Old-growth battle blooms in Alaska's coral gardens

By Craig Welch and Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporters

	R. STONE, NOAA FISHERIES A large basket starfish, center, finds a home in a kaleidoscope of coral and sponges that can provide cover and food for other sea life in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Scientists are trying to discover if commercial fishing imperils such undersea gardens.
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In the deep-sea gloom was a remarkable sight: Azure sponges grew next to brilliant red tree coral that fanned out like tumbleweeds. In between poked invertebrates shaped eerily like human fingers.

"We'd never seen anything like what we found there," said Stone, a researcher at Alaska's Auke Bay Laboratory, run by the National Marine Fisheries Service. "There were these gardens, like coral reefs, but you'd see acres and acres of ground 100 percent covered. We were finding species the Smithsonian had never seen before."

The discovery of Alaska's extensive cold-water coral gardens little more than a year ago has since garnered attention from scientists and environmentalists worldwide.

At the same time, the amazing find has quickly worked its way to the center of a fight over commercial-fishing practices and the use of nets weighted with chains that drag the bottom, scraping up everything from rockfish to cod to starfish, crabs, clams and, sometimes, tons of coral.

It's a debate that echoes the wars in the Northwest over the northern spotted owl in the 1980s: A burgeoning movement is rallying behind an alluring symbol — Alaskan coral — to back its claim that the practices of a powerful industry are harmful to the environment.

Coral, patches of which are found along Washington and Oregon's coastline, cradles some of this ecosystem's diverse marine life. Environmentalists contend bottom trawling clear-cuts the sea floor, scraping away long-lived invertebrates that provide shelter and food for fish, much like logging an old-growth forest.

"It's a Neandertal approach to fishing," said Jim Ayers, former chief of staff to former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles, who now works for the environmental group Oceana. "I think we have the brains and technology to catch fish without destroying habitat."

Alaska trawl fishermen are leery of more restrictions, protections — or even preserves — for coral. And they say — with pride — that the region remains among the best managed and most productive in the world, yielding an abundance of fish, even after decades of commercial fishing.

Still, the trawl fleet fears the debate over coral could harm an otherwise healthy, $1 billion-a-year North Pacific industry, much of it based in the Puget Sound region.

"We're into a new era where environmentalists are focusing on us," said Trevor McCabe, executive director of the At-Sea Processors Association. "We're in their sights, and no one in the fishing industry dreams they're going away."

While complaints about trawling aren't new, this new movement, buoyed by multimillion-dollar foundation grants, is distributing glossy fliers illustrated with colorful coral that urge an end to "reckless destructive fishing" in Alaska. And it's lobbying with a sophistication and combativeness that has the fishing industry on high alert.

"They come in with Web sites saying industrial fishing has destroyed the ecosystem in the Bering Sea — and that has polarized people right away," said Jim Gilmore, also with the group At-Sea.

The industry is worried environmentalists may take their fight to court and that, in turn, may lead to costly closures of prime fishing grounds.

This adds new urgency for government scientists struggling to gain enough knowledge to help guide decisions.

In 1996, a new federal law required fisheries agencies to identify and preserve sea-bottom habitat that is essential to maintain commercially caught fish stocks. Scientists since have been exploring the North Pacific seafloor, from the sand-swirled flats of the Bering Sea to the rocky bottom of the Gulf of Alaska to the volcanic flanks of the Aleutians.

The scientists have documented evidence that the funnel-shape trawl nets have leveled coral beds in the Aleutians, including one ghostly underwater video that shows a colorful coral bed reduced to white rubble.

But they said such alarming images don't tell the whole story.

Scientists said they are far from understanding the scale of the damage to Alaska's coral and whether it's significant enough to undermine the broader marine environment and put fish populations at risk.

"The big picture is really difficult, and we really haven't gotten that far," said Jon Heifetz, an Alaska researcher with the National Marine Fisheries Service. "The politics are going ahead without us understanding the full scientific picture."

