{"id":16414,"date":"2018-07-31T09:41:17","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T14:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomseymour66.com\/?p=16414"},"modified":"2018-07-31T09:41:17","modified_gmt":"2018-07-31T14:41:17","slug":"gulf-of-alaska-cod-are-disappearing-blame-the-blob","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomseymour66.com\/gulf-of-alaska-cod-are-disappearing-blame-the-blob\/","title":{"rendered":"Gulf Of Alaska Cod Are Disappearing. Blame ‘The Blob’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Fisherman Darius Kasprzak searches for cod in the Gulf of Alaska. The cod population there is at its lowest level on record.<\/p>\n

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Annie Feidt for NPR<\/p>\n

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Fisherman Darius Kasprzak searches for cod in the Gulf of Alaska. The cod population there is at its lowest level on record.<\/p>\n

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Annie Feidt for NPR<\/p>\n

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A hint of optimism creeps into Darius Kasprzak’s voice as he pilots his boat, the Marona, out of Kodiak harbor on a recent calm day.<\/p>\n

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“We’re in the morning, we’re at the start of the flood tide,” he says. “This is where you want to be.”<\/p>\n

He is fishing a bay on the northwestern edge of the Gulf of Alaska, about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage. The chilly waters here are some of the most productive fish habitat on Earth. In a good year, Kasprzak could catch more than 100,000 pounds of cod.<\/p>\n

On the screen of his echo sounder, he sees a dense cluster of dots on the ocean bottom.<\/p>\n

“Let’s drop on it,” he says. “That looks pretty darn good.”<\/p>\n

He kills the engine, leaps onto the deck and lowers one of his fishing lines into the water.<\/p>\n

And then …<\/p>\n

Nothing.<\/p>\n

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\n But the cod decline could be a disaster for Kodiak. With boats traveling more than 1,000 miles away to find fish, crews aren’t stocking up at stores in town, and boats aren’t paying the local fish tax.<\/p>\n

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But the cod decline could be a disaster for Kodiak. With boats traveling more than 1,000 miles away to find fish, crews aren’t stocking up at stores in town, and boats aren’t paying the local fish tax.<\/p>\n

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For years, Alaska fishermen like Kasprzak have worried that climate change would threaten their livelihoods. Now it has. The cod population in the Gulf of Alaska is at its lowest level on record, according to an expert at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration. The culprit is a warm water mass called “the blob<\/a>” that churned in the Pacific Ocean between 2013 and 2017.<\/p>\n

At its peak, the blob stretched from Alaska to South America. In the Gulf of Alaska, the cod population plummeted by more than 80 percent.<\/p>\n

Climate change didn’t cause the blob all on its own. But scientists say<\/a> global warming made it worse, pushing high ocean temperatures to the extreme.<\/p>\n