Scientists tell fisheries committee Prince William Sound has warmed and surface productivity fallen about a third

Dr. Rob Campbell, an oceanographer and chief science officer at the Prince William Sound Science Center in Cordova, told the Alaska Legislature’s Special Committee on Fisheries on March 12 that long‑term temperature records and satellite observations show a persistent warming trend in Prince William Sound and a substantial decline in surface productivity.

Campbell presented a 50‑year time series of temperature anomalies and said the region has warmed at roughly a tenth of a degree Celsius per decade. He highlighted two notable marine heat waves — the Gulf of Alaska “blob” of 2013–14 and a strong event in 2019 — that produced sustained positive surface temperature anomalies and contributed to ecological change.

Those changes, Campbell said, appear linked to a roughly one‑third decline in satellite‑measured surface greenness (a proxy for phytoplankton biomass) over the past 25 years. "What we're seeing is about a third less, over the last two and a half decades," Campbell said, noting that warming combined with increased fresh meltwater makes the surface layer thinner and reduces nutrient availability.

Campbell traced the ecological consequences: a shift in plankton community composition toward smaller, lower‑lipid species more typical of Oregon and Washington; declines in forage fish abundance and growth; recruitment failures in commercially important stocks such as Pacific cod and crab; and large mortality events among seabirds and declines in overwintering whales. "We had a massive die‑off of seabirds — on the order of about a million birds — and in some places whales we used to see overwintering largely did not return," he said.

Committee members pressed on biological relevance. One asked whether a 4–6°F seasonal swing matters; Campbell replied that species have differing thermal preferences and that even modest shifts can favor warmer‑adapted species while stressing cold‑adapted ones. He also said stream temperatures during the 2019 event reached ranges lethal to salmon in some non‑glacial streams, producing dead fish in rivers that lacked cooler glacial input.

Campbell placed the center’s long‑term, high‑frequency monitoring in context: early datasets incorporate federal sampling (including work tied to oil and gas exploration and pre‑spill monitoring), while the center’s newer datasets—collected over roughly two decades—provide a localized, intensive view of ecosystem change. He emphasized that other oceanographers work across Alaska but few monitor a single patch of ocean as intensively as Prince William Sound.

Marisha Shmkoviak, director of coastal resilience at the Prince William Sound Science Center, told the committee that community‑centered resilience planning ties scientific monitoring to fisheries livelihoods: "Resilience is about continuing to be able to fish and to pass on fishing knowledge across generations," she said, and described a two‑year seafood energy and innovation planning project with partners in Sitka, Cordova and Kodiak.

The committee closed the session by thanking the presenters and suggesting a site visit to Cordova to see the center’s work in person. No formal actions or votes were taken; members asked staff to explore opportunities for improved integration of monitoring data into management.

The committee adjourned at 11:24 a.m.