Undersea puzzle

	BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES, 1987 Fishermen on the Bering Enterprise labor to haul up a load of bottom fish in the Bering Sea, where almost 90 percent of Alaska's commercial fishing takes place.

Coral is one of the most startling discoveries in a remarkable decade of exploration by scientists trying to gauge how Alaska's marine environment has been affected by the nation's appetite for seafood.

Like their counterparts working in the forests, these biologists are dealing with a hugely complex web of life. But getting a glimpse of the underwater landscape can be formidable.

The scientists dive in submersibles, use undersea cameras and sonar and drop survey nets down hundreds of feet to study the bottom. The area they're studying encompasses three vastly different environments — the Gulf, Aleutians and Bering Sea — that together stretch more than 1,000 miles east to west.

For more than half a century, these waters have laid claim to some of the world's biggest fisheries, and catches remain strong even as many fisheries around the world are in decline.

The Aleutians yield a fraction of the annual Alaska harvest, about 5 percent, but are rich in mackerel and cod. It's in these deep, rocky basins that most of the coral is thought to exist, in sharp, hard forms that can shred an unwary fisherman's net.

With the aid of chain-edged nets and discs known as "rock-hoppers," fishermen have found ways to intensively trawl these areas. Over time, the gear can kill coral and smooth out the sea bottom, making trawling easier than fighting through virgin coral grounds.

"In some areas, the corals and sponges have been completely removed or knocked over or displaced by nets," said Doug Woodby, with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

While scientists knew through years of accidental catches by fishermen that the coral and sponges existed, they were flabbergasted by the volume and diversity they found on their dives: up to 100 different species. And a majority of the intricate gardens they came across appeared to be intact.

"We'd never seen corals so dense before," said Stone, the Auke Bay Lab biologist.

This coral — like that in tropical oceans — clearly plays a role in the Aleutian marine system. It gives structure to the seafloor, provides refuge for young fish and attracts small creatures that fish find tasty.

	J. BIZZARRO, NOAA FISHERIES A sea anemone settles near gorgonian coral and other invertebrates. Coral offers shelter for fellow creatures and often harbors tiny critters that fish like to eat.

But it's much more difficult, some scientists said, to gauge how much coral must be knocked down before rockfish or other commercial fish species are threatened, or whether it matters at all. Researchers do know it may take decades or centuries for damaged coral to rebound.

The research also is expanding from the coastal Aleutian chain into the Bering Sea, where almost 90 percent of Alaska's commercial fishing takes place and most of the 4 billion pounds of fish are caught each year.

Unlike the bottom-scraping trawls in the Aleutians, many Bering Sea fishing vessels trawl at midwater depths, but their nets bounce along the bottom at least some of the time.

As researchers explore the Bering Sea, where much of the bottom is flat and sandy, they're seeing glimpses of long-term changes. And that could prove more of a challenge for fishermen.

At first, scientists couldn't tell the difference between areas of the Bering Sea that had been fished with trawl nets and those that hadn't. "One part was undistinguishable from the next in terms of the naked eye," said Robert McConnaughey, a federal biologist who has played a key role in the Bering Sea studies.

But more detailed surveys found fewer snail shells, fewer anemones, fewer hermit crabs and fewer tunicates, sea-squirt-like creatures that grow in bottom-dwelling colonies.

Could those changes trigger broader consequences for the marine system? McConnaughey can't say.

So far, at least, the fishing is good, which is part of the complication for scientists.

"In Alaska, all the managed stocks of fish are healthy," said Jack Taggart, a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife scientist who sits on an Alaska fisheries management advisory panel. "There are those who think that because the resource is healthy that means the habitat is also healthy."

Congress gets involved

Last month, a group of state and federal officials and members of the fishing industry gathered in the Anchorage Hilton Hotel ballroom to decide which areas of Alaska's fishing grounds need protection from trawl nets. The group, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, helps set harvest policy for the 200-mile zone off Alaska.

