June 11, 2026 — Fisheries scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks are on a mission to find out where Chinook salmon are at all times, not to catch them, but to avoid them.

Their research draws on a trove of data from a Chinook salmon tagging program, with a focus on helping commercial trawl harvesters avoid the depths and areas where these fish risk becoming bycatch, and where they may also be adversely affected by naval exercises in the Gulf of Alaska used to train U.S. military forces for combat at sea.

Chinook and chum salmon have been hard hit in recent years by rising ocean temperatures, anthropogenic impacts, and increased microplastic pollution.

Bycatch limits already in place for declining Chinook stocks shut down the trawl fishery in Kodiak in 2024, when two trawl boats caught so many Chinooks over a single weekend that the entire fleet had to stop fishing, leaving most of their total allowable groundfish catch in the water.

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