sweeping landscapes,
towering mountains,
over 100,000 glaciers, 44,000 miles
of coastline and intertidal waters
Far up in the most
northwestern corner of North America
is Alaska. At the top of
the 25,000 mile Pacific Ring of Fire
is a vast land of extremes.
Our state is one-fifth the size of the lower forty-eight.
The tallest mountain in North America
rising twenty thousand three hundred feet, is Denali,
also known as Mount McKinley. Volcanic eruptions continue to form
the growing Aleutian Islands. Earthquakes rattle the land,
and see the results
are devastating.
This most northern state
has many boundaries: to the north,
the Arctic Ocean and Beaufort Sea; to the east,
Canada's Yukon Territory and province
of British Columbia; to the south, the Gulf of Alaska
and Pacific Ocean;
and to the west, the Bering Sea, Bering Strait
and Chukchi Sea.
Alaska is covered with lakes and rivers.
The Yukon
is the third largest river in the United States.
At one thousand nine hundred
eighty miles it begins its journey in Canada,
and cuts its wide meandering path through the center of the state
where it drains into a sprawling delta
on the shores the Bering Sea.
Whether fresh
or salt, our waters are the basis for so much that is important to
all Alaskans, to the nation and the world.
For thousands of years
the rivers and oceans have provided us with the means of transportation,
and it has been an important source from which we get our food.
About three-quarters the state's population
lives in our coastal communities. Half of the entire shallow continental shelf
is located off of our coast. This shelf was once exposed
and considered to be a land bridge, allowing Alaska's first inhabitants
to migrate to this land. These are the people
who became known as the Inupiaq and the Yupik Eskimos,
Athabaskan, Aleuts, Alutiiq,
Eyak, Tlingit, Haida,
and Tsimshian. The first Europeans
came from Russia. Vitus Bering, a Danish explorer,
is credited with the first visit. He and his crew,
which included the naturalist George Steller, crossed the sea
later name for Bering in 1728.
They got as far as Cape St. Elias,
in what is now called the Gulf of Alaska. In 1799
the Russian-American company was formed to hunt sea otters for their fur.
Later the northern fur seal too. Despite initial abundance of these animals,
they were hunted to near extinction. In 1848
another hunter arrived, only this time from the east:
New England whalers. The whalers
were affective harvesters. They killed whales
without regard to overhunting. Consequently, the populations of whales
in Alaskan waters
was also dramatically reduced.
On
April 9, 1867, the United States
purchased Alaska from Russia. At the time of the purchase,
US citizens thought Alaska was a useless wasteland
and a bad investment.
But that opinion was soon proven wrong. The year was
1880. Gold was discovered near the community of Juneau.
But it was the Klondike strike in 1896
that brought a Stampede of mostly Americans
to the north. The Klondike
was followed by more large discoveries of gold in Nome,
and then in Fairbanks. Well throughout the 20th century.
many industries came and went, and would come and go.
Fish had been and continue to be
an important renewable resource for Alaskans.
Long before the first Europeans' arrival,
Alaska Natives relied on fish as a barter commodity.
When the Russians arrived they provided them with salmon,
halibut and cod.
Soon the Russians set up fish plants to salt the fish mostly for their own
people.
Meanwhile fish canneries developing in California
were moving north to Alaska.
By the end of the 19th century fish traps and canneries
were found all along the lengthy Alaska coast.
The canneries were owned by businesses
outside of the territory.
Concerns over salmon conservation became one of the issues that pushed Alaska
towards statehood. Harvesting animals and plants from the sea
for Alaska Natives is a traditional activity.
The modern-day term for this important practice is
subsistence. Subsistence is gathering food.
Alaska Natives and other rural Alaskans
subsist on fish shellfish and marine plants
at a rate of up to 600 pounds per person
per year. We get about 50 to 100 Kings.
Depends on if we've got any left over for winter or not.
If we don't have enough left over for winter from the
summer before we didn't usually
get very much during the winter. We just
get so much and strip them brine them and smoke them.
We cut it up and dip it in salt water so
they'll be open.
We cut one side and go on the other.
It's half raw but it's smoked.
And we just boil it in hot water.
We eat it with seal oil.
It's tasty. Then the rest we dry
and put them away in the buckets.
But subsistence is more than just gathering food.
It is the cornerstone of what it means to be an Alaska Native,
and is expressed and celebrated
throughout the cultures.
Alaskans
are diverse.
The distance between our communities is vast.
Travel can be expensive,
time-consuming
and sometimes hazardous. Expenses are high
in rural Alaska. Economies
can be precarious. Marine resources are important
to Alaskans, and fish by the basis for the culture,
food, and economic security. Rising and falling prices
and fish populations have a dramatic effect on Alaska's communities.
So while coastal Alaskans search for ways to create a more diverse economy,
the long-established commercial fishing industry
continues to be the economic base.
In 1968 oil reserves were discovered on Alaska's northern coast at Prudhoe Bay.
