October 7, 2026 — Cole Hockema, operator of the 104-foot Pacific Storm, is disappointed that pollock fishermen like him have no champions in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.
“It’s just such easy, low-hanging fruit, essentially, to get votes, is to be against trawling,” he said.
The pollock industry, America’s largest fishery, has been hit with a tsunami of popular discontent in Alaska this election season, with loud demands for a ban on trawling. The problem is bycatch — the thousands of salmon and metric tons of halibut the pollock fleet catches by accident. Anger about these wasted fish has sparked a movement that’s flexing its political muscle, and it could be decisive in Alaska’s tight Senate election.
Amid the barrage, the pollock industry — the source of the fish in fish sticks and McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish — is feeling misunderstood.
Trawl opponents focus their harshest critiques on the biggest players in the pollock fleet — the massive catcher-processors, floating factories that are homeported mainly in Seattle, and the substantial number of trawlers owned by out-of-state corporations.