October 2026 | Alaska Pollock Fishery Alliance
This letter responds to the Associated Press article “The Fish Behind America’s Fish Sticks Is Fueling a Fight Over Trawling in Alaska” by Annika Hammerschlag, published October 9, 2026. The article omits or misrepresents federal science on the eastern Bering Sea Alaska pollock fishery in seven areas: the impact of salmon bycatch on western Alaska salmon returns, the origin and scale of salmon bycatch, the fishery’s environmental performance, crab and halibut bycatch, total trawl bycatch data, seafloor habitat impacts and a photo caption of the American Empress II.
1. The impact of the Alaska pollock fishery on western Alaska salmon returns and subsistence fishing opportunities.
Federal science from NOAA Fisheries’ Alaska Fisheries Science Center estimates that Alaska pollock fishery bycatch has reduced coastal western Alaska Chinook salmon returns by an average of 1.9% since 2011, and chum salmon returns by an average of 1.75%. The primary frame of this reporting project is the nexus between the Alaska pollock fishery and western Alaska salmon declines. It is an extraordinary omission for your reporting to make no reference to this science.
Every single salmon encountered as bycatch by an eastern Bering Sea Alaska pollock fishing vessel is counted by an independent monitor. NOAA Fisheries scientists perform genetic testing on every 10th Chinook salmon and every 30th chum salmon encountered. This enables the Alaska Fisheries Science Center to perform Adult Equivalent (AEQ) modeling, which produces a very specific estimate of the impact Alaska pollock fishery bycatch has on run strength. Since 2011, the estimated impact rate for Chinook returns has averaged 1.9% for the combined coastal western Alaska stocks and 0.6% for the Upper Yukon River stock. The estimated impact on chum returns has averaged 1.75% for the combined coastal western Alaska stocks and 1% for the Middle/Upper Yukon River stock.
In April 2026, new peer-reviewed science from NOAA Fisheries was published in the journal Ecological Applications, specifically in relation to Yukon River Chinook salmon. It confirmed previous research that pointed to periods of low juvenile (in-river) recruitment as the primary driver of declines. It also identified a recent increase in post-juvenile natural mortality due to an acute Bering Sea marine heatwave between 2016 and 2020. It analyzed and specifically rejected theories that Alaska pollock fishery bycatch was having significant impacts (including cumulative impacts) on Yukon Chinook returns.
We acknowledge that your reporting references climate change as “the primary cause” of Yukon salmon declines. In the absence of sharing the AEQ science with readers, however, the strong implication throughout the reporting is that bycatch is a very significant secondary cause.
For example, in the reporting’s lead video, Janet Woods is prominently featured, stating: “The industry is taking away again part of our life, part of our culture … people outside don’t understand what it’s doing to the Alaska Native people.” This is the only portion of the video that offers any perspective on whether Alaska pollock fishery bycatch is causing western Alaska salmon declines, and it is left uncontested. Nowhere in the video is any science relating to the actual causes of salmon declines referenced. Similarly, throughout the concluding paragraphs of the article, the fishing opportunities of pollock harvesters are juxtaposed with the lack of fishing opportunities for Yukon communities, strongly implying a causal link. The science is very clear that eliminating the pollock fishery would not increase subsistence fishing opportunities. It would not enable any reconsideration of the Yukon moratorium. The entire framing of the reporting is deceptive.
The AEQ science is inconvenient for activist opponents of the Alaska pollock fishery. They avoid referencing the AEQ data, preferring an emotional narrative that strongly implies pollock fishery bycatch is causing declines and limiting subsistence fishing opportunities. Your reporting adopts that precise playbook.
2. The origin of salmon bycaught in the pollock fishery and the scale of western Alaska salmon bycatch.
NOAA Fisheries’ salmon genetic stock identification program also provides very detailed information about the origin of salmon encountered as bycatch by Alaska pollock fishing vessels. While your reporting discusses this science, the overall presentation of the data is deeply flawed.
