Fishermen are calling for state and federal fisheries managers to make changes to salmon bycatch limits for trawlers as chinook salmon numbers plummet across Alaska.
Chinook returns were dismal virtually everywhere in Alaska this year, from Southeast to the Bering Sea, with few exceptions. That follows a trend, as abundance has declined over roughly the past decade. Commercial fishermen have lost most of their opportunity to harvest kings, and sport fisheries have been restricted. Now subsistence fisheries are being reined in to help preserve the runs.
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is debating changes. Trawlers, which use weighted nets to drag along the bottom or in midwater, are permitted a certain amount of bycatch as they fish for their target species, the largest of which is pollock. Bycatch is always a heated issue, but it is especially so now.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game informed the council in a letter dated Sept. 23 that three index species that it uses to track king salmon runs in the Bering Sea — the Unalakleet, Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers — didn’t reach a threshold necessary to maintain the current bycatch allowances. That threshold is set at 250,000 fish between the three rivers; this year, there were 165,148.
The shortfall in salmon this year hit fishing communities hard, particularly among subsistence fishermen. Amos T. Philemenoff Sr., president of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, wrote to the board that the salmon shortages in the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim region this year have hurt the island’s subsistence traditions. Donations of salmon from commercial harvesters to replace the lost food do not replace the traditions.
“Our communities have experienced physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual hardship due to the impacts of over-harvest and mismanagement that characterize these Alaska fisheries,” he wrote. “The burden of conservation has fallen on Indigenous (e.g., subsistence) users who are not part of the salmon population collapse.”
Philemenoff said the community has been bringing up concerns about the Bering Sea ecosystem for years and pointed to a combination of factors, including trawl over-exploitation of the fishery resources and climate change. Sea ice has become increasingly rare, not surrounding St. Paul Island since 2011 and 2012, and seabird die-offs have become increasingly common in the region.
“The population declines of northern fur seals, Steller sea lions, Pribilof Islands blue king crab and Pacific halibut, to name a few, have been devastating to the livelihoods, well-being and future of our tribal and community members,” he said. “We have carried these concerns to this council for years, decades.”
He requested that the council drop salmon bycatch allowances to zero for the 2022 Bering Sea pollock fishery, that it seek federal disaster aid and research funding, and that the council seek tribal consultation on salmon bycatch and management.
The Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission asked for the same measures in its letter, noting that because of the lack of information on the reason for the salmon collapse, “sustainable fishery management requires that the council limit salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery to ensure that NO salmon are taken as bycatch … in 2022.”
Kawerak Inc., the Ocean Conservancy, Yukon River Inter-tribal Fish Commission, Yukon Drainage Fisheries Association and Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association submitted the same requests.
Several commenters are asking for similarly tough actions on the Bering Sea pollock fishery, but others are noting that significant cuts could also hurt Native coastal communities because they hold interest in that fishery through community development quota groups. Fishermen with the Coastal Villages Region Fund, which represents the villages around the Kuskokwim River Delta and surrounding areas, caught about 102 million pounds of pollock in 2019, according to the fund’s annual report from that year.
Others are asking for changes to the bycatch management in the trawl fisheries. A letter from the Salmon Habitat Information Partnership program signed by 300 commercial fishermen asks the council to reconsider a decision it made regarding apportionment of chinook salmon bycatch in the Gulf of Alaska pollock fisheries.
The fishermen in the letter, from everywhere from Ketchikan to Dutch Harbor, protested this move, saying the fish should be left in the Gulf rather than be allowed to be caught by another sector as bycatch.
“Alaskans are making huge sacrifices to protect chinook; the federal government via the NPFMC needs to do the same,” the letter states. “Chinook bycatch being rolled over to another trawl sector to kill and discard is unconscionable when many Alaskans are foregoing subsistence, sport and commercial harvest.”
Salmon fishermen across the Gulf of Alaska, from Southeast to Bristol Bay, saw restrictions this year due to low king salmon runs. In Southeast, sport anglers were restricted starting in June to protect the kings returning to the rivers there.
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