northern fur seal

St. Paul Island, in the Bering Sea, is home to vast marine ecosystems that have supported the Unangax̂ community for generations. But the island’s most iconic species — the northern fur seal — has been in steep decline for decades. Last fall, the tribe began holding listening events to hear from residents about how to protect the island’s ecosystems from threats such as climate change and overfishing. The eventual goal behind that work is designating the waters around St. Paul Island as an Indigenous marine stewardship area.

The recent closure of the Bering Sea snow crab and Bristol Bay red king crab fisheries has some of Western Alaska’s coastal towns taking a hard look at their futures, and one small island is bracing for a huge hit. The Pribilof Island of St. Paul runs on snow crab — also known as opilio crab. The community’s Trident Seafoods is one of the largest crab processing plants in the world. So when fisheries management officials announced the species “overfished” and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game shut down snow crab for the first time in the fishery’s history in October, City Manager Phillip Zavadil knew the community needed to act fast. “We're trying to get creative and have people understand that this is going to happen more and more, and that we need to address it,” Zavadil said. “We can do something now, instead of waiting for next year, when we don't have any funding or we can't provide services.”

Researchers looking into the decline of Steller sea lions over the last decade noticed that the concentration of mercury levels in lion pups was increasing in some parts of the Aleutian Islands — but they didn’t know why. Now, a group of scientists from around the nation are working to solve that mystery with a research project called Aleutian Mercury Dynamics. The project’s goal is to create a timeline to see mercury levels in the Aleutian Islands over the last few thousand years.

Unalaska’s Sea Grant officers have rescued a northern fur seal pup found stranded on Front Beach. The pup has been sent to Seward’s Alaska Sealife Center…