The years 2002 through 2005 were bad for Bering Sea pollock. The biomass plunged during those years. In a presentation in Washington, D.C., a NOAA fisheries biologist said today ongoing research points to two suspects: ice and fat, in league with each other.
NOAA biologist Ed Farley of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center says the low pollock years were warm, resulting little Bering Sea ice by May. The ice rebounded in 2007-2012, and so did the pollock.
"If we focus on that downward trend, that tended to occur during that early ice retreat period. That drop amounted to a 40 percent drop in available pollock catch, so that was a big issue. No one really understood why the pollock biomass was declining but it was impacting the fishery."
Farley told reporters in Washington on Tuesday, that the key Arctic ingredient is fat. And it starts low on the food chain. Farley says when the ice retreats early in the spring, it benefits small zooplankton that are low in fat. The pollock have to eat a lot of them to become fat themselves. But late ice retreat favors big, fatty zooplankton that Farley says make for bigger, fatter pollock.
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