In 1977, the 800 mile long
Alaska Pipeline was completed and the North Slope oil was pumped
through the pipeline from the Arctic to the ice-free
Port of Valdez in Prince William Sound. The oil industry is important to Alaska
as it provides jobs and large revenues to the state.
Tourism and commercial fishing provide many jobs
Alaska's commercial fishing industry
represents fifty percent of the total seafood production
in the United States. From Kotzebue to Ketchikan
around 50,000 people are employed in fishing business,
representing roughly a one billion dollar industry.
It is the second largest private employer in the state,
and one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States.
Alaska has one of the highest drowning rates for boaters
in the nation. Almost every Alaska community
has felt the loss of family and friends
involved in the commercial fisheries.
The water and climate are cold and the weather can be harsh
and difficult to predict. If trouble develops on the water,
help is generally far away.
It is a pristine and vast land,
carefully managed, that allows these opportunities to continue to occur
in Alaska. The US Oceans Commission
recognized Alaska's fisheries as the best managed in the United States.
The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council is a model of how to
oversee the management of many fisheries.
Healthy fishery resources
are important to every Alaskan.
Ecosystem approaches to fishery harvest management,
balanced with conservation of Alaska's living resources,
are of vital importance to the state. The profitability
and the viability of Alaska's commercial fishermen
and fishing communities is a primary interest
to all who live here. Concern over the health of wild salmon stocks
resulted in a prohibition on fish farming in Alaska.
However, other coastal aquaculture is being conducted in several areas of the
state.
Oysters are the primary commercial mariculture activity,
but several other types of shellfish such as
littleneck clams and geoducks are also being developed.
What's always been our vision is to generate small-scale family operations.
The majority our income in the community comes from commercial fishing.
Much of the industry we have comes from
our resources, and there's been a lot of interest in developing side businesses
for commercial fishermen
and for their families.
In this location here at Canoe lagoon, we have
out plants of geoduck clams and
littleneck clams and we're here to evaluate the first year and a half of
growth. So we've dug some clams, we'll
measure them and get an idea of how well they're growing and also get an idea of survival rates.
The tourist industry is also dependent on healthy ecosystems.
Tourism is one of the largest private industries in the state.
Each year the number of people visiting Alaska on cruise ships
far outnumbers the population of people living here.
Sport fishing generates thousands of jobs and millions in wages and salaries
for Alaskans each year. Due to the fact that Alaska's
seas and coasts are so untouched and wild,
the number people interested in this sort of experience
is also growing. Alaska is unique.
$100 million acres of national park
and refuge lands, 16,000 square miles
covered with glaciers, 35-foot tides in Turn again Arm,
the second largest tides in North America,
and three and a half million lakes of 20 acres or larger.
Its vastness and relatively small population
permit it to remain wild, pristine
and rich in natural resources. Wildlife is abundant.
Mammals, birds and fish
all thrive here where there is room to live.
But Alaska is not without her challenges.
Marine ecosystems and habitats can
easily be disrupted by human activities.
Once pristine, Alaska's beaches
can become depositories for floating garbage
and cause problems for the plants and animals that live there.
Underwater coral beds are being destroyed.
The northern fur seal populations have been declining at a rate of 5 percent
per year.
They are currently on the critical species list.
Sea otter populations are declining in the Aleutians,
but booming in southeast Alaska where the increased populations
are eating and decimating the animals critical
to some commercial fisheries in the area. Stellar sea lions have been on the
threatened list in eastern Alaska
and in the western areas on the endangered list
for many years. Scientists have spent a great deal of time studying this animal.
Short-tailed Albatross
were near extinction in the 1950s,
but are very slowly recovering. Scientists and fishermen
have worked together to minimize the impact of fishing on these slow to
reproduce
and rare birds.
Marine mammals, seabirds and fish
are vulnerable to human and environmental changes.
Climate change is affecting Alaska and the results,
if not addressed, will be devastating to local economies.
Erosion is destroying villages,
and a change in plankton blooms could cause major changes in the marine animal
and plant populations
that are so important to our economy. Protection of our resources,
making good decisions. Because Ketchikan is a rainforest we
average 220 days of rain per year and
we have about 13.5 feet of rain per year.
Reaching out to Alaskans with science
and good information is important to Alaska's welfare.
The biggest part of this tour is to not find the green crab.
We're rocking it out right now but now we've got this fish and
we're going to need three pictures of them. Collaboration between western scientists and resource
managers
with local and traditional knowledge possessed by Alaska Natives
and other rural people is helping bridge gaps
and creating a greater understanding of our seas and coasts.
Look there's two of them! Oh a smaller one!
Improved literacy about the ocean
will take Alaskans closer to understanding how to protect
and use our resources wisely.
Alaska
is a strong and vital state. There are many challenges
and opportunities.
Alaska Sea Grant has communicated with constituents
to identify issues. We have developed a long-range strategy
to address these issues.
We receive guidance through community meetings statewide surveys,
interaction with local state and federal agencies and leaders,
and input
from our advisory committee faculty,
staff,
and students at the University of Alaska.
Alaska Sea Grant we address the challenges,
and produce significant results for the state,
nation and the international community.