Helping Alaska's Coastal Communities Adapt with Next-Generation Ocean Forecasting

Changing ocean conditions threaten lives, livelihoods, and invaluable marine resources across the United States. From marine heatwaves and the collapse of snow crab populations in Alaska , to last year's historic hurricane season , the day-to-day realities of people throughout the nation are being impacted by reduced food security, increased operational costs for fisheries, and higher seafood costs for consumers.

To help fishing communities and fisheries managers anticipate and respond to these challenges, NOAA is leading a nationwide effort called the Changing Ecosystems and Fisheries Initiative (CEFI) . This initiative is building a powerful new ocean forecasting system that delivers short and long-term predictions of future ocean and ecosystem conditions. Through a combination of high-resolution modeling and community engagement, CEFI aims to provide the information needed to support food security, protect American fisheries, and strengthen coastal economies in the face of rapid changes.

Rapidly Responding to Changing Oceans

Dr. Kirstin Holsman , a fisheries biologist with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, has been working at the forefront of research on fishery and community adaptation for over a decade. She is the co-lead for the Alaska Climate Integrated Modeling Project (ACLIM) -the first of several "pilot" projects on which the CEFI system builds. ACLIM was established to project the responses of key species like fish, crabs, and marine mammals to varying ocean conditions in the Bering Sea, and better understand the impacts on fishing communities that rely on those species.

Fishing is the backbone of many Alaskan communities' economies. The Alaskan fishing fleet brings in over $5 million in sales each year and supports over 74,000 jobs . Following the Bering Sea snow crab population crash of 2018-2019, the community of St. Paul, Alaska, saw a 60% drop in community revenue, so supporting this industry is crucial. As changing oceans continue to drive operating costs up and wholesale prices down for Alaskan fishers, the information that ACLIM provides is more critical than ever for strengthening the Alaskan fishing fleet.

"Over the course of my career, experts have made a number of predictions about how marine species will move north and how things will shift as our oceans change," Holsman says. "What has been shocking is that predictions we made about what would happen by 2050 or even 2070 have already come true in the 2020s. We were right about the effects, but wrong about the timing."

Since 2016, Holsman and her team have been using ocean and ecosystem models to anticipate:

• How Bering Sea conditions may change in the near future
• Likely impacts of changes to Bering Sea conditions on species and people in the region
• How different management and community responses can support our nation's fisheries and fishing communities in the face of changing ocean conditions

This has been a collaborative effort with fisheries managers and other stakeholders from the start. Through feedback and discussions, the team has iteratively tuned their models, tested results, and demonstrated the ability to combine ocean, ecosystem, and socioeconomic information into useful outlooks and advice. They've also shared models and results with resource managers and the public to help fishing communities better navigate ecosystem impacts and shocks.

Addressing Community Needs in the Eastern Bering Sea

When ACLIM began in 2016, it initially focused on projecting how Eastern Bering Sea ecosystem conditions may change to provide fisheries managers and other decision makers with the information they need in order to effectively respond and adapt. Today, the project team has broadened their scope to examine social and economic dimensions, including the links between changing oceans, fisheries, food security, fishing communities, and information pathways. ACLIM's comprehensive team of more than 50 subject matter experts-including oceanographers, biologists, economists, and social scientists-make this possible.

"We have these models for forecasting that are continuously improving. We're working to connect these models to the needs of fishermen and fishing communities," says ACLIM co-lead Dr. Sarah Wise . "In Alaska, people are already experiencing direct impacts from changing ocean conditions."

Wise and her team are building partnerships with Indigenous and rural fishing communities to understand these impacts. To do this, the team is engaging with these communities to understand how the pressures of changing oceans impact their communities and livelihoods-and what tools they need to adapt.

The ACLIM team has recently developed a resource called the Alaska Climate and Ecosystem Dashboard to share information on expected future conditions, risks, needs, and strategies with fishery managers, industry, and Tribes. "If our plans and partnerships line up, we can provide information about what will likely happen in different future scenarios," says Holsman. "This will improve the capacity of individuals and decision makers to consider their options and reduce their own risk in investments and livelihoods."

The Bering Sea region and its inhabitants have been hit particularly hard by changing ocean conditions and extreme events . Changes in vital fish stocks are causing physical, social, cultural, and economic upheaval in coastal communities. Rural Alaskan communities have limited access to affordable store goods. About 60 percent of Alaskans do not have access to roads, relying on marine and air transports that increase the prices of necessary goods like food. Subsistence harvests rely heavily on local marine resources for food and to support a way of life. Amid these extreme changes, marine resources are becoming less abundant and more difficult to obtain, threatening the food security and cultural cohesion of fishing communities.

"I've seen a really strong interest-and some worry-about how the environment is changing, from the people I've worked with," Wise says. "I've heard many expressions of how important this topic is, because everyday people are experiencing the effects of changing conditions in so many aspects of their lives. People are concerned about filling their freezer, food security, their safety going out to sea, and whether or not their children will be able to stay with them in the summer and fish, or whether they'll have to go elsewhere to find work."

Wise is collaborating with NOAA Fisheries biologist and ecosystem modeler Dr. Ellen Yasumiishi and Bering Sea fishing communities to confront these issues. They're currently developing models of the phases of mortality events for Yukon River Chinook salmon , a run only fished by Alaska Natives for subsistence rather than commercial use. In the same way that experts can predict algal blooms and marine heatwaves with some accuracy, Wise and Yasumiishi hope that their work will help fishing communities and fisheries managers predict salmon mortality events and anticipate where the most significant impacts will be.

To address the unique needs of the region, the ACLIM team is developing additional tools and approaches. While the Alaska Climate and Ecosystem Dashboard is useful for groups like fishery management councils, it may be less practical for some Bering Sea communities, where the WiFi required to access the dashboard is expensive and unreliable. Wise and her colleagues are working with communities to develop relevant and culturally appropriate mechanisms to provide vital information.

The team is also developing a food security survey with partners, which they plan to implement across coastal regions in Alaska. The survey will help to establish a data-informed baseline for the kinds of stressors that people across the region are experiencing. This will allow the team to better tailor ACLIM and CEFI products and tools to support community dependence on marine resources.

Preparing fishing communities for the impacts of shifting ocean conditions is critical. Connecting with people to better understand their experience with these changes, as well as their needs for building resilience, is the first step in that process. "We aim to provide information and tools to support adaptation for communities of practice-like fisheries-and communities of place," Holsman emphasizes.

A Model for the Nation

Despite the challenges facing communities in this region, Holsman and Wise remain hopeful and motivated by what can be achieved through adaptation and strategic partnerships. "I'm actually optimistic because we've come so far in such a short time," Holsman says. "There's a lot we can do to address changing oceans if we do it fast. Across knowledge holders in the region, we have the information we need to make informed decisions. The key is bringing that understanding together in a coordinated way. We have the capacity to make a very important difference in where we'll be in 10 to 20 years based on policies at the regional and national levels."

Wise emphasizes the role of collaboration to address the broad changes we're seeing in our ocean systems. "We have to work together, partner with the people who are facing these challenges every day to better understand how to effectively build resilience," she says. "That way we can connect actions and information with the needs."

ACLIM is one of several CEFI pilot projects funded through the Climate and Fisheries Adaptation (CAFA) Program , which supports targeted research to promote resilience in our nation's valuable fisheries and fishing communities. While ACLIM is making progress in the Bering Sea region, it and the other pilot projects are simultaneously feeding into the sweeping national approach CEFI is taking to transform NOAA Fisheries' ocean forecasting and decision support capabilities. ACLIM is the research and development component of this work, and CEFI is the system through which the information is deployed.

Previous ocean forecasting models used by NOAA Fisheries were region-specific and limited to shorter-term outlooks. Supported by the advancements of projects like ACLIM, CEFI will allow NOAA to produce comprehensive ocean outlooks for up to 10 years across entire coastlines. NOAA Research has already produced a new high-resolution ocean model to better understand ocean conditions along the West Coast and in Alaska as part of the initiative. "We're not stitching together a quilt of oceanographic models like we used to," says Holsman. "We have models for whole coasts that will help us predict when ecosystem shocks are coming and what the effects might be. That ability has never been on the table before."

The value in CEFI lies in its potential to deliver regular, stable forecasts and advice, which benefits both people's wellbeing and local economies. "There's an analogy I like to make," Holsman says. "If I was a sailor 60 or 70 years ago, I would've had to go outside and guess what the marine weather would be like. If I took my boat out, there's a good chance I would get caught in some pretty dangerous scenarios. But now, we have much better forecasting, and I can get more accurate information before I make a decision. That's what CEFI and ACLIM are helping us do in terms of ocean and ecosystem forecasting."