In the Koyukon village of Rampart on the Yukon River, families have watched their way of life erode as salmon runs collapse. The community’s summer routine—checking nets, cutting fish, and tending smokehouses—has been upended by a seven‑year ban on Chinook fishing, a measure put in place after salmon populations fell dramatically.
Pollock trawlers and unintended salmon catches
Alaska’s Bering Sea pollock fishery, which supplies everything from McDonald’s Filet‑O‑Fish to imitation crab, operates a fleet of vessels that use mid‑water (pelagic) trawls. While these nets are designed to stay in the water column, pollock often swim near the seafloor, causing the gear to make contact with the bottom and unintentionally capture other marine life.
Over the past decade, pollock trawlers have taken an average of about 18,000 Chinook salmon and 288,000 other salmon—mostly chum—each year. Those numbers represent a small fraction of the total salmon harvest, but for river‑dependent Alaska Native communities the loss is felt sharply.
Management measures and industry response
Industry leaders point to a suite of mitigation steps. Every pollock vessel carries a salmon excluder, a device that gives salmon a way out of the net, and crews stay in constant radio contact to share information about salmon concentrations. The fleet also receives weekly voluntary closure areas based on real‑time reports from the fishing grounds.
“The amount of science and management effort that goes into improving it is basically unprecedented anywhere,” said Matt Tinning, CEO of the At‑Sea Processors Association, which represents five pollock companies. Observers or cameras monitor each trawl, and all catches are recorded at shore‑side processing plants.
Scientific perspective
Scientists attribute the primary cause of salmon declines to warming waters and shifting ocean conditions, not bycatch alone. Genetic testing shows that most chum salmon caught by pollock trawlers originate outside western Alaska, yet even a modest percentage can translate into tens of thousands of fish from already stressed runs.
“The people that bear the brunt of the conservation measures are people along the river,” said Andrew Seitz, a fisheries professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He notes that while the fishery’s mitigation tools are robust, the cumulative impact on already depleted salmon stocks remains a concern.
Broader resource debate
The controversy has drawn a rare coalition of stakeholders—Democrats, Republicans, commercial and sport fishers, and Alaska Native groups—who rarely align on resource issues. At least ten of the nineteen candidates in this year’s crowded governor’s race have taken positions critical of trawling or bycatch, and the issue has become a defining point in the state’s U.S. Senate contest.
Some conservation advocates argue that areas closed to bottom trawling to protect corals, sponges, and crab should also be off‑limits to pelagic trawlers, given the gear’s occasional contact with the seafloor. Others contend that the existing voluntary closures and excluder devices represent a balanced approach that protects both the industry’s economic vitality and the region’s ecological health.
Local voices
Janet Woods, a Rampart resident, expressed the cultural toll of the fishery’s impact. “You think back in history how they tried to destroy us. Taking our language, our ceremonies, and now our culture, and it’s been forever a fight for us just to hang on to what very little we have,” she told the Associated Press.
Small commercial halibut and crab fishers, as well as charter operators, echo these grievances, noting that they too face shrinking catch limits and closures while groundfish trawlers continue to operate.
Looking ahead
The debate over pollock trawling and salmon bycatch underscores a larger conversation about how Alaska balances a world‑class fishery with the preservation of traditional subsistence resources. As climate change reshapes ocean ecosystems, the state’s managers, industry, and native communities will need to continue collaborating to ensure both economic prosperity and the survival of cultural lifelines tied to salmon.
Original reporting: Alexandria, VA News – WTOP News — read the source article.
