Salmon Bycatch
Dear Editor: As the members of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council prepare for their upcoming meeting in Sitka from June 6 to June 14, Tribal fishermen across Western and Interior Alaska have one question on our minds: When will the council act to end the waste of salmon bycatch?
Early summer is normally a joyful time of year across our region, full of preparations for fishing and the anticipation of fresh salmon. This year, however, we face the grim prospects of yet another season without the salmon which are the lifeblood of our Yup’ik, Cup’ik, Athabascan, and Inupiaq people in rural Western and Interior Alaska.
Subsistence salmon fishing on the lower Yukon has already been closed, even as the first fish are barely making their way upriver. Fishermen on the Kuskokwim are again facing severe restrictions on subsistence fishing. The multi-decadal salmon crisis in the Norton Sound region continues with significant impacts on the region’s communities.
Fishing restrictions and rapid declines of Chinook and chum salmon populations pose a threat to food and cultural security for over 100 Tribes in the region with the state’s highest subsistence dependence. Without these fish, our meals are incomplete, our physical and mental health suffers, and our families and communities are negatively impacted. Without salmon, the wellness, kinship relationships, inter-generational learning, cultural enrichment, and nutritional intake of our Tribes are significantly affected.
Though threatened, our people have not been silent.
For decades, we have been speaking about these declines – and the role that salmon bycatch by the commercial trawl industry has in these declines. Yukon and Kuskokwim fishermen recall testifying about chum salmon intercept since the 1980s. Fishermen from Nome have been advocating for an end to bycatch and a reorganization of the Council process for the better part of two decades. This Council should recall our testimonies at their October 2021 meeting, when many of smokehouses on the Yukon stood empty for the first time in our memory.
Despite our sustained efforts to end bycatch, factory trawlers in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands are allowed to catch the same Chinook and chum salmon that are bound for our rivers as bycatch, or unintended prohibited species catch, as they trawl for pollock. Already in 2022, the pollock fleet has reported killing over 5,184 Chinook salmon as bycatch; in 2021 they caught over 15,000 Chinook salmon as bycatch. While chum salmon struggle in-river, in 2021 the pollock fleet reported over 550,000 chum salmon as bycatch. While not all of these fish are bound for our rivers, many are, and instead of returning home to their natal rivers and nourishing our Tribes, cultures, and families, these fish are killed and discarded at great cost to our people and the ecosystem.
We have been calling for reductions in salmon bycatch for years. Yet under the current rules set by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA Fisheries, the pollock fleet is legally allowed to catch up to 45,000 Chinook salmon and – even more troubling – an unlimited amount of chum salmon in 2022.
Again, we ask the Council members: Why are we – the first people of these lands and waters who depend on these fish for our physical, spiritual, and cultural survival – restricted from taking a single salmon, while factory trawlers are allowed to kill tens of thousands? Federal management bodies are obligated to manage fisheries and the continued existence of our salmon – when will you act? How much longer will you wait?
Tribes and rural communities have made tremendous sacrifices to protect and restore our once abundant salmon runs by forgoing our subsistence and commercial harvests, engaging in research and monitoring, and pushing for management changes amid this salmon collapse. We can all agree that the only truly acceptable amount of bycatch is zero, and we must be continually striving towards this goal. We call on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, Governor Dunleavy, and ADF&G Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang to take every possible action to reduce bycatch significantly when they meet in Sitka in June by lowering the Chinook salmon cap and establishing a hard cap for chum salmon.
Restricting the way of life for subsistence users is not working; runs will not improve, and escapement goals will not be met, until we all share the burden of conservation.
We also encourage the Council and its staff to collaborate with Tribes on identifying research priorities and management actions. We want to be included in researching, managing, and monitoring the fish and ecosystems we depend on. Our communities are at the forefront of the many changes occurring across the Arctic, including species declines and climate change. Through a co-productive approach, our Traditional and Indigenous Knowledge – a science in and of itself – can enhance our collective efforts and equitably bring together Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and Western science.
Our people are ready for action. We are ready for the waste and injustice of salmon bycatch to end. We are ready to return to our fish camps, nets and uluaqs in hand, our children by our sides, learning and practicing our traditional ways of life.
Melanie Bahnke, President,
Kawerak Inc.;
Vivian Korthuis,
Chief Executive Officer,
Association of Village
Council Presidents;
Brian Ridley, Chief/Chairman, Tanana Chiefs Conference;
Fred Phillip, Chair,
Bering Sea Elders Group;
Kevin Whitworth,
Interim Executive Director,
Kuskokwim River
Inter-Tribal Fish Commission;
Brooke Woods, Chairwoman,
Yukon River Inter-Tribal
Fish Commission
Blue Lake Dam Tour
Dear Editor: Recently we, a group of Sitka High School students, received a tour of the Blue Lake Dam powerhouse and an overview of our electric grid. We would like to thank the City of Sitka electric department for the tour and the Sitka Conservation Society for helping facilitate the tour.
Our city’s electric generation is such a vital part of the comfort and wellbeing of our community, and yet there is so much that we did not know about Sitka’s system until the tour. There are several of us who attended the tour who are thinking about going into the field of electricity generation, and seeing the workings of the powerhouse definitely sparked our interest. This was a great way to connect Sitka’s teens with these trades and professions and we are glad that CBS is invested in the next generation.
Even though many of us knew generally how our electricity was generated, seeing it all in action, in person, made us better understand how lucky we are to have clean, renewable electricity generated locally and managed by an amazing electric department. It is exciting for us to see that there are people in charge who are taking the lead on renewable energy. Just last week, the Sitka Assembly passed a resolution to decarbonize city government operations by 2030 by transitioning the city fleet and buildings to electric power.
It is good to know that our city local utility and organizations like the Sitka Conservation Society are looking ahead and prepared for the future!
Sitka High School students
Asa Dow, Razie Guillory,
Darby Osborne, Jamison Dunn, Sergio Carlos, Addie Poulson,
Annan Weiland, Theo Everson, Dylan Crenna
