By Captain David Bayes
The trawl (also known as the dragger) fishery occurring offshore of Alaska is one of the largest in the world. Many trawl boats currently fishing in Alaska moved here after fisheries in their home waters collapsed. Many crews of factory trawlers fly from their homes in other states/nations to meet the boat, extract Alaskan fish, sell them mostly overseas, and then fly home. Therefore, they rely upon Alaska’s fish, but they do not rely on nor significantly contribute to Alaska’s economic and geographic stability.
Trawl’s Enormous Scale
The scale of trawl and trawl bycatch (discarded fish) is difficult to comprehend. Over the last decade, trawlers in Alaska average 141 million pounds of observed and reported bycatch each year. That amounts to approximately 3.53 billion pounds of bycatch waste since the year 2000. On an hourly basis, that equates to 16,000 pounds of waste per hour. Trawl is a fishery built for speed and volume. Although many issues exist, trawl is protected by a management regime which absorbs extreme damage as “routine.”
Trawl’s Impact on Habitat
Trawl’s habitat footprint is equally astounding. The largest trawlers drag 6 square miles of seafloor every day. There are dozens of these vessels fishing hundreds of days per year. The cumulative seafloor habitat destruction extends over tens of thousands of square miles annually. Although the harm happens invisibly beneath the water, the irony of this destruction is not lost upon Alaskans. For comparison, the Willow oil project receives scrutiny for a surface impact of 0.8 square miles per year. On land, fractions of a square mile are treated as emergencies. But underwater, entire landscapes are scraped without debate.
The contradictions run deeper when you look at trawl’s “mid-water” nets. The name suggests gear suspended above the bottom, but their bycatch of bottom dwelling species tells a different story. Over the last 5 years midwater nets caught 14 million pounds of flathead sole, 8.9 million pounds of yellowfin sole, 8.88 million pounds of rock sole, 6.8 million pounds of skates, 4.55 million pounds of arrowtooth flounder, and 1.2 million pounds of halibut. They also caught 760,000 pounds of sea stars (starfish). These are bottom species. Their presence in these volumes is not the whole bycatch picture; however, it is crystal clear evidence that the “mid-water” label is a misnomer.
Trawl’s Toll on Alaskan Communities
The toll on Alaskan communities is also immediate. Families on the Yukon and Kuskokwim cannot take a single Chum or King Salmon, even though trawlers are rubber stamped to waste 77,500 individual Kings each year statewide. Halibut quotas are shrinking, and many crab fisheries have experienced total closure. These are total economic and social erasures, which disproportionately fall on the people who harvest the least. Meanwhile, trawl continues to harvest the most.
Paralysis by elected officials allows this to continue. Polling shows 70% of Alaskans want trawling banned or restricted. That level of agreement is extremely rare, yet it has not moved state or federal leadership. Senators, our Governor, and many others in Alaskan politics have and continue to accept money from corporate interests tied to trawl. Combined, trawl’s campaign contributions reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As the impact and awareness of these issues mount, Alaskans are increasingly frustrated that top Alaskan officials are sidestepping the issue by attempting to say that it’s either not “their” job, or that their “hands are tied”, since the federal government also plays a role in management. Senator Sullivan, Lisa Murkowski, and Governor Dunleavy all received large sums of campaign money from trawlers.
What Can Be Done
The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council (NPFMC) is the federal council which regulates the bulk of trawling. The NPFMC has 11 voting members. The Alaska Governor nominates 6 of those 11 members. Those nominations create a permanent “Alaskan” majority on the NPFMC, which then directly determines trawl policy. If the Governor wanted hard bycatch caps, mandatory cameras, real-time closures, habitat safeguards, lower catch limits, and robust enforcement of mid-water gear classifications, then he or she needs to appoint people who value those protections to the Alaskan NPFMC seats.
The Alaska Congressional Delegation has similar power. Congressmembers could pressure NOAA Fisheries. They could order oversight hearings. They could require transparency on observer coverage and bycatch mortality. They could push the White House to initiate a federal review of trawl impacts. And they could amend the Magnuson Stevens Act (MSA). After all, it is the MSA which determines how bycatch is counted, how habitat is defined, and how regional councils operate.
Conclusion
Alaska is now following a pattern which has repeated globally. Extreme extraction. Weak oversight. Political reluctance. Ecological decline. And (if the trend continues) collapse.
But the trawl fleet will simply move on after the system breaks. Trawl will find a new region and a new council willing to believe the same assurances Alaskans once heard. The people harmed most will be the ones who depended on these fish long before trawling arrived.
Which leaves the questions that matter: How long should a public resource be exploited for private profit? How much more loss should coastal communities bear? How many red flags must appear before leadership intervenes? What do we do when the science warns of structural decline, but the political system shrugs?
The people put in power by Alaskans must use the authority they are given to protect our resources and communities.
Captain David Bayes in a long-time fisherman based in Homer. He founded and owned DeepStrike Sportfishing from 2003-2024. He has served as president of both the Alaska Charter and Homer Charter Associations. He manages the “Stop Alaskan Trawler Bycatch” Facebook group, a group gaining traction in their efforts to change bycatch rules and protect Alaska’s seafood resources.
I have known about all of this for a long time and believe it to be truly criminal. All for fish-sticks. Pollock. A low grade fish used for industrialized production of unhealthy breaded, fried, frozen products while our salmon runs are destroyed. Our elected officials are amply supported by this industry – follow the money. Murkowski has especially benefitted. What stuns me most is that there isn’t more outrage from across our state.
