Part of this truth I am referring to includes the host of daunting challenges that western scientists and policy-makers face, and which must be dealt with if there is to be any coordinated multi- disciplinary and cross cultural ecosystem based approaches to the problems in the Bering Sea. There are a litany of challenges that scientists alone could not hope to address without more political, public, and financial support:
-different disciplines have different research and data gathering methodologies, making it difficult if not impossible, to correlate data and findings, or to coordinate research efforts.
-funding and research emphasis is inconsistent as administrations and public priorities change, making it difficult if not impossible to pursue sorely needed long term research programs or to even synthesize existing data and findings.
-different departments and research institutions must singularly pursue their own respective missions and funding priorities in order to remain on the political radar, to meet their minimum statutorily mandated missions, and to simply survive. Such an environment is not conducive to coordinated research.
-institutional support of independent researchers is non-existent, lessening the pool of different perspectives.
-research and information exchange protocols between Russia and the U.S. are inadequate or non-existent for researching and managing migratory species or the same species in one ecosystem.
-data gathering and research methodologies between Russia and the U.S. are different, making comparison of findings difficult if not impossible or very costly.
-most research and management regimes are single species oriented, which in some cases, results in strong resistance to different approaches; and by the same token, there is a dearth of critical scientific and philosophical debate, or public understanding, of what any ecosystem approach means. Such a situation leaves scientists without support or direction they need to move forward substantively.
-Cartesian based science and peer group review systems are simply not equipped to validate traditional knowledge and wisdom. It would be unfair to expect this system, which is a quantitative world view based on time-series data gathering and computer models, to assess the veracity of information from indigenous systems which are qualitative and unwritten. Defacto, this situation disenfranchises the primary stakeholders in the Bering Sea and substantially diminishes access to information which will prove to be invaluable to understanding what is going on with single species and the ecosystem.
-the sheer number of variables impinging on individual species may be untenable in terms of our current scientific capacity to deal with. Given this, we understand how daunting it seems, to deal with an entire complex and synergistic ecosystem in a constant state of flux.
-scientists are put to an impossible test to prove definitively that any particular anthropogenic factor is an underlying cause for adverse fish and wildlife population trends before policy-makers and managers take action.
-late fall, winter, early spring higher trophic specie research is virtually non-existent due to funding limitations and the sometimes extreme human discomfort and hazards posed by conduct- ing research during these times. I know I would not want to be on a small research vessel in the middle of the Bering Sea in January facing 80 knot winds and 40 foot seas.
-ecosystem monitoring systems for the Bering Sea are nonexistent and therefore changes in key ecosystem parameters which may dramatically affect wildlife population trends are not tied to management decision-making.
-professional jealousies impede efforts to understand what is happening to different species and the systems or subsystems that sustain them.
-research funding and programs are frequently reactive rather than preventative or proactive.
-native peoples and scientists alike, must deal with a historic distrust of each others intentions and motives(sometimes justifiable sometimes not), making substantive cross-cultural cooperation extremely difficult at best, and no program exists to deal with these challenges from either side.