Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Trawling and bycatch dominate political messaging in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race

August 17, 2026 — Trawling ships that over the years have incidentally scooped up and wasted millions of pounds of salmon and other fish have burst onto the forefront of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.

Multiple Outside political advocacy groups with little public information about their donors are targeting candidates over their approach to limiting bycatch in the pollock industry, which critics blame for contributing to historic declines in Alaska salmon, halibut and crab fisheries.

Alaska fishermen have appeared in ads discussing the bycatch records of the major candidates, Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and challenger Mary Peltola, a Democratic former U.S. representative.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Beyond bycatch: The bigger story of Alaska pollock

August 14, 2026 — Alaska pollock is the biggest catch in the United States. But the fish drawing the most attention are the ones the fleet never meant to pull up.

For Sam Murphy, vice president of the Alaska Pollock Fishery Alliance (APFA), the focus on bycatch misses a much larger story.

That argument comes at a pointed moment for the fishery. In February, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) voted 8-3 to recommend the first mandatory limit on chum salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery, an annual cap of 45,000 Western Alaska chum, paired with a corridor closure near the Alaska Peninsula between June 10 and Aug. 31, apportioned among the at-sea processor, catcher vessel, mothership, and Community Development Quota (CDQ) sectors.

The NPFMC heard testimony from more than 170 people over four days, including tribal leaders, subsistence fishermen, CDQ groups, and pollock industry participants. The new rules are not expected to take effect until June 2028 at the earliest.

Murphy didn’t dismiss the difficult conversations about salmon bycatch or the challenges facing Alaska’s fisheries. Those discussions are necessary, he said. But after spending the past year and a half aboard fishing vessels, touring processing plants, and visiting fishing communities across Alaska, he believes the conversation had become too narrowly focused on a single issue while overlooking the broader role pollock plays in the state’s seafood economy.

“I don’t really see it as an argument,” Murphy said in an interview with National Fisherman. “To me, it’s simply the reality that I hope more people start to recognize.”

That reality, he said, was one of interdependence.

Murphy described Alaska’s seafood economy as a three-legged stool. Commercial fishermen harvest the resource, processors transform that harvest into products consumed around the world, and coastal communities provide the workforce, ports, and infrastructure that allow the system to function.

“Remove any one of those three legs, and the whole thing starts to wobble,” Murphy said.

That connection, he said, was why framing Alaska’s fisheries as rivals missed the point.

“Pollock doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Neither do salmon, crab, cod, or halibut,” Murphy said. “These fisheries are connected economically, operationally, and culturally.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Alaska challenges MSC certification of Russian pollock

July 10, 2026 — Alaska fisheries officials are calling on the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) to reject the recertification of Russia’s Western Bering Sea pollock fishery, arguing the fishery fails to meet the conservation standards routinely required of U.S. fishermen while competing directly with Alaska pollock in global markets.

The request comes as MSC considers formal objections to the fishery’s five-year recertification. According to IntraFish, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang submitted a July 1 letter urging MSC Chief Executive Rupert Howes to halt the recertification, following a formal objection filed by the At-sea Processors Association (APA). MSC expects a decision on the objection during the week of July 13.

In his letter, Vincent-Lang argued consumers purchasing seafood bearing the MSC ecolabel often assume the product was harvested responsibly, despite what he described as significant shortcomings in the Russian fishery’s management.

“For the last five years, the MSC has provided products originating from the WBS (Western Bering Sea) pollock fishery with full access to the most widely recognized sustainability certification in global seafood,” Vincent-Lang wrote. “During this time, WBS pollock has been sold around the world to unwitting consumers who see the MSC ecolabel and believe that their purchases must be ethical.”

He argued the Western Bering Sea fishery lacks “no credible harvest strategy, no bycatch avoidance measures, and no benthic habitat protections whatsoever,” while questioning how the fishery’s previous certification conditions were considered satisfied.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Groundfish industry cleans 55,935 pounds of nets for recycling

June 8, 2026 — Four huge worn-out midwater trawl nets that in old times might have been buried in a landfill are instead being repurposed into usable new products and protection for Ukrainians from explosive Russian drones.

