A presentation on the Chugach Imaq Initiative – which supports management of harbor seals, sea otters and Steller sea lions – is slated for delivery in Anchorage tomorrow during the Gulf of Alaska plenary session of the annual Alaska Marine Science Symposium.
Raven Cunningham, tribal fish and wildlife director for the Chugach Regional Resources Commission (CRRC), will present. Cunningham, of Cordova, is of Eyak-Chugach Alaska Native descent. She has also been an artisan and the owner of Made by Raven, her handcrafted Alaska Native art brand, since 2011.
The Chugach Imaq Initiative was founded by CRRC in 2022 to support the creation of marine mammal harvest management plans prioritizing the conservation and benefit of harbor seals, sea otters and Steller sea lions. Imaq in the Sugt’sun language means “the ocean and all of its contents.”
CRRS is working toward revitalizing the tribally-led stewardship of the area’s traditional territories and all marine mammals through co-management with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), with a regional focus centered on the Tribe’s sovereignty. Cunningham notes in the abstract for her presentation that in its first years, Chugach Imaq developed Indigenous-led bio sampling from marine mammal subsistence harvests to comprehend the health and well-being of the three subsistence species.
Their efforts:
- Promoted culturally respectful collaborative research;
- Identified gaps in research and monitoring;
- Worked with the Indigenous Sentinels Network to provide app-based research and monitoring support to tribal communities;
- And built a collaborative foundation for coproduction of science with regional and federal partners in support of co-stewardship of marine malls and ecosystems in the Chugach region.
Building on this initiative, Cunningham wrote, CRRC grew the Imaq Project to the Chugach Imaq Research Collaborative (CIRC) with support from the U.S Geological Survey, Alaska Science Center and USFWS. This brought together partners from Gulf Watch Alaska, ADF&G, NOAA-NMFS, the Marine Mammal Commission and Chugach region Tribes, and other groups.
The founding tenet of CIRC is that direct scientist-to-scientist collaboration among staff within participating organizations can best achieve meaningful collaboration, incorporate Indigenous science and knowledge into federal decision making, and establish a lasting relationship among Tribes and agencies with a mutual responsibility for stewardship of coastal regions, she wrote.
At its first meeting in Cordova last September, participation came from 30 individuals from partnering organizations who took first steps toward the collaborative monitoring and coproducing of marine mammal stock assessments, she wrote.
Cunningham’s presentation is one of seven presentations scheduled during the afternoon within the seabirds and marine mammals section of the Gulf of Alaska Plenary.
Additional presentations
A doctorate oral presentation by two University of California Davis educators on the role of fisheries diversification in stabilizing local fishing economies is also on that afternoon’s agenda.
Kyumin Kim and Matthew Reimer note in their abstract that climate change presents significant challenges to the economic growth and stability of fishing communities.
“The literature has established that a diverse portfolio of fisheries stabilizes fisheries income for individual fishers and communities, highlighting its importance for the resilience of fishing communities,” the two researchers note in their abstract. “However, empirical evidence that fisheries diversification also stabilizes local economies beyond the fishing sector is limited. This study addresses this gap by focusing on the role of fisheries diversification as a risk management tool for the local economies of Alaska’s fishing communities.”
Their work specifically explores how fisheries diversification influences growth and stability of employment across all sectors of a community’s local economy. In all, they analyzed 17 years of fisheries and community data from 177 Alaska fishing communities to assess how diversification and other local factors impact economic growth and instability.
Earlier in the day, Gary Shigenaka, of NOAA’s Office of Response & Restoration, is to present on the long-term recovery of disturbed Prince William Sound beach habitat from simulated oil spill cleanup.
Shigenaka notes in his abstract that following the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill disaster that hydraulic techniques using combinations of high-pressure and heated water were used to mobilize weathered oil from impacted shores. During treatment, concerns were raised over the ecological impacts of these treatment methods. The report is a long-term study comparing grain size and infaunal communities in washed and unwashed plots at unoiled beaches treated using these methods.
They concluded that despite the long-term disruption of grain size structure, total infaunal abundance showed no significant differences between washed and unwashed plots after only one year, and species diversity metrics had recovered by the third year post-treatment. Similarly, community structure appeared to have recovered by year three, according to this abstract.
