Council to consider trawl bycatch limit for chum salmon
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council this week will consider limiting trawlers’ bycatch of chum salmon in the Bering Sea pollock pelagic trawl fishery. From 2014 to 2023, trawlers have bycaught (caught and then largely discarded) more than 300,000 chum salmon each year on average. Meanwhile, Western Alaska communities, traditional chum salmon fishermen, small boat commercial fishermen, and everyday Alaskans have been experiencing chum salmon restrictions and shutdowns.
“It’s unacceptable that large-scale Seattle-based trawlers have no limits to their chum salmon bycatch while Alaska Native, small boat commercial and sport fishermen are bearing the burdens with restrictions, prohibitions, and empty smokehouses, freezers, and closed businesses,” said Jackie Arnaciar Boyer, SalmonState’s Ocean Justice Program Coordinator. “We’ll be looking for the Council to take meaningful action. Establishing a meaningful cap on chum salmon trawl bycatch when there is currently none and Alaskans are going without is far from unreasonable.”
There are five options, or “alternatives,” before the Council. Opportunities to improve the alternatives on offer include:
Establishing a more meaningful (lower) cap
Ensuring the alternatives adjust for climate change
Ensuring a cap applies in general, not just years chum abundance is below half or one-quarter of historical returns.
Considering the potential for further declines in chum abundance
Disallowing the transfer of uncaught bycatch to another sector, instead ensuring those fish remain in the ocean.
On average, trawlers bycatch a documented 141 million pounds of marine life each year. This bycatch includes king salmon, chum salmon, halibut, herring, squid, crab, whales and more.
Trawlers trail nets the size of football fields to catch everything in the water column. When they drag the bottom, they rip up seafloor habitat and crush bottom-dwelling species in a way that never comes up to the surface to be counted. Pelagic, or “midwater” trawlers, are allowed to trawl in protected areas and drag the bottom up to 100% of the time.
Important Bering Sea pollock trawl fleet chum bycatch numbers can be found in this fact sheet from Oceana.
In 2024, trawlers in Alaska bycaught 38,751 Chinook salmon; 48,643 chum salmon; 4.5 million pounds of halibut; 3 million pounds of herring; 950,680 crabs; and one orca.