Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands

The 1960s-70s was a period of high exploitation, particularly for yellowfin sole, Pacific ocean perch, walleye pollock. Since the 80s, the total allowable catch has been capped at 2 MT, which has been consistently lower than the sum of species quotas; so catch has been very stable and, while some species are considered fully exploited, the ecosystem has not shown patterns of overfishing. Over half of the total catch has been pollock, a mid-trophic level species. It also dominates the surveyed biomass, so the indicators tend to follow the variable recruitment of pollock, possibly explaining non-significant trends for 1996-2005. Longer-term positive trends in fish size and lifespan were due in part to longer-lived flatfish, which experienced strong recruitment in the 80s possibly due to beneficial climate conditions.