COMMENTARY: Seattle Fishing Industry: From Traps to Trawlers

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Category: News

Created on Monday, 23 December 2024 15:25

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By LAINE WELCH
Alaska Beacon
    An advertiser-sponsored article in the Seattle Times gushed “Wild Alaska pollock’s fishing fleet is based right here in Seattle although all of the fish are caught in U.S. waters off of the coast of Alaska. This fishery benefits the economic growth of the entire region, including the North Pacific Fishing Fleet.”
    That includes 300 commercial fishing vessels of which 226 fish in Alaska.
    Many of the boats are huge catcher-processors — factory trawlers — that target pollock, cod, rockfish, flounders and other “groundfish” species. Alaska pollock alone is a 3 billion-pound fishery worth roughly $2 billion. And every year, the Seattle trawlers take home up to 76% of the value of ALL groundfish caught in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska.
    It’s not a new scenario.
    Starting in 1885 and until Alaska became a state in 1959, Seattle companies used big traps to catch salmon throughout the territory. 
    “In an economic model likened to colonialism, the largest slice of the profit pie went south, to cannery owners in the lower 48,” wrote James Mackovjak in “Alaska Salmon Traps.” 
    “The exclusion of local fishermen enraged Alaskans as much as the waste of the captured fish, which the cannery owners decided not to can if they didn’t need to,” wrote David Policansky. 
    William Selzer, the first congressman to visit Alaska in 1893, called the traps “the most murderous and iniquitous instrumentalities that were ever devised by the human brain to destroy natural life.” Salmon production peaked in 1936 at 130 million fish. Then came a steady decline until the 1950s when the salmon runs were declared a disaster. Lax federal management and lack of basic research were cited as factors.
History repeats.
    As it was with salmon, Alaska’s federally managed fisheries are ruled by “powerful fishing interests from down south who were able to influence regulations, and they made sure they did not interfere too seriously with their ability to catch as many fish as they wanted,” wrote Mackovjak. 
    Since the 1980s, those influencers comprise the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, a federal advisory body that is top-heavy with trawl interests and “has a track record of finding ways not to take meaningful action that could affect their profits,” says Tim Bristol of SalmonState.
    As the profits from Alaska’s largest fisheries head south, there’s little sense of partnership when it comes to ecosystem restraints and protections. That falls mostly to all other commercial, sport and subsistence users. 
Some examples?
    Along with the profits, Seattle’s “iniquitous instrumentalities” also take the most bycatch, which they are required by law to throw overboard. From 2011-2021, that topped 1 billion pounds. 
    Since 2020, Western Alaska Natives have been banned from catching salmon for subsistence while pollock trawlers take hundreds of thousands as bycatch. The NPFMC has proposed a bycatch cap on chum salmon. The pollock trawlers say “we will not accept it. ”
    When Bering Sea crabbers petitioned the NPFMC for a six-month closure on trawling during the mating/molting season, as they do in Canada, it was denied because it “did not meet the requirements for emergency rulemaking,”
    Trawlers can take and dump more Bering Sea crab as bycatch than the crab fleet is allowed to catch. 
    The Pacific halibut stock is at the lowest level since the 1970s. A new rule puts a limit on trawl halibut bycatch by a fleet of 19 Seattle bottom trawlers whose limits are more than halibut fishermen are allowed to catch in nearly every fishing region.The fleet immediately sued NOAA for more bycatch.  They lost.
    The NPFMC continues to quibble about the “definition” of pelagic — mid-water — fishing nets after findings in 2022 revealed that catcher processors using “mid-water” gear averaged 85% on the bottom.
    In 2023, Seattle trawlers caught 10 killer whales in their massive nets. Nine died. 
    Alaska’s seafood industry has been hit recently with unprecedented changes that include eco-effects from an off-kilter climate. Losses between 2022 and 2023 are estimated at $1.8 billion to the Alaska economy, says a NOAA report.
    Those impacts extend to Seattle. The report shows that total output in “non-Alaska” regions decreased by $680 million and employment declined by 3,770 jobs.
    History repeats.
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Laine Welch covered news of Alaska’s seafood industry for print and broadcast for over 30 years from Kodiak. She retired in 2022. Visit her blog at www.alaskafish.news.

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