Saving Seafood

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: Alaska governor candidates split on fisheries

September 11, 2026 — Alaska’s four candidates for governor faced off over fisheries policy in Kodiak Wednesday night, offering commercial fishermen their clearest look yet at how the next administration could reshape fisheries management in the state.

For fishermen, the differences went beyond campaign politics. Depending on who wins, Alaska could see changes to who represents the commercial fleet on the Board of Fisheries, how conservation restrictions are shared among user groups, who is nominated to the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council (NPFMC), and even how fisheries leadership is structured within state government.

Republicans Dave Bronson, Treg Taylor and Bernadette Wilson joined Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins for the Sept. 9 gubernatorial fisheries debate at Kodiak’s Gerald C. Wilson Auditorium. Hosted by the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce and KMXT Public Radio, the event is Alaska’s only gubernatorial debate devoted exclusively to fisheries. Questions were submitted by members of the public and the seafood industry and vetted by a committee representing different sectors of the fishing industry.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Alaska gubernatorial candidates vow support for the seafood industry while revealing some splits

September 11, 2026 — At a fisheries forum held Wednesday night in Kodiak, all four candidates remaining in Alaska’s gubernatorial race found plenty of common ground.

Former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a Democrat, and the three Republicans, former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, former state Attorney General Treg Taylor and business owner and talk-show host Bernadette Wilson, described the seafood industry as a pillar of the state’s economy and fish as part of the state’s identity.

All four gubernatorial candidates, who are set to face off in the general election in Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, said they consider bycatch — the accidental interception of nontargeted species — to be an urgent problem for salmon runs.

All said they want to appoint a special adviser on fisheries, something that past governors have done but that current Gov. Mike Dunleavy has not.

All said they wanted to appoint members of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, the panel that oversees practices in federal waters, and the Alaska Board of Fisheries, which has jurisdiction over state waters, who would represent state interests broadly, including non-commercial interests.

All vowed a commitment to science, support for the state agency that markets Alaska’s seafood and investment in the infrastructure in coastal communities.

But there were differences that emerged at the event, sponsored by the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce. Those started with the candidates’ personal connections to and knowledge of seafood issues.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

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

US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick goes against top choices for fishery management councils

July 17, 2026 — U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has opted to go against some top nominations for U.S. fishery management councils.

In a 26 June announcement Lutnick announced he selected Forrest Bowers, the second choice for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, instead the Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy’s top choice and current Alaska Department of Fish & Game Board Chair Märit Carlson-Van Dort. For the Pacific Fishery Management Council, Lutnick selected second-choice Chad See, director of the Freezer Longline Coalition, over the Washington Governor Bob Ferguson’s first pic of Jamie Goen, the executive director of the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers trade group.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Sullivan reintroduces sweeping bill targeting bycatch, seafloor impacts

July 8, 2026 — U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) has reintroduced the Bycatch Reduction Act, legislation that would expand federal efforts to reduce bycatch, limit seafloor impacts from trawl gear, improve fisheries monitoring and increase transparency in fishery management.

According to Sullivan’s office, the bill builds on recommendations from the Alaska Salmon Task Force, which was created through legislation he authored and signed into law in 2022.

The proposal would establish new standards and monitoring requirements designed to keep both midwater and bottom trawl nets off the seafloor, require proven salmon excluder devices on pollock vessels, invest in salmon tagging and genetic sampling, expand ecosystem research, and create a new flume tank testing facility to evaluate fishing gear under simulated ocean conditions. The bill also would reauthorize NOAA’s Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program and encourage fishermen to test new gear and technologies aimed at reducing bycatch and habitat impacts.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Alaska’s wild salmon harvest climbs to over 14.5 million fish

July 7, 2026 — On the eve of July 4 and a plethora of holiday barbecues, Alaska’s commercial salmon harvest had already brought in over 14 million wild sockeye salmon, with the big surge coming from Bristol Bay.

Silver Bay Seafoods and Trident Seafoods posted $1.60 a pound for chilled, bled sockeye, 30 cents more than last year’s pre-season price and considered a conservative starting price for the 2026 season, said Janis Harsilla, business manager for the Bristol Bay Fishermen’s Association.

Retail sales were steady, with prices ranging between $16.99 to $18.99 a pound at King Soopers supermarkets, between $23 and $29.99 a pound at some online direct-to-consumer shops, $15.99 a pound at Anchorage Fred Meyer, part of the Kroger chain, and $20.99 a pound at Anchorage Carrs-Safeway supermarkets. The best deal in town was still $14.99 a pound at Costco warehouses in Anchorage for fresh Copper River reds. 

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NOAA eyes potential changes to Alaska sea lion protections as Trump urges boosted seafood harvests

July 6, 2026 — Federal regulators plan to reevaluate fishing closure boundaries established to protect endangered Steller sea lions in Alaska, part of a national Trump administration push to cut regulation of U.S. commercial seafood harvests.

The Steller sea lion protections are among a series of rules that the administration is seeking to relax or change to carry out a mandate from President Donald Trump to increase catches, reduce regulation and ensure that the nation is “the world’s dominant seafood leader.”

The recommended changes were released on Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries service and are in response to Trump’s 2025 executive order titled “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.” They could affect oceans from New England and the Caribbean to the tropical Pacific and the Bering Sea.

Several months of public consultations resulted in a list of recommendations that “we believe will reduce burdens on domestic fishing, increase production, stabilize markets, improve access, and enhance economic profitability,” NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator Eugenio Piñeiro Soler said in a statement.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

North Pacific council to study new options to reduce bottom trawling

June 17, 2026 — Federal fisheries managers plan to consider new options in 2027 to reduce bottom contact of pelagic trawl gear on red king crab populations in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska.

Members of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council assigned council staff during their June meeting in Vancouver, Wash., to develop a discussion paper on potential regulatory measures to reduce bottom contact of pelagic trawl gear in areas currently closed to non-pelagic trawl gear.

The goal is to reduce the uncertainty associated with unobserved crab mortality and to improve existing fishing practices, in light of depressed red king crab populations and changing ecosystems, council staff said.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NPFMC asks for more research on midwater trawling, despite increased calls for regulation

June 16, 2026 — At the June meeting of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC), council members made a motion to continue research on the effects of midwater trawling in Alaska but failed to take concrete action on the matter, despite public pressure.

According to documents from the meeting, the reason the council gave for not reducing bottom contact in pelagic trawl gear fisheries is due to a lack of data “regarding the magnitude of unobserved crab mortality from interactions with pelagic trawl gear.” The council has previously stated that reducing bottom contact is a goal in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, where nonpelagic trawl gear is already banned.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource