March 17, 2025 — Federal fisheries managers did not mishandle trawl fishing rules amid Alaska’s ongoing salmon subsistence crisis, a federal judge in Anchorage has ruled.
In a 45-page order published Tuesday, Judge Sharon Gleason ruled against the Association of Village Council Presidents and the Tanana Chiefs Conference, which sued the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2023 over its management of Bering Sea trawl fisheries in the years since a marine heat wave.
“This suit arises from the apparent tension between federal defendants’ management of the fishery and the needs of Alaskan communities in times of significant change in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands region,” Gleason wrote.