Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Alaska troopers seize Kodiak trawl group’s electronics in bycatch probe

November 17, 2025 — Julie Bonney is a longtime, Kodiak Island-based representative of some of Alaska’s trawlers — a type of fishing boat that’s drawn increasing criticism over the years for accidental “bycatch” of salmon, halibut and other species.

Last week, Bonney was returning from a trip off the island when Alaska State Troopers seized her mobile phone and work laptop. The day before, investigators searched the offices of Bonney’s member-based business, the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank, and seized all of its electronics.

Bonney was not arrested and no charges have been filed. But troopers, over the weekend, confirmed an active investigation into allegations that “multiple seafood processors” had been illegally profiting from salmon and halibut bycatch — further fueling scrutiny of an industry that’s already under attack.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

NORTH CAROLINA: Fishermen rally at Blessing of the Fleet

October 8, 2025 — As commercial fishing boats processed past crowds gathered for the annual Blessing of the Fleet at Radio Island, North Carolina, on Sunday, fishermen made their feelings clear about recent state legislation efforts to ban shrimp trawling. Nearly 30 vessels hoisted signs reading: “NC SEAFOOD FOR ALL. NO TRAWL BAN.”

The push to ban shrimp trawling came unexpectedly earlier this year. In June, the proposed legislation ultimately failed, thanks to what Carolina Coast Online describes as “massive protests by area commercial fishermen, their families and other supporters.” The protest reflects a united front from the state’s fishing families following the failed legislation.

According to an article from National Fisherman from June 25, House Bill 442, originally drafted in the lower House of the legislature to set fishing seasons for southern flounder and red snapper, was amended June 18 and passed by the state Senate to include the trawl prohibition. That ignited intense protests from shrimp fishermen and supporters, who suspected the Coastal Conservation Association of using the amendment as a vehicle.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

US judge dismisses NGO lawsuit challenging North Pacific trawling

October 8, 2025 — U.S. district court judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by conservation NGO Oceana challenging bottom trawling in the North Pacific, finding that NOAA Fisheries acted in accordance with the law in regulating commercial fishing in the area.

Oceana filed the lawsuit in August 2024 in an effort to block bottom trawling in the North Pacific, an activity the group claims can cause substantial damage to seafloor coral and sponge habitats.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

UK rejects total ban on bottom trawling in offshore marine protected areas

October 7, 2025 — The U.K. government has rejected calls to fully ban bottom trawling in its offshore marine protected areas, despite evidence that the fishing practice tears up seabed habitats and releases large amounts of carbon.

Bottom trawling involves dragging weighted nets across the seafloor, often crushing coral reefs and sponges while stirring up sediments. The huge nets catch almost everything in their path, including unwanted species that are later discarded as bycatch. The practice remains legal in roughly 90% of the U.K.’s 377 marine protected areas (MPAs), according to marine conservation nonprofit Oceana UK.

“The government are being quite sneaky with this. They’re kind of trying to play it both ways,” Alec Taylor, Oceana UK’s director of policy and research, told Mongabay in a video interview. “You cannot call these areas protected on paper and still allow this type of fishing to take place.”

In a Sept. 9 response to the nation’s Environmental Audit Committee, a parliamentary body that oversees environmental policy, the government said “blanket bans” on bottom-towed gear are “disproportionate.”

“The Government’s policy is not to introduce whole-site bans on bottom-towed fishing gear in MPAs,” they wrote in the response. “Our approach is to only restrict fishing which is assessed as damaging to the specific protected features in each MPA.”

Read the full article at Mongabay

A ‘worthwhile effort’ to address trawl bottom contact

May 19, 2025 — Jon Kurland, Alaska regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, agreed to take questions on the issue of trawl gear touching bottom and the pollock industry’s Gear Innovation Initiative. Here are his responses.

NF: It seems the issue of pollock trawl gear contacting the seafloor has taken on a higher profile lately. Is this true, and if so, why?
Jon Kurland: It’s been gaining attention for a while. A number of stakeholders have raised concerns about unobserved mortality of crabs from pelagic trawls contacting the seafloor as well as impacts to bottom habitats. It was a big topic during the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s review of potential new management measures for the Red King Crab Savings Area in the Bering Sea – an area that is closed to bottom trawling but open to pelagic trawling.

NF: What role have you and Alaska’s fish and game commissioner, Doug Vincent-Lang, played in elevating this issue?
JK: Commissioner Vincent-Lang and I have met with members of the pollock industry about this a number of times. We told them this is an important issue and that we’d like to see the industry take a leadership role in exploring and devising viable solutions to reduce bottom contact in areas where that’s a concern due to potential consequences for unobserved mortality of crabs or impacts to bottom habitats.

NF: Do we know enough now about the actual impact of trawl gear on the bottom and benthic habitat?
JK: It’s important to distinguish between bottom trawls and pelagic trawls. We know that bottom trawls are designed to fish on the bottom, and managers have closed some areas to bottom trawling specifically to avoid those impacts. Unfortunately, we don’t know a lot about how much pelagic trawls contact the bottom. We know that fishermen sometimes fish these nets very close to the bottom and make contact with the seafloor, but we don’t have much quantitative data about that.

