Glacier Bay’s Marine Reserve: Wilderness Waters Closed to Commercial Fishing in 1999

In 1999 Congress prohibited commercial fishing in almost 48,000 acres of marine waters in Glacier Bay that the Alaska lands act of 1980 had made wilderness, creating one of the nation’s largest marine reserves. The waters lie mainly around the Beardslee Islands and in the narrow East Arm and West Arm in the upper reaches of the bay. A National Park Service article says the decision gave scientists a unique chance to study marine reserves in a high-latitude ecosystem.

A law that made a laboratory

The addition of 10 new national park areas and three major expansions by ANILCA in 1980 is rightly remembered as the largest conservation act in American history, the article says, but the act can also be thought of as the establishment of the largest scientific laboratory ever: vast protected places where the effects of humans had been slight, natural processes were still running and unique research could be done. What research was funded, and where science made an impact on park management, is a less tidy story, shaped by forces outside science, including the federal courts, legislation, Congress and administrative policy.

The article names three areas of inquiry that drew significant fieldwork after the law. Subsistence and mining research were covered earlier in its issue, and the third is research in wilderness areas, where resource protection was at the heart of the matter. ANILCA set aside 33 million acres of “Wilderness” in Alaska national parks while continuing certain traditional uses. The 1964 Wilderness Act describes wilderness as an area of undeveloped federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, protected and managed to preserve its natural conditions, with the imprint of human work substantially unnoticeable. Its allowed public purposes include recreational, scenic, scientific, educational, conservation and historical use.

What the reserves allow

The closures created five protected areas, each next to waters still open to commercial fishing, so researchers can compare populations of crab, halibut and other marine life under different management. Studies led by a U.S. Geological Survey scientist and others are looking at how Pacific halibut, tanner crab and red king crab move between the reserves and adjacent areas. They are measuring movement patterns and helping identify essential habitat, changes in distribution and migration patterns. Crab size data from before and after the closures are being compared, and initial results show increasing abundance of large male crabs in the reserve areas. The research is described in more detail in the Winter 2003 issue of Alaska Park Science.

Sources

• John Quinley, Science in Wilderness Marine Reserves, National Park Service article in the series The Legacy of ANILCA (the source gives no affiliation for the author); the photograph of a named scientist is left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.