Anchorage Daily News

In a TV ad that debuted on Alaska television Tuesday, a sad-looking, bearded fisherman in a yellow rain slicker -- the spitting image of the guy on the Gorton's fish stick frozen meals -- wanders the streets with a big sign that claims the crash of a Bering sea fishery left him jobless.

The fishery in question -- Alaska's $1 billion pollock industry -- hasn't actually crashed. Not yet, anyway.

But the steep population decline of the bottom-dwelling pollock -- hunted by large processing ships and turned into fish sticks, fast food sandwiches and imitation crab meat -- over the past two years has caught the attention of Greenpeace, the international environmental group.

The group has begun running the TV ad featuring the woebegone fisherman on network and cable TV stations in Alaska and Seattle. In the ad, Greenpeace claims Bering Sea pollock is being overfished.

Federal scientists say there are fewer fish but the accusation of overfishing is false.

The pollock industry agrees with the federal scientists. "This (population decline) was not unexpected, and the sky is not falling," said David Benton, executive director of the Marine Conservation Alliance, which represents western Alaska fishing fleets, processors and ports.

Federal scientists have called for a dramatic reduction in the pollock industry's harvest next year -- the lowest catch in the fishery's history -- in response to the decline.

Greenpeace and other conservation groups say even deeper cuts in the catch are needed to ensure that pollock remain healthy in the long run.

The federal scientists have recommended limiting the pollock harvest to 815,000 tons -- the smallest in more than 30 years. Greenpeace is pushing for a much smaller harvest: 458,000 tons.

"Pollock is one of the most important food sources for every animal in the Bering Sea food web," said George Pletnikoff, a Greenpeace campaigner based in Alaska.

Next week, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council will meet in Anchorage to consider next year's catch limit, among other tasks. The meetings begin Monday and are expected to spill over into the following week.

"People can go to the Anchorage Hilton hotel next week and give their opinions and thoughts about the fishery. They should be involved in it," Pletnikoff said.

National Marine Fisheries Service scientists say the decline in Bering Sea pollock is due to natural variability in the fish population that has been documented for decades, not too much harvesting.

But conservation groups are concerned. "We don't hit any other species in Alaska harder than pollock," said Jon Warrenchuk, a Juneau-based scientist for the conservation group Oceana.

"Overfishing is only one of the risks. The other is, how low can you push the stock before you compromise the resilience of the whole system," Warrenchuk said, noting the decline of Steller sea lions and fur seals in the region, and the rise of less-tasty flounder that may be competing with pollock for prime habitat.

"There is something that is allowing all of these critters to decline at rates that we don't really understand yet," Pletnikoff said.

But federal scientists say their annual Bering Sea surveys show that the pollock stocks are healthy and will be more abundant next year.

The stock has not been overfished in the past 30 years, said James Ianelli, a federal fisheries scientist based in Seattle who is involved in the Bering pollock stock assessment.

He said Bering Sea fishing vessels were allowed to haul 1 million tons of pollock out of the ocean this year but ended up catching roughly 980,000 tons. To have actually overfished the pollock, the fleet would have to have caught more than 1.44 million tons, he said.

Find Elizabeth Bluemink online at adn.com/contact/ebluemink or call 257-4317.

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