The Alaska Department of Fish and Game recently published the independent scientific review of the recent 2010 Biological Opinion by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) concerning the impact of groundfish fisheries on Steller sea lions:

The States of Alaska and Washington jointly assembled this panel of four scientists to determine whether the federal agency used all relevant scientific information and impartially considered those facts in its final Biological Opinion for the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska Groundfish Fisheries. This Biological Opinion was the basis for significant fishery closures and restrictions in the western Aleutians.

The Panel concluded that the NMFS theory of nutritional stress from competition with fisheries was not well supported, and that other scientific explanations were inadequately examined. They also concluded that the Reasonable and Prudent Alternatives in the Biological Opinion were unlikely to contribute to sea lion recovery.