An Empty Donut Hole: the Great Collapse of a North American Fishery

Walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma) is North America's most abundant and lucrative natural fishery, and is the world's largest fishery for human food. The little-known demise of the "Donut Hole" stock of pollock in the Aleutian Basin of the central Bering Sea during the 1980s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology and Society
Main Author: Kevin M. Bailey
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Resilience Alliance 2011
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-04124-160228
https://doaj.org/article/7ed00544bc004f718acf2ae8caedf2e9
Description
Summary:Walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma) is North America's most abundant and lucrative natural fishery, and is the world's largest fishery for human food. The little-known demise of the "Donut Hole" stock of pollock in the Aleutian Basin of the central Bering Sea during the 1980s is the most spectacular fishery collapse in North American history, dwarfing the famous crashes of the northern cod and Pacific sardine (Sardinops sagax). This collapse has received scant recognition and became evident only in 1993 when fishing was banned by an international moratorium; nearly 20 years later it has not recovered. The history of fishing in the North Pacific Ocean after World War II offers some insights into how the Donut Hole pollock fishery developed, and the societal and economic pressures behind it that so influenced the stock's fate. Overfishing was, without a doubt, the greatest contributor to the collapse of the Aleutian Basin pollock fishery, but a lack of knowledge about population biocomplexity added to the confusion of how to best manage the harvest. Unfortunately, the big scientific questions regarding the relationship of Donut Hole fish to other stocks are still unanswered.