Big fight looms at Board of Fish meeting over Prince William Sound trawl bycatch

For years, conservationists, tribes and fishermen have feuded over bycatch of salmon in the huge pollock harvest in the remote Bering Sea off Alaska.

Now, a new bycatch fight has erupted over a much smaller pollock fishery not far from urban Alaska, in the waters of Prince William Sound, east of Anchorage.

This week, the state Board of Fisheries is considering four proposals by a local tribal government and an Alaska sportsmen’s group that could place sharp restrictions on, or even close down, Prince Williams Sound’s annual pollock trawl harvest.

Supporters of the proposals cite state data that show the roughly 15 participating boats, most of which come from Kodiak Island, unintentionally scoop up some 900 king salmon and 900 rockfish each year in their wide-mouth trawl nets. And they say that subsistence harvests of those fish need protection.

Only a few dozen people still live in the Prince William Sound village of Chenega, whose tribal government submitted three of the proposals, according to Boyd Selanoff, a member of the tribal council. Roughly 50% of Chenega households harvest salmon and 90% eat it, according to state subsistence surveys, and the community has no grocery store, meaning that residents have nowhere to shop to replace subsistence species, he added.

“The language is disappearing. The culture is disappearing, the subsistence traditions and education are disappearing,” Selanoff said in a phone interview. “One of the main sources of life in Prince William Sound — for all of us, not just Chenega — is a healthy fish stock.”

Chenega’s proposals, along with a separate proposal from the Alaska Outdoor Council to bar king salmon trawl bycatch in the Sound, have drawn an array of allies. They include conservation group SalmonState, tourism businesses, an Anchorage sporting goods store and dozens of members of the public.

But they face opposition from the Dunleavy administration, whose Department of Fish and Game says it has the legal tools to manage the pollock harvest sustainably.

Trawl fishermen and their representatives also object, citing the income they’d lose at a time when the industry is already struggling and state data shows far more rockfish are accidentally harvested by hook-and-line commercial fishermen targeting halibut.

They also cite research indicating that pollock can feed on juvenile salmon as evidence that limiting trawl harvests could backfire — by allowing pollock populations to grow.

“The people down in Chenega, I can understand where they’re coming from. I can understand the emotion of it all — they’re living in an isolated community, and you have all these boats coming into there,” said Paddy O’Donnell, board president of the Alaska Whitefish Trawlers Association and skipper of the Kodiak-based F/V Caravelle. But, he added: “It’s not going to do anything for those communities. It’s just a feel-good measure.”

At stake in the debate is a yearly pollock harvest worth a total of roughly $1 million, according to the fish and game department.

That’s not especially large for the overall trawl industry — the Bering Sea pollock fishery is some 400 times larger, by weight. But O’Donnell and other trawlers say that the Prince William Sound harvest is an important one for the Kodiak fleet because it comes at the beginning of the season, after trawl businesses have made substantial investments in yearly startup costs without a chance to recoup them.

Early in the Prince William Sound fishery’s history, vessels would deliver their catch to be processed locally, in the town of Cordova, O’Donnell said. Fishermen would still be happy to sell their pollock to a local processor, he added, but because none are currently buying, it’s hauled back to Kodiak and sold to processing plants there.

Of the four proposals targeting the fishery, one of them, from Chenega’s tribal government, would close it altogether. Another Chenega proposal would require the trawlers to have electronic cameras or human observers monitoring their catch, to make sure that no bycatch is thrown overboard but is instead brought back to a processing plant to be counted.

“If there’s nothing to hide, like they say, why won’t you put an observer on your boat?” Selanoff said. “I’m a fisherman, and we all lie to each other.”

A third Chenega proposal would limit overall bycatch to a specific number of pounds to be set by the fish and game department, rather than limiting it to a percentage of the overall pollock harvest.

The last proposal, from the Alaska Outdoor Council, would allow pollock fishing in Prince William Sound only if king salmon bycatch is completely eliminated and if trawlers can ensure their fishing gear doesn’t touch the sea floor.

Sea floor contact has become a major subject of controversy in the Bering Sea bycatch debate, as managers have acknowledged recently that “midwater” trawl gear there can sometimes be dragged along the ocean bottom — potentially crushing species like crab or harming important habitat.

The trawlers say that this practice does not happen in Prince William Sound, because the fishing grounds there are much rockier than the Bering Sea’s and would risk damage or loss to their trawl gear, which can cost $200,000 or more.

They also say that throwing rockfish bycatch overboard to avoid being counted by regulators would be impractical — it would take too long to find them among pollock packed in their big trawl nets, and because rockfish float, they would be easily detected, said O’Donnell, the skipper.

“Any plane flying over or anyone in a boat transiting along there’s going to see all these rockfish floating,” he said. “That has never happened.”

Selanoff said that people have, in fact, witnessed “little floating red dots all over Prince William Sound.”

Statewide, managers say that there’s a “growing level of concern” about rockfish, which they describe as “vulnerable to overharvest” and as requiring long recovery periods.

Advocates on both sides of the debate have helped fill the Board of Fish’s pre-meeting materials with more than 1,000 pages of testimony.

The board’s meeting began Tuesday in Cordova. It is scheduled to run through Dec. 16.

Nathaniel Herz is an Anchorage-based reporter. Subscribe to his newsletter, Northern Journal, at northernjournal.com. Reach him at natherz@gmail.com.