September 27, 2024 — Federal managers shut down a major Alaska fishery Wednesday after two Kodiak-based boats targeting whitefish caught some 2,000 king salmon — an unintentional harvest that drew near-instant condemnation from advocates who want better protections for the struggling species.
The Kodiak-based trawl fleet has caught just over one-fourth of its seasonal quota of pollock — a whitefish that’s typically processed into items like fish sticks, fish pies and surimi, the paste used to make fake crab.
But about 20 boats will now be forced to end their season weeks before its Nov. 1 closure, with hundreds of jobs at shore-based processing plants also in jeopardy, to make sure the fleet doesn’t exceed its yearly cap on its unintentional king salmon harvest — some 18,000 fish.
“From a community perspective, it’s huge,” said Julie Bonney, who runs a trade group, the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank, that represents the trawlers and processing companies. “Nobody’s happy about the closure, but they understand the reason.”
The incident is sure to draw more scrutiny on the issue of bycatch — the industry term for the unintended harvest, typically of salmon or halibut, by boats targeting other species.
Tribal advocates and conservation groups, for the past several years, have been making increasingly urgent pleas to managers to crack down on bycatch by trawl vessels, which can scoop up salmon in the nets they drag through the water targeting pollock and other lower-value species.
Those groups’ focus has largely been on bycatch by pollock trawlers in the Bering Sea.
The salmon caught Sunday were harvested using the same type of nets used by trawlers in the Bering Sea, but in a different area of the ocean, the central Gulf of Alaska.