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Environmental group seeks limits on trawling

The American Triumph — a 285-foot factory trawler with an onboard processing plant — sits in the Port of Dutch Harbor.
Hope McKenney
/
KUCB
The American Triumph — a 285-foot factory trawler with an onboard processing plant — sits in the Port of Dutch Harbor.

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.

Another hot-button issue in the trawl fishery is bycatch, which is when non-target species like salmon are unintentionally caught and often discarded. Pollock trawlers operating in the Gulf of Alaska recently caught more than their annual bycatch limit of Chinook salmon — over 2,000 fish.

Oceana has also taken legal action, filing a lawsuit against federal fishery managers for “failing to protect Alaska’s seafloor habitats.” The lawsuit argues that fishery management plans in the region have not fully considered the best available science or implemented adequate conservation measures.

Fishing groups and coastal communities have pushed back against many criticisms of the trawl fishery. Industry representatives argue that calls for tighter restrictions are unnecessary and could place undue burdens on the fishing sector. The Groundfish Forum, a trade group representing 17 catcher-processor vessels, says the criticisms are often based on misperceptions.

Stephanie Madsen, executive director of the At-Sea Processors Association, warns that recent legislative proposals aimed at curbing trawling would introduce “unworkable and burdensome new federal mandates.”

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will take up the bycatch issue at its February 2025 meeting in Anchorage.

Theo Greenly covers the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands for the Alaska Desk from partner stations KUCB in Unalaska, KSDP in Sand Point and KUHB in Saint Paul.
Related Content
  • Nearly 100 tribes and communities in western Alaska, including the Association of Village Council Presidents, signed their support for an emergency petition that would set a zero bycatch limit on chinook salmon in the pollock trawl fishery for 180 days, a move Unalaska Mayor Vince Tutiakoff Sr. said would “effectively shut down the entire pollock fishery of the Bering Sea,” and create a “dire situation” for Unalaska.
  • Crew members shovel pollock onboard a trawler on the Bering Sea in 2019.
    Federal fisheries managers hold Bering Sea pollock quota steady
    The move has generated criticism from conservationists, tribes, and the trawling industry alike.
  • Alaska Congresswoman Mary Peltola introduced two bills Wednesday that aim to deliver on one of her campaign themes: Reducing the number of salmon that the Bering Sea fishing fleet catches by accident. One of the bills would curtail the use of fishing nets that scrape sensitive parts of the sea floor. It would require regional fisheries management councils to designate bottom trawl zones and limit that kind of fishing to those areas.