Stop the draggers and put an end to the herring fishery. The rebound in stocks would likely be amazing and may even offset the losses to the exploded whale population.
And there are no more salmon in the Yukon River…
A photo of a little hook and line salmon troller on an article about how heinous Trawlers are is criminal. And the caption? That’s the ocean, not a lake, and I don’t see any sails, do you? Spreading around an article like this with that cover photo negates the content, is crap for Alaska fisherman and Alaskans in general and is frankly embarrassing. Do better.
Hello Caroline, thank you for commenting! Captain Bayes and I worked hard on getting this piece published. We definitely do not want the image to detract from the content. My apologies. I have replaced the photo with one featuring real trawlers in Alaska. Thank you for your readership and feedback!
Natalie,
with all do respect,theres only one dragger in the pic of 4 vessels.
The large converted mud boat on the other side of dock.
The three in the foreground are aft house crab boats.
In a previous life,i spent 23 years before the mast on Seattle halibut schooners.So I’m no friend of the trawl fleet, but facts and depiction’s matter.
And in 23 years I never knew an owner operator or skipper for hire who called himself “captain”.
Its the self described blow hardiness among other things that makes the Council tend to ignore the ankle biters.
Just sayin’…
Very good article and I wish it would go mainstream. Don’t forget about the foreign Gil-net fisheries that run five mile Gil nets.
Good point. Doppler radar shows all of the illegal fishing boats traveling into protected waters, like the Galapagos and Alaska is no exeption. The focus should be on expanding the Coast Guard to enforce boundaries and creating super vessels that are armed. Alaska’s fish are feeding the bloated population of China.
Well done! One suggestion: Change the image from a troller to a trawler to eliminate confusion by readers.
Hello Laine, thank you for commenting! My apologies about the image. I have replaced the photo with one featuring real trawlers in Alaska. Thank you for your readership and feedback!
Exactly 1 day after Barack Husain Obama took office most of the lake enhancement projects which were funded mostly by aquaculture associations on federal land were halted. The following years has seen considerable decline in salmon fishery’s. Add the out of state trawl fishery to that and what we have is a mess. It’s all fixable at the moment,
If we kill the oceans, we are done
I’ve been up here since 1980. Every fishery has been decimated, one after another.
Don’t let the environmentalists convince you ‘global warming’ is behind it. That is utter nonsense.
You cannot remove/destroy millions of tons of biomass from an ecosystem, devastate millions of acres of bottom habitat, and expect the ecosystem to churn along as if nothing has happened.
Back in the early 80’s, when public schools were worth what we spend on them, my Marine Tech class at Homer High School had a field trip on a F&G boat doing a bottom survey of Kachemak Bay.
There are horrors in this world that cannot truly be comprehended except by seeing them with your own eyes. What that F&G boat did with their relatively little net was an atrocity and it was done merely for a census.
The real fish boats, dragging real nets… If you want to lay waste to the Bering Sea or any ocean, I can think of no more efficient a way to do so.
It needs to stop, completely, and we need to defend Alaska’s waters from the fishing fleets from other nations doing the same thing or using lights bright enough to be seen from space to disorient fish and bring them to the surface.
Alaska politicians accepting money from corporations looting Alaska’s waters, go and see what it is you’re protecting. It’s an atrocity that cannot be comprehended except by seeing with your own eyes.
The trawlers will takes every last fish, crustacean, sea star, or whatever until all are gone and they won’t give a crap. Start harassing Slurkowski until she resigns.
As an East Side fisherman in Cook Inlet, we know this is part of our problem for the low returning King salmon issue.
Our fishery is completely shut down until the king stocks return to sustainable levels.
We are heartbroken as we are slowly losing our fishery, our businesses, and our families who return every season.
Our fishery targets Red salmon. Last season over 4 million reds escaped into the Kenai River. The sustainable goal of 1.2 million was exceeded and by state constitution we should be allowed to harvest the excess. But due to the lack of sustainable Kings, we were shut down for several years and are now restricted to commercial fish with dip nets.
Wrap your head around that! Commercial fish with dip nets!
We need to set limits on the money politicians get… how does 5 thousand per candidate sound?
Didn’t you guys refuse to use new tech nets that allow kings to swim under them? Medred reported this a few months ago. A few tried the new nets but the majority of the community refused to change and as a result are now shut down. Cheers –
agimarc – Are you referring to the use of beach seines that allow unwanted Kings to be released unharmed? That is NOT new tech. In fact, it is one of the oldest methods of harvesting salmon in Alaska! It was recently tried in the Inlet on a limited experimental basis to reduce King mortality while still allowing a commercially viable harvest of the more plentiful sockeye salmon. From what I’ve heard it was a success and may become the solution the East Side setnetters’ so desperately need in order to feed their families!
The more nets you get out of the water, the less damage you do to the ecosystem, bottom, and biomass in the North Pacific. Fish farming for finfish is coming sooner rather than later. It is a solution rather than a problem. 35 years of protectionism as only protected commfish from being able to compete in a global marketplace for salmon. Fish farming was responsible for around 10% of all salmon caught in 1991 when Alaska passed the ban. It is now over 85% and climbing. There is a solution out there guys. Time to consider it. Cheers –
I remember back in the 70’s I worked for a cannery in Kodiak..After the fishing areas closed due to quotas met with Alaskan fisheries, the Japanese or Russians would come in and clean up what the American’s weren’t allowed to fish and “rake” the sea floor clean with with lugg chains after they were done fishing.