The North Pacific Fishery Management Council may be just days away from a decision that could limit the amount of chum salmon that the Bering Sea trawl fleet is allowed to scoop up as bycatch. The move comes after years of calls for change from tribes that say they bear the brunt of conservation in the face of sustained salmon crashes.
The council will weigh five options for dealing with chum salmon bycatch at its meeting in Anchorage this week.
Tribal nonprofits and advocacy groups that represent a vast swath of Western Alaska and western Interior communities have mostly aligned around a combination of restrictions – a hard cap on all chum bycatch, a more severe hard cap where Western Alaska chum are most prevalent, and strengthening the incentive-based regulations already used by the pollock fleet.
During advisory panel testimony on Feb. 3 before the main council meeting, Caitlin Yeager with the At-Sea Processor's Association – a trade group representing factory trawlers in the pollock fleet – said that putting a cap on chum bycatch across the entire fishery could be catastrophic.
"These hard caps are indiscriminate, triggering full shutdowns even when vessels are operating far outside of the times and areas where Western Alaska chum are at risk," Yeager said.
The pollock industry says severe chum restrictions would mean hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. Leaders in the pollock-dependent community of Unalaska also say a hard cap on chum bycatch would likely shut down the fishery early and bring serious economic consequences.
Some Western Alaska communities are also heavily invested in the pollock industry through a long-running federal Community Development Quota program, which channels profits into economic growth and education.
The volume of chum bycatch recorded in the pollock fishery has dropped significantly in recent years, from a high of more than half a million fish in 2021 to just over 35,000 in 2024. But that number bumped up to a little more than 150,000 fish in 2025.
Federal fisheries managers contend that, on average, roughly 17% of those chums over the last decade were bound for Western Alaska rivers.
Yeager advocated for codifying current voluntary rules that she said that the pollock fleet has already implemented. And she said the costs of more severe restrictions could outweigh the benefits for Western Alaska chum.
"If you or the council select a hard cap approach, it must be transparent about the trade-offs involved and the limited biological effect, benefit that they are expected to provide," Yeager said.
Residents are looking for any means to put salmon in their smokehouses
Tribal members from the state's hardest-hit waterways, like Charlie Wright Sr. from the upper Yukon River, told the panel that every salmon counts.
"I'd just like to see some fish get back on the spawning ground so future generations can enjoy it. I ain't trying to make money off of it. I just want to eat," Wright said.
Wright is Athabascan and chairs the fish commission that advocates for dozens of Yukon River tribes that are now entering their seventh year of total salmon fishing closures.
"A lot of villages that don't have a store, they don't have boats and motors, there's no economy. They're kind of pushed right back against the wall with no other means," Wright said.
Krystal Lapp, a policy analyst with the Tanana Chiefs Conference, said salmon closures have caused measurable harm in the Yukon River communities her tribal consortium represents. She testified not only about the loss of subsistence, but also the loss of the river's commercial salmon fishery.
"Over the last six years, closures have cost our region an estimated $27 million in direct income," Lapp said.
On the Kuskokwim River, where commercial fishing has also collapsed, there are still opportunities to harvest chinook and chum. But Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission Chair Martin Andrew testified that severe restrictions have taken a toll.
"There's no more commercial fishing income. We struggle to put food away for the winter and have enough to share in our limited subsistence opportunities. Our physical, mental, and spiritual health is in crisis," Andrew said.
Any decision by the council to tighten bycatch restrictions wouldn't likely go into place for at least a year, and the effects would take years to assess. But residents from communities along the Kuskokwim, in the Norton Sound region, and along the Yukon River are looking for any means of putting salmon in their smokehouses, and they say the clock is ticking.
The main council will begin taking up the potential final action on chum bycatch beginning Feb. 5 at the Egan Center in Anchorage. To sign up to testify remotely or in-person, visit the council's website here.
Proposed changes to the state-managed Area M fishery on the Alaska Peninsula will take place during the Alaska Board of Fisheries meeting, from Feb. 18 to Feb. 24. Debate over the impacts of chum bycatch in that fishery flared in 2021. That year, record low chum returns and fishing closures on the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers corresponded to record high chum catches in Area M.
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