The premise of SeaBank is uncomplicated, and reflects a principle that is gaining traction globally: The value of a region is more than just the sum of its product.
Linda Behnken is the president of the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust, which created SeaBank. She says the program got an auspicious start.
“SeaBank was the brainchild of Richard Nelson and Sam Skaggs, who believed that if people understood the incredible value of this rich Southeast ecosystem in terms of the economics, of what dividends the system pays to people who live here and to the planet as a whole, in fish and in tourism, as well as the ecosystem services, that we would take very good care of that natural capital, which is the forest and and the ocean that supports and produces these products,” said Behnken.
SeaBank is not an abstraction. The project has been generating an annual report since 2019, filled with hard data.
“The annual economic value of just commercial fishing and tourism to the people who live in our Southeast communities is $1 billion,” said Behnken, “and there are 16,500 jobs in commercial fishing and tourism that are provided by this Seabank that we all call home. But beyond that, there’s also 2.7 billion metric tons of carbon that sequestered in our forest that not only benefits the people that live here, but also helps buffer the whole planet against climate change.”
Dominick DellaSala is keynote for the summit. DellaSala is the chief scientist with Wild Heritage, and a coastal temperate rainforest expert. He got his start during the 1990s working on what were then called “bioblitzes,” where researchers deployed to threatened ecosystems to quickly catalog their biodiversity.
DellaSala says that work led to an interesting realization.
“Some of the most exciting discoveries that are happening in the last decade is the role that these ecosystems now play in buffering us from the most extreme consequences of climate change,” said DellaSala.
DellaSala points to the remarkable interconnectedness of Southeast Alaska’s ecosystem: Ocean-going salmon depend on the forest where they return to spawn; the forest – and just about everything in it – depends on the nutrients supplied by the dying salmon. Critical to it all is climate, and DellaSala says the forest plays a major role here as well.
“Southeast Alaska has more buffering properties than other rainforests around the planet, and certainly compared to points farther south and in the interior of Alaska that are going to feel more of the negative consequences of climate change,” he said. “But we can only get the region through the climate storm if we steward it better, and that means protecting the old-growth forest, making sure that these cool streams are available for salmon to run and do their thing. So that really is the backbone of the regional economy, the cultural connections that indigenous people have with that resource, and the ability of Southeast Alaska to get through this unprecedented climate change that we’re on track to experience.”
The annual SeaBank report puts this all in a format useful for a variety of advocacy. Linda Behnken advocates often for Alaska’s fisheries in Washington, D.C.
“I’ve done a presentation back there to Senate subcommittees, and we have used the values and comments that we’ve made on various decision-making, whether it’s with regards to the Tongass or to fisheries management,” said Behnken.
And because thick reports don’t work for everyone, SeaBank has its own podcast, called The SeaBank Chronicles, produced by Beth Short-Rhoads, which is decidedly un-report-like…
Excerpt from SeaBank Chronicles: “The SeaBank forest is among the rarest because it feeds – and is fed by – salmon, a wild and silvery nation, endlessly bound for home…”
New episodes of the SeaBank Chronicles drop every Friday.