In the fifth paragraph of the article, total Chinook and chum annual average bycatch numbers (about 18,000 Chinook and 288,000 other salmon per year) are presented without any context whatsoever. Every year, more than five billion hatchery salmon are released into the North Pacific Ocean, according to the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission (NPAFC). Those hatchery salmon are a substantial majority of the Alaska pollock fishery’s salmon bycatch. Incidental catch of these hatchery salmon by our vessels presents no conservation concern. Featuring these totals in isolation misleads rather than informs your readers. Unsurprisingly, in social media posts targeting McDonald’s since your article was published, these are the numbers that are highlighted.
The fact that not all salmon referenced in paragraph five come from western Alaska river systems is finally shared with readers in the article’s twenty-fifth paragraph. Even then, however, the data is presented in a highly misleading way. The only western Alaska chum bycatch total shared with readers is 51,000, the 2021 total. That contrasts with the most recent two years, when 4,205 (2024) and 6,764 (2025) western Alaska chum salmon were encountered by the eastern Bering Sea pollock fleet – numbers not referenced in your reporting. We were pleased to facilitate access to the Bristol Bay Science and Research Institute (BBSRI) genetics lab and share information about recent advancements in efforts to avoid western Alaska chum salmon specifically. None of this progress was included in your reporting.
Further, readers are given no relevant context about comparative fishing mortality. In its absence, the public are invited to conclude that bycatch by the pollock fishery represents a dominant source of salmon mortality. In reality, it’s a modest component of overall fishing pressure. In 2024 (the last year for which data from all sectors has been released), commercial salmon fishermen in Alaska harvested an estimated 244,000 Chinook, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G). Additional significant sources of fishery-related Chinook mortality were sports fishermen (101,277) and subsistence users (59,807). Bycatch in the eastern Bering Sea pollock fishery was 8,046 Chinook. In the case of chum, directed commercial salmon fisheries harvested an estimated 19.3M chum salmon, while total chum bycatch in the Alaska pollock fishery was 32,081 fish. This data substantially overstates the comparative contribution of Alaska pollock fishery bycatch to overall western Alaska salmon mortality – first, because commercial, recreational and subsistence salmon fisheries are unobserved, resulting in underestimates; and second, because in contrast with marine harvests, in-river harvests result exclusively in the mortality of Alaska salmon, not foreign hatchery salmon.
Finally, it is remarkable that detailed reporting focused on Yukon Chinook declines and the Alaska pollock fishery would not reference total mortality estimates from government scientists. The 2024-25 Chinook genetics data released in June estimates that an annual average of 435 Yukon Alaska Chinook and 331 Yukon Canada Chinook were encountered by the Alaska pollock fishery – not all of which would have otherwise survived the marine stage of their lifecycle to return to the Yukon River. Failing to include that data in your reporting invites readers to assume that encounters were vastly higher.
3. The comparative strength of the Alaska pollock fishery’s environmental performance.
The article quotes industry representatives asserting that the Alaska pollock fishery is well-managed. Entirely absent from the article, however, is any attempt to provide an objective assessment of the fishery’s comparative environmental performance. Against any reasonable metric, seafood from the eastern Bering Sea Alaska pollock fishery has one of the lowest environmental footprints of any animal protein on Earth. This is critical information and context not provided to your readers.
First, the fishery’s performance compared to other wild-capture fisheries deserves attention. The United Nations Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries is the international community’s most important benchmark for the core tenets of effective fishery management. Third-party certification schemes – most prominently the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) – assess fisheries against criteria that mirror the UN Code. The eastern Bering Sea pollock fishery has been certified by the MSC since 2005, repeatedly earning some of the highest assessment scores of any fishery in the program. On key metrics including precautionary harvest strategy, bycatch avoidance, monitoring, enforcement and habitat protection, very few fisheries on Earth could make a claim to match the eastern Bering Sea pollock fishery. Your reporting provides none of this context.
Your treatment of the fishery’s overall bycatch performance provides a deeply concerning example of where you fail your readers. Very few people have any context to assess whether 2% harvest of non-target species is an acceptable bycatch rate. NOAA describes the Alaska pollock fishery as “one of the cleanest in terms of incidental catch of other species”. This is objectively true, whether the comparison is with other fisheries in the Alaska Region, in the United States, or globally. Your reporting quotes the executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association describing our bycatch level as “extremely frustrating”. If you had reviewed the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) bycatch report directly hyperlinked in your article, you would have seen that the Gulf of Alaska longline fleet she represents has a bycatch rate of 41% -- approximately 20 times higher than the eastern Bering Sea pollock fleet she is criticizing. How could the Associated Press possibly publish reporting so deceptive?
