Rising temperatures in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska will reduce stocks and harvests of Alaska pollock by mid-century, but there is a silver lining for the fishing industry, according to a new report: The ubiquitous whitefish gobbled around the world in fast-food sandwiches, frozen sticks and imitation crab meat will no longer be ultra-cheap.
Economic losses from a catch diminished by climate change will be partially offset by rising prices for the fish species that supports the nation's single biggest seafood harvest, according to an analysis by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Alaska Fisheries Science Center.
The report, by economist Chang Seung and biologist Jim Ianelli and published in the journal Natural Resource Modeling, estimates that the total Alaska pollock harvest in 2050 will be 22.2 percent smaller than it was in 2004. But the dollar value of the harvest – total revenue from sales of raw pollock – will decline by only 9 percent, according to the report's projections.
Pollock harvests in waters off Alaska generally range between 1 million and 1.4 million metric tons a year, with nearly all of that pulled out of the eastern Bering Sea. The 2012 catch of pollock from waters off Alaska totaled 1.31 million metric tons and brought in nearly $500 million to the harvesting fishermen, according to the report. The total value of the fishery is much greater than that when multiplier effects are considered; it mounts to billions of dollars as the economic activity expands along each step from the fishing vessel to consumers' meals.
Future consumers will be willing to pay more for pollock for a variety of reasons, Seung said.
"There is a decrease in supply of pollock. That will increase the price a little bit," he said.
In addition, the analysis assumes growth in the global population and economy, meaning expanded markets of fish-eaters and a positive shift in the demand curve, he said.
The analysis considers a range of scenarios that are averaged over the long term.
In the short term, Alaska pollock stocks and harvests fluctuate year to year. The gradual warming that is happening and is expected to continue will have effects in coming decades.
Effects of warmer waters on pollock are complicated, according to analysis by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. Higher summer temperatures tend to spur growth of more young fish, but those conditions leave much less high-oil prey for them to eat. Though they are more abundant than their cold-summer counterparts, the warm-summer young pollock are low on the fat reserves they need to survive the winter. Since juvenile pollock are a major source of food for a variety of fish and marine mammals, winter survival is critical to stock sizes. Pollock populations can be plentiful if warm and cold years alternate, according to NOAA analysis, but there is concern about several sequential warm years causing big stock declines.
Do the future supply and demand changes mean the lowly pollock might become a more premium whitefish? Could pollock be the new cod?
Don't count on it, advises Gunnar Knapp, a University of Alaska Anchorage economist with fisheries expertise.
"I don't see it happening any time soon," said Knapp, director of UAA's Institute of Social and Economic Research.
Though groundfish is not his specialty, he said, his "gut instinct" is that pollock faces too many obstacles to become a prized fish like halibut, now considered a delicacy, or even cod, which has niche appeal as food with centuries-old traditions.
Those include competition from other whitefish, like farmed catfish and tilapia, along with the emerging farmed species from Vietnam, Pangasius hypophthalmus, which goes by the newly coined name "swai," Knapp said. Swai was not even eaten in the United States until about 10 years ago but it is now a strong contender in the whitefish market, he said.
Future marketing of pollock could make a pitch for the product as wild and sustainably managed, Knapp added. Pollock also feeds spinoff markets for roe – generally a Japanese market subject to the changing value of the yen – and the paste known as surimi, making pollock economics a bit more complex than those applicable to other fish, he said.