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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.
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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.
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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.
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has fined one of Alaska’s biggest fishing companies nearly $1 million for Clean Water Act violations.
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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.
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A series of fish- and ocean-related bills have been introduced by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and colleagues from coastal states.
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Vincent-Lang calls certification of Russian seafood a form of ‘appeasement,’ while congressional delegation targets indirect imports of Russian-caught fish.
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Bering Sea pollock fishermen have almost met their “A” season quota. Since the fishery opened in late January, nearly 100 vessels have caught about 1.2 billion pounds of Alaska pollock.
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Fur seals are an essential subsistence food for the Unangax̂ communities in the Bering Sea’s Pribilof Islands. But for years, scientists have been unable to explain why the seals’ populations have been falling. Now, a new peer-reviewed study points its finger at an industry that’s long been suspected, but never definitively linked with the population declines: Alaska’s huge commercial pollock fishery, which harvests the same species that nursing female seals rely on to feed their pups.
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A raw fish tax that has pumped tens of millions of dollars into coastal communities over the past decade has survived a legal challenge before Alaska’s…