Read the full article at The National Fisherman

Judge Rejects Need for New EIS in Alaska Trawl Fishing Case

March 27, 2025 — The National Marine Fisheries Service did not violate the National Environmental Policy Act when setting seasons and conditions for pollock trawl fisheries in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands, even though the fishery harms Native American tribes in western Alaska, a federal judge ruled March 11.

The case, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska by two consortiums representing 98 Alaskan tribes, claimed that the climate crisis is causing rapid and unprecedented change in the ocean (Clearing Up No. 2136). Plaintiffs claimed that NMFS failed to take those changes into account when setting conditions for the last two groundfish seasons.

Joined by several environmental groups, the tribes asked the court to require NMFS to prepare a new environmental impact statement (EIS) for the trawl fishery, taking climate change into account.

Although District Judge Sharon Gleason agreed with plaintiffs on several of their points, she ultimately ruled against them.

Read the full article at News Data

ALASKA: Pollock trawl closure sends economic ripples across Kodiak as fishermen adapt

November 1, 2024 — Cole Hockema has been fishing since he was a teenager growing up in Oregon. For 12 years now he’s been trawling for pollock in the Gulf of Alaska, but today he’s sitting at home with his young daughters in Kodiak.

“We had lots of projects and stuff scheduled that we wanted to do at the end of the year and now we have a lot of time to do those, but we’re putting those on hold now until next year just because of a lack of money,” Hockema explained.

Hockema captains the Pacific Storm, a 100-foot trawler based out of Kodiak, which his father owns. The vast majority of the Central Gulf of Alaska trawl fleet is made up of local boats like his.

According to the trade group Alaska Groundfish Data Bank, 19 boats were fishing in the Central Gulf of Alaska when the pollock fishery closed on Sept. 25. 15 of those are homeported in Kodiak.

Normally, fishermen like Hockema would be out on the water until early November, when the Gulf of Alaska’s pollock B season typically closes. But this fall season ended just three weeks into fishing, when two vessels incidentally hauled in approximately 2,000 Chinook salmon, which exceeded the fishery’s annual bycatch limit. Hockema said the Pacific Storm was offloading its catch on Sunday, Sept. 22 when they first got the news about the bycatch and he knew the fleet would need to stop fishing immediately.

Bycatch from the trawl fleet has caught a lot of negative attention over the years, especially as king salmon runs decline across the state.

Since the closure, the Central Gulf of Alaska trawl fleet has separated out into a few camps – some are trying to switch into rockfish and or flatfish to make up lost revenue, others are doing a couple trips for Pacific cod, and a few like Hockema are done fishing for the year.

“Yeah we just can’t invest in nicer, better gear to go get this one [Pacific] cod trip,” Hockema said. “And then we just don’t want to take the risk of going backwards out there, messing up gear, ripping up gear, costing us more money.”

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Environmental group seeks limits on Alaska trawling

October 15, 2024 — The international advocacy organization Oceana is pushing for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to take action on trawling. The nonprofit released a statement Oct. 7 calling on the council to limit trawling in the Bering Sea and Alaska fisheries, saying it is a threat to sensitive seafloor habitats.

Trawling involves dragging a large fishing net behind a boat to collect fish. It’s big business: the trawl fishery targeting Alaska pollock in the Bering Sea is the largest fishery in the nation. Critics say trawl gear used in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea makes contact with the seafloor, damaging marine ecosystems.

Ben Enticknap, a scientist and campaign director for Oceana, expressed concerns about the practice, saying trawling “risks damaging sensitive habitats.” He called on the council to impose measures to ensure the gear stays off the bottom.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Multiple groups urge seafloor protections from pelagic trawling

October 15, 2024 — A diverse group of harvesters, conservation entities and others are calling on federal fisheries managers to do more to protect seafloor habitats from midwater trawl nets they say are dragging the bottom of the ocean floor.

Midwater, or pelagic, trawling — used to catch schooling fish like pollock, is supposed to be fished in the water column rather than on the seafloor. For this reason, pelagic trawling is allowed in most conservation areas closed to bottom trawling — a form of fishing where nets are purposely dragged on the seafloor and damage corals, sponges and other living seafloor habitats in the process.

An analysis by the National Marine Fisheries Service indicates that 40% to 100% of the width of pelagic trawl gear fished in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea has been in contact with the seafloor, and that these nets, which range from 50 to 190 yards wide, are dragged for miles.

After hearing extensive testimony during their October meeting in Anchorage, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) called for a special meeting to be held Feb. 3-10 at the Egan Center in Anchorage for an initial review of chum salmon bycatch in these waters. The fishery council is to further consider pelagic trawl seafloor impacts at its June 2025 meeting in Newport, Oregon.

Read the full article at the Cordova Times

Environmental group seeks limits on trawling

October 9, 2024 — The international advocacy organization Oceana is pushing for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to take action on trawling. The nonprofit released a statement Monday calling on the council to limit trawling in the Bering Sea and Alaska fisheries, saying it is a threat to sensitive seafloor habitats.

Trawling involves dragging a large fishing net behind a boat to collect fish. It’s big business: the trawl fishery targeting Alaska pollock in the Bering Sea is the largest fishery in the nation. Critics say trawl gear used in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea makes contact with the seafloor, damaging marine ecosystems.

Ben Enticknap, a scientist and campaign director for Oceana, expressed concerns about the practice, saying trawling “risks damaging sensitive habitats.” He called on the council to impose measures to ensure the gear stays off the bottom.

Read the full article at KYUK