Sitka Sound in Southeast Alaska is home to one of the state’s largest commercially viable stocks of Pacific herring, which are harvested for their roe (eggs) in the spring, just before they spawn. There is also a subsistence herring fishery in Sitka Sound, with subsistence users collecting the roe after the herring spawn. In recent years, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has increased the commercial guideline harvest level—and conflict between commercial and subsistence fishermen has also increased.
James Shewmake, a research professional at ISER, earned his master's in natural resource management for his research on the subsistence herring fishery in Sitka Sound. He found that the size of the subsistence harvest depends not only on how many people participate, but also on other measures of participants’ effort and on harvesting opportunities.
News at ISER
Welcome to the ISER News and Announcements page, your hub for timely updates, industry insights, and the latest organizational highlights. Here, you can stay informed about upcoming events, important deadlines, and exciting achievements, all aimed at keeping the ISER community connected and engaged.
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The Barents region is a sprawling area of international cooperation that includes the northernmost parts of Sweden, Norway, and Finland, as well as Northwest Russia. It was created under an agreement among those countries in the early 1990s. Thomas Nilsen is the editor of BarentsObserver.com, an online public affairs and news site operated by the Norwegian Barents Secretariat, which promotes cooperation among Barents member countries, particularly cooperation between Norway and Russia.
At ISER, Mr. Nilsen talked about a range of topics, including Arctic oil and gas drilling in Norwegian waters, transportation of oil in Norwegian and Russian Arctic waters, potential routes across the Arctic as sea ice melts, and the Norwegian government’s High North policies and strategies for promoting economic and social development in the Arctic. Mr. Nilsen's visit to the United States was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State's International Visitor Leadership Program.
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Jose Polanco, a professor of marketing and economics at the University of Cantabria, in Santander, Spain, is an expert on European seafood retailers and consumers and the Spanish seafood market. He talked about how the Spanish seafood market combines both old traditions—such as consumer fish markets—with new trends, such as growing supermarket sales of frozen fish and rapidly growing imports of farmed pangasius and other whitefish.
Download the presentation (PDF, 1.57MB).
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Spending for construction in Alaska—including both public and private spending—will be about $9.2 billion in 2014, up 18% from spending in 2013. Increased spending by the oil and gas industry will account for most of the growth in private spending, and a larger Department of Defense budget will lead growth in public spending. State-funded projects will also be a major part of construction spending, with a number of projects that were funded in recent large state capital budgets starting or continuing in 2014.
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Scott Goldsmith, professor emeritus of economics at ISER, has updated his estimate of how much Alaska's state government can afford to spend each year, without risking sudden big budget deficits and economic hardships for Alaskans, as it deals with declining oil revenues.
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The TUNDRA project is an international study, with researchers from Norway, Russia, Canada, and Alaska examining the influence of society and governance on subsistence and land use among the people who live on the tundra in the Circumpolar North. Jennifer Schmidt, a researcher at the University of Tromsø, Norway, is part of the project team. She also describes other socio-ecological projects underway in Norway and Europe—and opportunities for researchers from different disciplines to collaborate on such research. To learn more about the TUNDRA project, visit: http://site.uit.no/tundra/researchers/
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In the 1970s, the state and federal governments began "privatizing" access to Alaska's commercial fisheries—that is, they either issued permits or assigned shares of the catch to a limited number of fishermen. Those permits and quota shares are commodities that can be bought and sold on the market. Scholars and fishermen alike view this privatization as a fundamental driver of change in fishing livelihoods and communities. Courtney Carothers, an associate professor in the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at UAF, has studied some of the social and cultural effects of the shift to privatization in Kodiak, one of Alaska's major fishing communities. Hear Dr. Carothers talk about the results of her research.
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A paper co-written by Katie Cueva, a research professional at ISER, has been awarded the R. Davilene Carter Prize for Best Paper submitted at the 2013 American Association for Cancer Education Annual Meeting. The paper, "Evaluating Arts-Based Cancer Education Using an Internet Survey among Alaska Community Health Workers," was published in the November 2013 issue of Journal of Cancer Education.
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A paper co-written by Katie Cueva, a research professional at ISER, has been awarded the R. Davilene Carter Prize for Best Paper submitted at the 2013 American Association for Cancer Education Annual Meeting. The paper, "Evaluating Arts-Based Cancer Education Using an Internet Survey among Alaska Community Health Workers," was published in the November 2013 issue of Journal of Cancer Education.
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For ten years, the United States has been mapping the continental shelf in all of its marine regions—from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Pacific and Arctic oceans. Betsy Baker, a professor at Vermont Law School, has sailed with two of the Arctic mapping cruises on the USCGC Healy, and recently completed ten months in the Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs, at the U.S. State Department, preparing documentation to help establish the extent of U.S. continental shelf rights under international law. Dr. Baker spoke at ISER November 14, 2013 about that process and the practical implications for Alaska’s Arctic, as well as developments in the Gulf of Mexico.