Saving Seafood

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: Peltola, Sullivan take different approaches to reducing bycatch

September 29, 2026 — Bycatch has emerged as a defining fisheries issue in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race, but the legislative records of former Rep. Mary Peltola and Sen. Dan Sullivan show different approaches to reducing incidental harvests and addressing trawling’s impacts.

Peltola, who is challenging Sullivan for his Senate seat, introduced the Bycatch Reduction and Mitigation Act in 0224 while serving in the U.S. House. Sullivan introduced his Bycatch Reduction Act this year, which advanced through the Senate Commerce Committee on Sept. 16.

According to the Alaska Beacon, the two proposals share some common ground, particularly federal support for technology to reduce bycatch. But there are notable differences in how that support would be distributed and how each proposal approaches fisheries management.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Pitched battle for Alaska’s Senate seat is enveloped in a fight over fish

September 21, 2026 — Fish are central to Alaska’s economy, Indigenous cultures and identity.

With critical salmon runs in Alaska rivers struggling, commercial operators squeezed by higher costs and stiffer market competition, fish are now at the center of the hard-fought campaign for Alaska’s U.S. Senate seat.

For Democratic challenger Mary Peltola, who is seeking to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, the fishing issues are deeply personal.

She is Yup’ik, grew up in rural Western Alaska on the Kuskokwim River and, as she has explained many times, has been fishing since she was 6 years old.

“I’m the only candidate on this stage who’s an Alaskan fisherman. Fish is in my blood, earned over generations on the water,” she said at the Sept. 12 fisheries-focused debate held by the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce.

Sullivan is emphasizing his record after 12 years in the Senate, which he said resulted in 63 bills signed into law so far, many of which concern fisheries, and has secured generous appropriations for agencies that support the industry, like the U.S. Coast Guard.

“Our fishermen deserve relentless focus and action, not just talk,” he said at the Kodiak debate.

According to the information clearinghouse govtrack.us, Sullivan was the prime sponsor on 31 bills that have been signed into law during his tenure. Over his career in the Senate, he has been a cosponsor of more than 1,800 pieces of legislation, according to congress.gov, the  online database for the nation’s legislative branch.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

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

ALASKA: Sullivan, Peltola spar over fishing in Senate debate

September 15, 2026 — U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, and Mary Peltola sharply disagreed on policies related to Alaska fisheries over the weekend, in the first debate between the two candidates running for Alaska’s hotly contested Senate seat.

Alaska shipped more than $2.5 billion in domestic seafood exports abroad in 2025, according to the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office. However, Sullivan and Peltola both said the industry has struggled in recent years for different reasons.

Sullivan said competition from Russia and China has stifled Alaska’s fishing industry and weakened competition. He touted his work to ban Russian seafood imports in the U.S. and efforts to block Chinese imports.

Read the full article The Center Square

ALASKA: Fish fights take center stage in Alaska Senate race

August 20, 2026 — The plight of the state’s fisheries, some of the most productive in the world, has become a flashpoint in Alaska’s Senate race and arisen as a potential weakness for two-term incumbent Dan Sullivan.

Sullivan faces a tough reelection bid against former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who has centered her campaign around “Fish, Family, Freedom.” She’s trying to harness anger at out-of-state commercial fishing to win her way back to Congress.

Alaska hosts some of the largest commercial pollock fisheries in the world as well as major salmon populations — buttressing a seafood industry that supports more than 15,000 Alaskan jobs with around $5 billion in value. Many Alaska Natives harvest fish from the state’s mighty rivers and rely on the catch during winter.

Read the full article at E&E News

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: Sullivan, Peltola battle for Alaska fishing vote in Senate race

July 16, 2026 — Members of Congress routinely post news releases on legislation they introduce and cosponsor, including for Alaska’s delegation, a plethora of seafood legislation impacting the seafood industry.

Once in a while, one of these bills becomes law. The odds are 1-3 percent.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, and former Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, who are both running for his current Senate seat, have issued news releases stating their priorities for federal regulations related to the nation’s federal fisheries. Many of their campaigns are focused on convincing Alaskans engaged in the fisheries industry that they can do the most to protect and improve benefits for Alaskans working in that industry.

Purchases of Russian seafood were blocked from federal school lunch programs by an amendment introduced by Sullivan, which passed the Senate in November 2023.  That amendment closed a loophole that had allowed Russian seafood processed in China to bypass the National School Lunch Program “Buy American” requirements.

In 2022, the Alaska Salmon Task Force Act, sponsored by Sullivan, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and Rep. Don Young, Alaska’s all Republican delegation, was established as a federal task force. On July 12, 2024, the task force submitted its final science report on the complex biological, environmental and socioeconomic factors impacting Alaska salmon to the Secretary of Commerce, the Alaska Legislature and relevant congressional committees.

On June 25, Sullivan introduced the Bycatch Reduction Act, an updated version of bycatch legislation introduced by the Alaska congressional delegation in January of 2026, which remains in the introduced stage in the Senate and the House.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola will be absent from House floor to prepare fish for winter storage

November 5, 2024 — Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) will not be in attendance for House votes this week, so she can prepare fish for her family.

“This week, Representative Peltola will be in the state putting up fish with family to fill freezers for the winter. Mary’s family—as well as her late husband’s family—relies in part on her for subsistence duties,” her office said in a statement.

“Representative Peltola will submit publicly available statements to the Congressional record reflecting how she would have voted if present,” the statement added.

Read the full article at The Hill

ALASKA: US House candidates debate Alaskan fisheries management

October 30, 2024 — Candidates for the sole U.S. House of Representatives seat up for election in Alaska were able to make their positions on the state’s struggling seafood industry heard during the 2024 Alaska Fisheries Debate, hosted by the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce.

Incumbent U.S. Representative Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) touted her record on providing support to the state’s commercial fishing sector while pointing to the bills she has sponsored as a path forward for the industry.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource