Alaska's emergent fisheries processes

Abstract

Under climate change, shifts in distributions of commercialized marine species challenge livelihoods and management in some fisheries and create opportunities in others. Whether existing management processes can enable fishers to access emergent fisheries – efforts by fishers to commercialize species – is unclear. Thus far, the literature has largely focused on reactive management processes that lead to overharvest and conflicts over fisheries allocations under species distributional shifts. We examine the progress and outcomes of 144 emergent fisheries in the state waters of Alaska, illustrating the historical diversity of management mechanisms, regions, species, and gears in the state's unique system of permitting and data collection for emergent fisheries. We further examine 28 emergent fisheries' roles in fishing portfolios through a métier analysis, finding that most are small extensions to existing portfolio strategies instead of novel opportunities for specialization. Together, these findings underscore challenges in adapting current processes to future shifts in marine species distributions, reflecting the need for large scale reconsiderations of scale, tradeoffs and a more holistic approach.