The efforts of over 100 volunteers from Seattle’s wild Alaska pollock catcher-processor fleet hunkered down in 80-degree heat at Terminal 91 on Thursday, May 28, offered both environmental and financial benefits to American Seafoods, Arctic Storm Management Group, Coastal Villages Region Fund, Glacier FIsh Company and Trident Seafoods, all members of the At-Sea Processors Association.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Research continues toward automated bycatch monitoring

May 12, 2026 — New research on automated bycatch monitoring in Alaska pollock trawls concludes that developing accurate tracking methods is only an initial step toward potential applications.

Use of multi-object tracking (MOT) is currently limited by the challenges of collecting and automatically annotating footage of dynamic marine environments, according to research contracted by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and National Marine Fisheries Service and published recently in Elsevier, a major Dutch academic journal.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Conservation group sues over Alaska pollock trawling claiming practice harms fur seal population

April 10, 2026 — Conservation NGO the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) has filed a lawsuit challenging NOAA Fisheries’ regulations for pollock trawling in Alaska, arguing that the government has not done enough to protect northern fur seals.

The lawsuit centers on the seal population around St. Paul Island, Alaska, U.S.A., where many mothers raise their pups. According to CBD, those seals rely on the same pollock that are harvested by the commercial trawling sector, depriving them of a key source of prey and putting that population under unnecessary stress. The seal population on the island has shrunk 70 percent over the last 50 plus years, and CBD claims that the pollock trawl fishery is one of the primary culprits.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: State legislators urge federal government to extend Russian seafood ban

April 9, 2026 — Last week on March 30 the Alaska Legislature passed a resolution [HJR 29] supporting the continued federal ban on Russian seafood being imported into the U.S. Lawmakers and seafood market experts say the ban is crucial to boosting the value of Alaska’s industry.

Rep. Louise Stutes, a Kodiak Republican, is the chair of the state house fisheries committee, the body that sponsored the resolution. She said Alaska fishermen’s ex-vessel value has increased over the last year in part because the ban has been in effect.

“This year prices were higher for their seafood because there is no more Russian seafood on the market,” Stutes said.

The current ban on Russian seafood went into effect in 2022 during the Biden administration and was expanded in 2023. However it’s set to expire next week on April 15 according to the state resolution, unless President Donald Trump extends the executive order, or Congress passes similar legislation to continue the ban.

Read the full article at KMXT

Alaska pollock fishery secures MSC recertification

March 20, 2026 — Recertification of the Alaska pollock fishery against the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standard was finalized today, reaffirming the fishery’s status as a responsibly managed and sustainable seafood resource.

The Alaska pollock fishery has maintained MSC certification since 2005 and has now been recertified for another five-year period following a comprehensive, independent assessment.

Matt Tinning, CEO of the At-sea Processors Association (APA), which holds the MSC certificate for the Alaska pollock fishery, issued the following statement:

“We are proud that the Alaska pollock fishery continues to meet the rigorous, science-based standards of the Marine Stewardship Council. This recertification reflects decades of responsible management, strong science, and a shared commitment to continuous improvement across the fleet.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Managers OK increase in Gulf of Alaska cod harvest after shutdown delayed analysis

February 10, 2026 — In a decision that was delayed by the prolonged federal government shutdown last fall, federal fishery regulators have increased this year’s allowable harvest of Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska.

The approximately 37.5% increase in total allowable catch was approved by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, the panel that oversees commercial seafood harvests in federal waters off Alaska. The new limit approved by council members on Thursday totaled 30,053 metric tons across all three designated regions of the Gulf of Alaska, up from 21,826 metric tons tentatively approved in December.

Normally, the annual harvest limits for groundfish species like pollock and Pacific cod for both the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska are set at the council’s regular December meetings.

Fishery scientists lacked sufficient time to analyze data from summer surveys because of the record 43-day federal government shutdown that ended on Nov. 12, so the council then wound up using 2024 recommendations to set 2026 harvest limits.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon