Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Alaska trawler group leader says pollock fishing isn’t to blame for salmon decline

October 13, 2026 — Alaska’s pollock trawlers are under fire for accidentally catching salmon while salmon returns in the fall, and the head of the group that represents the boats says banning them would not solve the problem.

The boats target pollock, which ends up in fish sticks, fast food fish sandwiches and imitation crab sold worldwide. Their nets also pull in salmon, a practice known as bycatch. Critics say that hurts local fishermen and threatens a way of life for some Alaskan communities. Janet Woods, a local resident, put it this way: “The industry is taking away again part of our life, part of our culture, because it’s all about money.”

Read the full article at News-Nation

The fish behind America’s fish sticks is fueling a fight over trawling in Alaska

October 9, 2026 — The net rose from the heaving Bering Sea swells, packed so tightly with Alaska pollock that their heads squeezed through the webbing.

As the catch spilled onto the deck, other dead marine life came with it: a skate, crabs, jellyfish and, among the most consequential, salmon — the fish at the center of a growing political and cultural fight over industrial trawling in Alaska.

“This is a wild capture fishery so you do run into your nontarget species, and a lot of people have a problem with that,” said Maverick Blake, the boat’s captain. “But this is what it takes to put seafood on the table.”

Blake redirected the boat toward another fishing ground where he hoped to encounter fewer salmon.

Read the full article at The Associated Press

ALASKA: Pollock industry, Senate race and culture collide in a fight over fish

October 7, 2026 — Evon Waska’s fish camp was too quiet this summer.

“Well, this is my smokehouse,” he said, opening the door to the plywood structure at the water’s edge in Bethel, where he says his parents settled when they gave up their nomadic ways.

It’s next to empty salmon-drying racks and fish-cutting tables that have seen too few fish for many years running.

A few smoked king fillets still hang. Waska caught about 40 at the start of summer. That was a relief. Some years subsistence fishermen on the Kuskokwim River weren’t allowed to harvest any, and it’s worse on the Yukon. But Waska said he got only half of what his household needs.

His fish racks should be filled with silver salmon now. But the silver return was too weak to fish. So instead of getting more salmon in late August, his family was already dipping into what they put up for winter.

Waska, like a lot of people along the Kuskokwim River, say the problem is in the Bering Sea, with the trawl fleet. The trawlers are after pollock, but they are allowed to waste thousands of king and chum salmon, some bound for Western Alaska rivers like the Kuskokwim.

“They don’t close the trawlers,” Waska said. “They close me and my people first.”

Waska is up against a giant. Trawlers in the federal waters of the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska catch nearly 3 billion pounds of Alaska pollock, the nation’s largest fishery by volume. They can tow nets as wide at the mouth as a football field and a quarter-mile in length.

It’s not just subsistence fishermen who are upset about bycatch — the other species those nets scoop up. Sport, charter and commercial fishermen are also boiling mad and demanding change. In Alaska’s tight U.S. Senate race, bycatch has become a flashpoint, and the race may turn on which candidate — Sen. Dan Sullivan or challenger Mary Peltola — is perceived as the most willing and able to rein in the the trawlers.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Pollock trawlers feel cast as the villains of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race

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.

Read the full article at Alask Public Media

ALASKA: Southeast economy heats up: NOAA ship arrives in Ketchikan as federal contracts fuel shipyard growth

October 5, 2026 — The NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson has arrived at the Ketchikan Shipyard for a major modernization project, bringing a $95.4 million federal contract with it. Employment at the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority-owned facility is expected to approach 200 workers by the end of the year.

Operated by JAG Ketchikan LLC, the shipyard is building a growing portfolio of federal vessel work. The Oscar Dyson project, awarded to JAG Alaska Inc. in June 2025, follows a separate $99.6 million NOAA contract for modernization of the research vessel Henry B. Bigelow, announced by AIDEA in June.

The two contracts represent approximately $195 million in federal vessel modernization work, supporting demand for skilled trades, engineering, electrical, mechanical and fabrication expertise in Southeast Alaska.

According to AIDEA, the Oscar Dyson arrived the day before JAG hosted a shipyard tour for attendees of the 2026 Southeast Conference. Regional civic, business and economic development leaders were able to see the vessel and the facilities supporting the shipyard’s expanding workload.

