NOAA Fisheries and Alaska Natives sign ice seal co-management agreement

Yesterday in Anchorage, Ice Seal Committee and NOAA Fisheries representatives signed a co-management agreement designed to ensure conservation of ice seals in the far north while meeting subsistence harvest needs of Alaska Natives.

The agreement addresses management of ice seals--the ringed seal (Phoca hispida), bearded seal (Erignathus barbatus), ribbon seal (Histriophoca fasciata), and spotted seal (Phoca largha)-- in a geographic area that extends along the western, northwestern, and arctic coasts from Bristol Bay to the Canadian border.

The goals of the agreement are to promote the sustained health of Alaskan ice seals in order to protect the culture and way of life of Alaska Natives; to advance co-management, research, and the use of traditional knowledge of Alaska Natives; and to provide information to subsistence hunters and the public at large.

The Ice Seal Committee is a tribally-authorized Alaska Native organization that represents ice seal subsistence hunters in the Alaska Native regions of the North Slope Borough, Maniilaq, Kawerak, the Association of Village Council Presidents, and the Bristol Bay Native Association.

NOAA Fisheries—the National Marine Fisheries Service--holds the primary federal responsibility for the conservation and management of certain marine mammals, including ice seals, in the United States.

"A partnership between the federal agency with management authority and the Alaska Native resource users is an important structure for conservation and stewardship of marine mammal populations that are critical to the subsistence life-ways of Alaska Natives’" states the signed document. "This agreement provides for full and equal participation by both parties in decisions affecting the subsistence management of marine mammals, to the maximum extent allowed by law."

The agreement sets up the Ice Seal Co-Management Committee, comprised of representatives of NOAA Fisheries and the Ice Seal Committee, which will meet in public at least annually to make consensus decisions. The group’s first work will be to develop a management plan or plans for ice seal conservation and harvest. The management plan or plans will address ice seal population monitoring; subsistence harvest monitoring; education; research recommendations; and traditional knowledge as well as other topics.

Other Alaskan marine mammals co-managed with NOAA Fisheries under similar agreements include beluga whales, northern fur seals, bowhead whales, and harbor seals.

For more information, the ice seal co-management agreement and general information on ice seals is posted at http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/protectedresources/seals/ice.htm

To contact the Ice Seal Committee, please e-mail Rex Snyder at harpoon907@yahoo.com. To contact the Protected Resources Division of NOAA Fisheries in Alaska, call 907-271-5006.

NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) is dedicated to protecting and preserving our nation’s living marine resources through scientific research, management, enforcement, and the conservation of marine mammals and other protected marine species and their habitat. To learn more about NOAA Fisheries in Alaska, please visit our websites at www.fakr.noaa.gov or at www.afsc.noaa.gov

In 2007 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, celebrates 200 years of science and service to the nation. From the establishment of the Survey of the Coast in 1807 by Thomas Jefferson to the formation of the Weather Bureau and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries in the 1870s, much of America's scientific heritage is rooted in NOAA.

NOAA is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and information service delivery for transportation, and by providing environmental stewardship of our nation's coastal and marine resources. Through the emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), NOAA is working with its federal partners, more than 60 countries and the European Commission to develop a global monitoring network that is as integrated as the planet it observes, predicts and protects.