ALASKA BYCATCH, HABITAT DEBATES ON THE FRONT BURNER

 

A little less than two years ago, I wrote something called “Marine Fisheries Management:  You’re Defined by What You Oppose,” which focused on widespread commercial opposition to federal legislation intended to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which would have afforded forage fish greater protection, done more to preserve essential fish habitat, and required commercial fishermen to make a greater effort to avoid bycatch of non-targeted species, and the resultant discard mortality.

As I noted at the time,

“The fishing industry opposes [the legislation] because it 1) extends more comprehensive protection to the small forage fish that all of the larger fish, along with birds and marine mammals, feed on, 2) would better conserve essential fish habitat, and 3) seeks to minimize the incidental catch, and associated dead discards, of non-target, non-salable fish and other components of the target species’ ecosystem.

“And then they justify such opposition by arguing that such measures are unrelated to ecosystem health.

“It’s hardly a pursuasive argument.  Even more telling are the [industry’s] comments about ‘balance[ing] complex competing interests’ and ‘severely restrict[ing] some of our nation’s largest commercial fisheries’ for, although it remained unsaid, some of ‘our nation’s largest commercial fisheries’ are also the fisheries that place the greatest pressure on forage fish stocks, do the most damage to essential fish habitat, and cause some of the most serious bycatch issues.”

To illustrate my point, I turned to the (supposedly) mid-water trawl fishery for walleye pollock, which takes place off Alaska.  It is the largest commercial fishery in the United States, which in the course of harvesting about 3.3 billion pounds of pollock per year ( also generates something in the vicinity of 50 million pounds of bycatch of various species (this is according to the pollock industry itself, which claims that

“more than 98 percent of the catch in the [Bering Sea Aleutian Islands] Alaska pollock fishery has been pollock,”

but, with 3.3 million pounds of pollock being landed, well, you can do the math.)

That bycatch leads to some interesting situations, including regulations that allow the pollock trawlers to kill thousands of Pacific salmon at a time when Native Alaskans, who have historically depended on such fish for a substantial portion of their diet, are allowed to harvest few or none.

It wasn’t a complimentary piece, and drew one unhappy comment from a spokesman for the pollock fleet, but the issue did not fade away.  In fact, it is now more in the forefront than ever.

To oversimplify, the dispute puts the big pollock factory trawlers, which are generally owned by corporations headquartered  in the states of Washington and Oregon, but head up to Alaska to catch plentiful but low-value pollock (the approximately 2.7 billion pounds of walleye pollock landed in 2022 sold for just under 19 cents per pound), against Alaska’s small-boat commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, and subsistence fishermen, many of whom belong to Native Tribes, who believe that their opportunities to catch chum and chinook salmon, tanner crab, and other high-value or culturally significant species have been negatively impacted by the big trawlers’ bycatch and the damage that the trawlers’ nets, which are meant to fish in the middle of the water column, allegedly cause when they come in contact with the ocean floor.

A similar dispute is underway between large trawlers which fish for other species of groundfish (which are just what the term suggests, fish typically found near the ocean floor) and commercial and recreational halibut fishermen, who believe that trawler bycatch is causing real harm to both the halibut and to the halibut fishery.

The situation has been exacerbated by the fact that, while the directed harvest of some species, at least in some waters, is now prohibited by law—for example, United States and Canadian fisheries managers recently agreed to shut down the fishery for Canadian-origin chinook salmon in the Yukon River for the next seven years, while a similar closure was put in place in the Alaskan portion of the river a few years ago—the trawler  fleet may legally catch and kill the same species as bycatch.

The Anchorage Daily News quotes Maurice McGinty, an 80-year-old Native American who had just dipped into his last jar of smoked chinook salmon, and noted,

“We have no more now.  They are pushing us, and our traditional way of life, into a hole.”

Despite such outcomes, the big trawlers oppose any new restrictions on bycatch, worried that it will harm a fishery that grossed over a half-billion dollars in ex vessel landings in 2022. 

That doesn’t mean that the trawlers aren’t doing anything to reduce salmon bycatch.  In recent years, they have made a conscious effort to avoid “hot spots” in the ocean that host large numbers of salmon.  

Still, small-scale fishermen note that, while there is a hard cap on chinook salmon bycatch in the trawl fisheries for both pollock (25,000 fish) and for other groundfish (32,500 fish), which can lead to a fishery being shut down if the cap is exceeded, there is no cap on the culturally important chum salmon fishery.  Over the past decade, the pollock trawlers have unintentionally killed about 315,000 chum salmon each year but, perhaps because of the greater attention being paid to bycatch in recent years, managed to cut that number to just 112,000 chum salmon in 2023.

Nevertheless, Tribal leaders are asking the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to impose a hard bycatch cap of no more than 200,000 chum salmon, and preferably fewer, on the pollock fishery.  The pollock fishery is pushing back, arguing, according to the Anchorage Daily News, that

“hard caps are blunt tools that are unlikely to achieve what the tribes are pushing for: more salmon returning to Western Alaska rivers.

“That’s because genetic analysis shows that a little more than half the chums swallowed by trawl nets aren’t actually Western Alaska salmon—they’re salmon that came from Russian and Asian hatcheries, which have sharply increased their releases in recent years.

“Western Alaska fish, on average, make up just 19% of trawlers’ chum bycatch.  And industry officials say that a cap that doesn’t distinguish between those areas of origin could actually push their boats into areas where they’re catching Yukon and Kuskokwim fish at higher rates, even if the total number of chum is lower.”

Whether that’s a legitimate argument, or merely something the trawl industry offered up to avoid unwanted regulation, isn’t entirely clear.  But then, that sort of uncertainty is typical of any allocation argument—and let’s be perfectly clear that this is an argument about allocation, even if the central debate is between what the directed salmon fisheries are able to harvest versus what the pollock trawlers are able to incidentally kill, rather than what different sectors are each able to harvest and use—when those on the fat side of the allocation are trying to hang on to what they have, while those on the other side are reaching out for more.

But the debate over the pollock fleet isn’t limited to bycatch issues.  Alaskan crabbers are calling for more restrictions on the nets used by the pollock trawlers, alleging that such supposed “mid-water” or “pelagic” trawls, which are intended to fish relatively high in the water column, are actually scraping the bottom for much of the time when they’re deployed, and damaging habitat important to many species, including red king crab, along the way.

While bottom trawls may not be used in about half of the waters under the jurisdiction of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, due to the damage that they cause to bottom habitat, similar restriction do not apply to mid-water trawls, even those which remain in contact with the bottom for extended periods.

Although the Council has been reluctant to impose further restriction on the mid-water trawlers, the issue has caught the attention of Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK).  Last week, Rep. Peltola introduced two bills that are intended to address the bycatch and habitat destruction issues.

The more restrictive of the two bills is the so-called “Bottom Trawl Clarity Act,” which would require regional fishery management councils to create

“a definition of the term ‘substantial bottom contact’ as compared to the term ‘limited bottom contact’ when used to describe how often fishing gear interacts with the seafloor; a monitoring and enforcement plan to ensure that any pelagic trawl fishing activity that is carried out by a fisher managed by [a] Council has limited bottom contact; and a list of each gear type that has substantial bottom contact based on the definition [described above]. [formatting and internal numbering omitted]”

The legislation would also, among other things, require that each regional fishery management council designate Bottom Trawl Zones where trawls that make substantial bottom contact may be used, with such trawls outlawed in the remainder of the area under the jurisdiction of the council.  In explaining why such legislation is needed, Rep. Peltola’s office issued a statement which read, in part,

“Bottom trawling…is…the cause of one of the most widespread human impacts on the seabed and is relevant globally.  The net rolls over the ocean floor as it is pulled, destroying complex habitats, kicking up sediment, and wounding or killing any other animals in the way.

“Midwater—or pelagic—trawl is designed for fishing in the middle of the water column with minimal or no interaction with the seafloor habitat.  However, when considering the seafloor impacts of pelagic trawl, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council assumed bottom contact of up to 60% seafloor contact for small pelagic trawl vessels and up to 100% for factory catcher/processors.

“The consequences of intensive bottom trawling are severe, leading to the harm and death of non-target species.  The Red King Crab Savings Area, established in 1996 to protect the Red King Crab seafloor habitat, is permanently closed to bottom trawling but remains open to midwater.  However, if midwater nets are assumed to make bottom contact up to 100% of the time, it begs the question: what truly distinguishes midwater from bottom trawling?”

That’s a question that the pollock fleet has yet to answer.

Instead, it has made vague statements in opposition to the bill, claiming that it would impose

“unworkable and burdensome new federal mandates on regional decision-makers,”

and has noted that

“The [North Pacific Fishery Management C]ouncil has been looking at pelagic gear definitions, the enforceability, and they continue to look at that.  And that’s where we feel the work needs to be done.”

However, the pollock industry has never made a clear statement as to just why the requirements of Rep. Peltola’s legislation would prove “unworkable.”  Nor has it explained why, if the North Pacific Council is already looking at definitions for “pelagic” net gear, the bill would significantly upend the council process, as it merely requires them to stop “looking at” a definition for midwater trawls and actually put such definition in place within a year of the bill’s passage.

That hardly seems unreasonable, unless you’re one of those folks that wants to see talking go on forever, forestalling action so long as it does.su

And it seems that there is one constant in legislative politics:  Whenever someone pulls out the “burdensome new federal mandates” line when they’re opposing a bill, it’s almost always because they have nothing more substantive to say.

Rep Peltola’s second bill, the “Bycatch Reduction and Mitigation Act” would impose no new mandates on any existing fishery.  Instead, it would reauthorize the Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program, and increase the annual funding for such program from $3 million to $10 million, and also make other funds available through the Bycatch Mitigation Assistance Fund, which is administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

The latter bill has been cosponsored by Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA) and Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA).

While Rep. Peltola recognizes that she introduced both bills late in the congressional term, and that neither one is likely to be passed this year, she does think that they will elevate the conversation on bycatch and pelagic trawl issues.

In the end, much of the debate will come down to the question of whether, as a matter of policy, it is acceptable for a large, well-capitalized and very profitable industry, largely based in one state, to fish off another state’s shores and, in doing so, destroy a significant quantity of the marine resources that smaller-scale local fishermen need to survive.

It will come down to a simple question of whether it is acceptable to sacrifice subsistence fisheries and smaller-scale commercial fisheries in order to maintain, and perhaps provide the opportunity to increase, the profits of a large-scale commercial fleet.

It is still too soon to determine how those questions will be answered.

But the answer, when it comes, will tell us much about the values of the nation’s fishery management system, and of the people who make the eventual call.