Natives gain voice on sea

Conference hears concerns over Bering's health

Saturday, March 20, 1999

By BEN SPIESS, Daily News reporter

    Gibson Moto noticed a curious thing near his Bering Sea village. He has collected wild bird eggs near his home in Deering since he was a boy. But whereas he once lugged home full buckets without cracking an egg, now filling a 5-gallon bucket leaves half the eggs broken. "The shells are thinner" he said. "I am wondering if the elders here might know why."

    Moto, other Alaska Natives from the Bering Sea region, scientists and environmentalists were at the Anchorage Hilton Hotel on Friday for a four-day conference called Wisdomkeepers of the North. An association of Western Alaska towns known as the Bering Sea Coalition organized the event to hear Native concerns about the Bering Sea's health, gather local knowledge and organize to give Natives a stake in the future of the waters where they live.

    Sixty-five thousand Natives live on the shores of the Bering Sea. The sea also is home to a billion-dollar offshore fishing industry - the Bristol Bay red salmon run is the world's largest, and the pollock fishery is the world's biggest single-species catch. Onshore, thousands of Natives depend on the Bering Sea's bounty for subsistence food.

    At the Hilton on Friday, a circle of listeners heard Moto's description and nodded in grave agreement. There was no answer for the broken eggs, either from elders or scientists. But nearly all agree that something is awry in Alaska's western ocean.

    Alaska's only two endangered species are in the Bering Sea: the Steller Sea lion and the Spectacled Eider. The Bristol Bay salmon runs crashed two years in a row. Other signals from the waters are just plain weird. Sharks and sunfish have turned up in the North Pacific. Normally clear, seal oil seems of a yellowish subsistence, hunters say.

    What is causing change in the Bering Sea is not clear, though scientists agree commercial fishing and climate change are likely offenders.

    Managing the Bering Sea in an ecosystemwide mind-set that considers that complex interaction of all species and environmental factors is thinking that environmental groups have been pushing in recent years. "You can't look at the plight of a species like the Steller Sea lion in a vacuum", said Paul Clarke of Greenpeace. "It's more than that. It's pollock fishing and other factors".

    That approach to ecosystem management fits nicely with traditional, web-of-life belief that Eskimos and Aleuts bring to the table. Indeed, one goal of the conference is to bring Native groups into contact with environmental groups, said Sumner MacLeish, a meeting spokeswoman. Along with Greenpeace, other headline conservation groups, such as the World Wildlife Fund and the Nature Conservancy, are at the meetings.

    Just as the reasons behind changes in the Bering Sea are murky, so are the choices before the Bering Sea residents. Their goals may not be the same as environmentalists.

    Joe Clarke, a resident of Clark's Point near Bristol Bay, spoke up in one meeting of his fears about pollock fishing. Yet he wore a jacket showing a huge pollock trawler powering across the ocean with the words "Arctic Storm" stenciled underneath. Arctic Storm is a company that catches fish for Clark's Point and returns the benefit to the village in jobs and cash. "They've done a lot of good, but I know they are raping the sea," he said.

    Tammy Shelikof, an Aleut resident from False Pass on the Alaska Peninsula, says she is feeling the pinch of a dilemma too. False Pass depends on the pollock fishery and other Bering Sea commercial harvests for jobs. Yet the other half of the village economy - subsistence hunting and fishing - may be suffering from heavy commercial harvests.

    "We haven't been able to get our voice heard in the past. We don't have money like environment groups or big companies," she said.

    What course to take is unclear, but she said scientists and policy makers must listen to the people who truly know the Bering Sea - local residents.

    "A Ph.D. doesn't teach you what it's like to grow up in a fishing village," she said.