The members had in hand a thick draft report from federal scientists that included six options for expanding areas off-limits to bottom trawling. The most modest proposal would cost the industry about $900,000 a year in lost harvest, while the most sweeping measure would shrink by 20 percent the areas now open to trawling at an estimated annual cost of $236 million.

But while the federal report offered evidence that trawling damages sea-bottom life, scientists concluded there is no proof such damage ultimately harms commercially fished species. They determined there was no obligation under the 1996 law protecting commercial-fish stocks to make more habitat off-limits to fishing.

The council accepted the scientists' advice, and the findings will soon go out for public comment.

"Any scientist would have come to the same conclusion. The system is working and we have the fish to prove it," said John Gauvin, an industry consultant on fish-habitat issues.

But no one expects the battle to end there.

	R. STONE, NOAA FISHERIES Thick red and white bubblegum coral can grow to 5 or 6 feet tall and live for perhaps hundreds of years in the cold waters off the Aleutian Islands.

In 2000, environmentalists scored a victory in federal court. A judge found the government had not adequately considered alternatives to the status quo, such as wider fishing closures. That ruling forced last month's report. This time, the council considered more options but rejected them.

Fishing-industry officials are concerned environmental groups will have plenty of leverage to launch new lawsuits seeking to overturn that decision.

Marine conservationists had hoped the council last month would provide at least minimal protections for Aleutian coral gardens, arguing there was enough scientific uncertainty to justify a precautionary approach.

"It'd be nice to get to the bottom of all the scientific questions, but if we wait to answer them, we will have knocked down a lot more coral in the meantime," said Dorothy Childers, of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council.

With a board that includes small-boat fishermen, Childers' conservation group was among the first to try to sway public policy in front of the industry-dominated Fishery Management Council.

The fight has attracted a new wave of larger, well-funded environmental groups out to make a mark on ocean issues in Alaska. In 1998, it was a coalition of groups that sued the federal government arguing trawlers were a threat to the survival of Steller's sea lions. The coalition argued that commercial fishermen were competing for a favored sea-lion food source: pollock.

The groups won temporary fishing restrictions even though some government biologists thought the science behind the sweeping new measure was ambiguous at best.

"About a million dollars into the lawsuit, we realized we were right where the logging companies were in the '80s with the spotted owl," said Brent Paine, with United Catcher Boats, a nonprofit organization that represents catcher vessel interests in Washington, D.C., and at regional Fishery Management Council meetings.

Recognizing they may be outflanked in the courts, the fishing industry turned to a longtime ally: U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. Stevens, the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, in September upped the stakes, moving to delay protection of any fish habitat in Alaska until Congress gets a chance to rethink the 1996 ocean-habitat law.

Congress is expected to debate Stevens' measure — attached as a hard-to-block rider to a spending bill — as early as this week. Stevens, who rarely loses a fight over fishing regulations, is expected to face enough opposition in Congress that his rider, which includes other controversial measures, may not survive — further testament, in part, to the environmentalists' public-relations campaign.

Oceana, with a $12 million annual budget that includes millions from the Pew Charitable Trusts, is the most high-profile group. It portrays bottom-trawling as an international scourge.

Oceana staff members have pored over federal catch records to figure out what coral areas are hardest hit by the trawlers. According to their records, between 1997 and 1999, 1 million pounds of coral, sponges and other invertebrates were removed from the Alaska waters annually by trawl nets.

"Immediate measures are needed to stop the horrifically destructive fishing practices such as bottom trawling to ensure that our children and grandchildren will have fish on their tables," said an Oceana Web page titled "Take Action Now." The group also hired the lead environmental attorney in the Steller's sea lion lawsuit.

Oceana's Ayers said the group has no intention of trying to ban bottom trawling off Alaska but would like to see the Aleutian coral gardens protected and at least some additional small closures in the Bering Sea.

As for Stone, he was recently in Germany to present his findings on coral at an international conference, and he expects his research will resume next summer, with more dives in the Aleutians. "Certainly, coral and sponge habitat is going to be at the center of the whole to-fish-or-not-to-fish thing for years to come."

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com

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