Bering Sea pollock trawl bycatch fuels dispute over western Alaska salmon collapse

Left · 2Alaska pollock, the second-largest fishery on Earth, supplies the fish in U.S. McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, fish sticks and imitation crab, and its trawl nets also catch other marine life, including salmon. 1 2 Left · 2Bycatch makes up 2% of the fishery's total catch, but at that scale it can mean hundreds of thousands of salmon; over the last 10 years, Bering Sea pollock trawlers caught an average of about 18,000 Chinook and 288,000 other salmon a year, nearly all of them chum. 1 2 Left · 2Those catches have become contentious because salmon runs have collapsed across western Alaska, where dozens of Indigenous communities have relied on salmon for generations, and trawling and bycatch have become issues in Alaska's midterm elections for governor and U.S. Senate. 1 2

Left · 1In 2024, Alaska and Canada imposed a seven-year ban on Chinook fishing along the Yukon River, equal to one full salmon life cycle, and the Kuskokwim River has faced repeated Chinook and chum closures. 1 Left · 2Scientists point to warming waters and changing ocean conditions, not trawl bycatch, as the primary cause of the declines, and a 2025 study found warmer oceans can raise bycatch risk by changing where salmon and pollock overlap; critics counter that bycatch is one of the few sources of mortality managers can directly control. 1 2 Left · 1Andrew Seitz, a University of Alaska Fairbanks fisheries professor, said every fish is critical to Yukon River communities, who he said bear the brunt of conservation measures. 1

Left · 2Aboard the F/V Progress, the AP reporter saw about 210 chum caught in four days; captain Maverick Blake, a 13-year industry veteran, said avoiding salmon is central to his job and that moving to find fewer salmon burned nearly 11,360 litres (about 3,000 gallons) of fuel. 1 2 Left · 1Blake and industry representatives call it one of the best-managed fisheries in the world, citing vessel-to-vessel salmon information sharing, weekly closure areas, salmon excluders, and counting of every salmon by observers or cameras; Matt Tinning, CEO of the At-Sea Processors Association, which represents five pollock companies, said the system is designed to incentivise salmon avoidance. 1 Left · 2In Rampart, a Yukon River village, Brooke Woods, a Koyukon Alaska Native and commissioner of the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, said her community has a "big void" and that no generation has gone without learning to fish before now; her mother, Janet Woods, asked why locals are the only ones bearing the burden. 2 1

Left · 2Because Pacific salmon mix in the Bering Sea, bycatch can come from western Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, Russia or Japan; genetic data show western Alaska fish averaged about 17% of chum bycatch and half of Chinook bycatch in recent years, which supports an industry argument, though in 2021 a 9% share still meant more than 51,000 salmon, according to NOAA. 1 2 Left · 1In February, after hearing testimony from more than 170 people, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council recommended a cap of 45,000 western Alaska chum bycatch, which critics said was too high. 1 Left · 1Pollock landings from the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska exceeded 1.36 billion kilograms in 2024, worth about $432 million according to NOAA, and critics note most of the economic benefit flows outside Alaska, with many large vessels owned by Seattle-area companies. 1