“The arrival of NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson is another visible sign that the Ketchikan Shipyard is building momentum and competing for important federal maritime work,” said AIDEA Executive Director Randy Ruaro.

“The partnership between AIDEA and JAG at the Ketchikan Shipyard has been incredibly successful in a very short time since JAG took over operations,’ he said. “This is exactly the kind of activity AIDEA has worked to support — more vessels, more skilled jobs and more long-term opportunity for Southeast Alaska.”

The Oscar Dyson contract runs through Dec. 5, 2027. NOAA expects the vessel to return for the 2028 field season after a yearlong maintenance period following its 2026 research season.

Commissioned in 2005, the ship collects data used to manage Alaska pollock, one of the world’s largest commercial fisheries.

The overhaul includes replacing the propulsion system with variable-speed Tier 4 generators, installing quieter air-conditioning motors, and replacing pumps, fans, cranes, fire detection equipment and radars. The project will also increase the number of single-person staterooms. NOAA says the improvements will strengthen fuel efficiency, operational safety and the vessel’s ability to support research in Alaskan and Arctic waters.

Read the full article at The Alaska Story

Sullivan’s trawl bycatch bill clears a U.S. Senate committee

September 17, 2026 — A bill that aims to reduce the pollock fleet’s bycatch of salmon, halibut and other species passed the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday.

Sen. Dan Sullivan is the sponsor of the Bycatch Reduction Act. He said it would tell the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council to change how it treats the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska trawlers, to limit their impact on the marine environment.

“This sets out timelines. It sets out standards,” he said in a phone interview. “It sets out direct action to reduce bycatch, to limit — and, in many ways, do away with — trawl gear contact with the seafloor, and setting clearer standards.”

The bill also reconstitutes a group from a 2022 Sullivan bill, the Alaska Salmon Research Task Force Act. Sullivan said it will give Alaskans a direct say in what the federal government studies.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Peltola and Sullivan confront trawl bycatch, and each other, at Kodiak fisheries debate

September 15, 2026 — Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democratic challenger Mary Peltola vied to outdo each other as champions of Alaska fishermen at the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce fishery debate Saturday.

The debate sponsors included major players in the pollock industry, but that didn’t stop both candidates from vowing to crack down on the trawlers’ bycatch of salmon and other species.

Sullivan leaned into his record.

“My bill for establishment of the Seafood Policy Office is in the Farm Bill right now. That helps with regard to enabling fishermen to have access to all the programs that farmers have,” he said. “And finally, getting my bycatch bill over the goal line next week in the Commerce Committee.”

(Sullivan’s Bycatch Reduction Act, filed in June, is scheduled for a vote in the Commerce Committee on Wednesday. He is the sole sponsor.)

Sullivan repeatedly pointed to foreign fleets as an adversary he’s tackled, and said he secured a ban on Russian seafood imports.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Dutch Harbor genetics lab monitors hotly contested chum salmon bycatch numbers

September 14, 2026 — In a one-room genetics lab in Dutch Harbor, Abby Duffy was getting ready to load extracted fish DNA into what’s called a chip. It’s a clear, rectangular plate with rows of small wells separated by a silicone center.

“I like to make sure I’ve eaten recently so my hands are the least shaky they’re going to be,” she said. “Make sure my brain’s doing what it should be doing.”

Duffy is the lab manager at the Bristol Bay Science and Research Institute’s Dutch Harbor location. The space is brightly lit, with tables and shelves lining the walls. Small incubators, a robotic pipetting machine, and a centrifuge sit on top of the tables.

Every week from June to October — the Bering Sea pollock B season — Duffy and her team collect genetic information from chum salmon that get scooped up in pollock nets as bycatch. They want to know how many of those fish are from Western Alaska.

“There are communities and people who really rely on those stocks for economics, for subsistence food, for cultural health,” Duffy said.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

American Seafoods thriving, despite challenging Alaska pollock season

September 10, 2026 — Despite the challenges Alaska pollock suppliers are facing this B season, American Seafoods’ sales are strong and executives’ outlook for the future is positive.

The Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.-based processor of pollock, surimi, fish oil, Pacific hake and more is having a rough pollock fishing season, Chief Commercial Officer Rasmus Soerensen told SeafoodSource. The fish are smaller and the yields are “not as good” as previous years, he said.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource