Fisheries Research Institute, WH-10, University of Washington,
Seattle, WA 98195 USA
Abstract
There are two fundamental ways
of doing science: the experimental-predictive and the historical-descriptive.
The experimental-predictive approach uses the techniques of controlled
experiment, the reduction of natural complexity to a minimal set of general
causes, and presupposes that all times can be treated alike and adequately
simulated in the laboratory. The historical-descriptive approach
uses a mode of analysis which is rooted in the comparative and observational
richness of our data, is holistic in its treatment of systems and events,
and assumes that the final result being studied is unique, i.e., dependent,
or contingent upon everything that came before. We suggest that one of
the real difficulties we have in understanding ecosystem properties is
our inability to deal with scale, and show how historical science allows
us to approach the issue of scale through the interpretation of pattern
in time and space. We then use the techniques of the historical-descriptive
approach to doing science in the context of our own and other research
on climate change and biological production in the North-east Pacific Ocean.
In particular, we examine rapid decadal-scale shifts in the abundance and
distribution of two major components - salmon and zooplankton - of the
large marine ecosystem of the Gulf of Alaska and how they relate to similar
shifts in North Pacific atmosphere and ocean climate. We conclude
that they are all related, and that climate-driven regime shifts, such
as those we have identified in the North-east Pacific, can cause major
reorganizations of ecological relationships over vast oceanic regions.