alaska pollock

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.

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.

A price collapse in 2023 bodes ill for the seafood industry, the report said. Because of inflation, consumer demand dropped, notably in the United States, where it fell below pre-pandemic levels. There was a large amount of 2022 harvested fish leftover as inventory, making wholesalers and retailers less inclined to buy fish in 2023, and the global supply of key species like pink salmon and pollock increased dramatically, notably from Russia but also in Alaska, the report said.

The pollock fishery currently has a cap on Chinook bycatch, but those asking for stricter limits say the restrictions don’t go far enough.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which manages federal fisheries in Alaska, will continue to explore options for how to manage chum salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery. The council, facing rising pressure from western Alaska communities who depend on chum as a cornerstone of subsistence, released a statement Wednesday summarizing their decision from their April meeting.

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.

Alaska pollock’s “A” season opened saturday. That’s when the pollock trawlers set out into the Bering Sea to scoop up the whitefish that keeps Unalaska’s lights on.

The total amount of pollock allowed to be scooped up by trawlers in the Bering Sea will stay the same in 2024. In its Dec. 9 meeting in Anchorage, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council moved to keep the total allowable catch for pollock at its current level of 1.3 million metric tons, a move that has generated criticism from conservationists, tribes, and the trawling industry alike.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has fined one of Alaska’s biggest fishing companies nearly $1 million for Clean Water Act violations.

Trident has begun building the first bunkhouses at its to-be processing plant in Unalaska’s Captains Bay, progressing on a timeline the company says would make it operational by 2027.