Southeast Bering Sea Carrying Capacity (SEBSCC

• Main Author: S. Allen Macklin
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: PICES Press 1999
• Subjects: Bering Sea
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.510.2889; http://www.pices.int/publications/pices_press/volume7_issue2/May99/SEBSCC_8.pdf

The southeastern Bering Sea is a major ecosystem supporting bountiful economic resources. It boasts an abundance of high-latitude marine life and some of the busiest fishing ports in the United States. This ecosystem responds to changing conditions in ways that can be observed as fluctuations in abundance of commercial fish and shellfish, sea birds and marine mammals. At present, the southeastern Bering Sea ecosystem has a dominant pelagic species: the commercially fished walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramms). Pollock is a nodal species, constituting an integral part of the region’s food chain as both prey and predator. Understanding the ecology of this fish in the context of the overall ecosystem is a useful approach to developing methods to better manage living marine resources of the southeastern