Second, the choice of an environmental reporter not to introduce readers to the tradeoffs of different forms of food production is remarkable. The eastern Bering Sea pollock fishery delivers more than three billion nutritious and affordable animal protein meals to people globally every year. A 2026 life cycle assessment published by the Association of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (GAPP) found Alaska pollock to have a carbon footprint that’s a small fraction of any other major animal protein. Its ecosystem impacts are tiny compared to aquaculture or terrestrial animal food production. Eliminating the fishery would require alternative, more environmentally intensive food production to take its place. The kind of blinkered NIMBY-ism that vilifies a regional fishery without grappling with these tradeoffs is beneath the Associated Press.
4. The impact of the Alaska pollock fishery on crab and halibut abundance and fishing opportunities.
A significant flaw in the reporting is the sudden, unexplained mid-article shift from a focus on the Alaska pollock fishery to the presentation of aggregated data including other, entirely unrelated fisheries. This operates to mislead even the most careful readers.
The Alaska Region includes numerous federal fisheries. The focus of your reporting is the Alaska pollock fishery, which is prosecuted using pelagic trawl gear. Entirely unrelated flatfish and Atka mackerel fisheries are prosecuted by an entirely different fleet of vessels, owned by different companies, using a different type of gear (bottom trawl). After 30 paragraphs focused on the Alaska pollock fishery, suddenly the 31st paragraph notes that commercial halibut and crab fishermen have faced “shrinking catch limits and closures as stocks decline, while groundfish trawlers continue to catch both species as bycatch”. Yet neither species is encountered in meaningful numbers by Alaska pollock fishing vessels. For example, bycatch of Bristol Bay red king crab since 2013 has averaged 13 animals per year by pelagic trawl gear (compared with 111,292 animals per year caught as bycatch by pot gear, for example). In the case of halibut, just 0.52% of Alaska Region 2025 fishery-related mortality occurred in the Alaska pollock fishery.
What explains this disconnect? Your reporting suddenly shifts the frame from pollock to “groundfish”, inexplicably injecting data – and grievances – relating to non-pollock fisheries. It’s an extraordinary choice for a reporter to make. It’s as if an investigative piece on soy farming suddenly presented data for soy and corn farms combined, without meaningfully alerting the reader to their inclusion. The only way to understand this aggregation is as a campaign tactic that anti-fishing activists have relentlessly employed. On what conceivable basis could the Associated Press have chosen to follow their lead? Readers are left with the impression that concerns regarding Alaska pollock fishery bycatch extend beyond salmon to significant volumes of halibut and crab. Strongly implied is a link between the pollock fishery and halibut and crab closures and stock declines. No such link exists.
5. The presentation of total Alaska trawl bycatch data, including the “96 million pounds” figure.[BW4]
The indefensible choice to aggregate pollock fishery bycatch data with the bycatch data of entirely different fisheries continues in the following (32nd) paragraph. Readers are informed that Alaska trawl fisheries discarded some 96 million pounds (44,000 metric tons) of bycatch in 2025,, “roughly equivalent to 100 fully loaded Boeing 747-8s”.
First, this claim continues the deception of the preceding paragraph. In the absence of any explanation that non-pollock fisheries are suddenly being discussed, readers will assume that the bycatch data presented for these “trawl fisheries” relate to the pollock fishery that has been the focus of the article’s first 30 paragraphs.
Second, insufficient information and context is provided for the scale of the fishery and its bycatch. How can readers judge whether a certain number of “loaded Boeing 747-8s” is a reasonable amount of bycatch in the course of producing billions of meals? The framing is designed to provoke rather than inform readers.
Third, no information is provided about the composition of pollock fishery bycatch. Previous references to salmon, crab and halibut invite readers to imagine “100 Boeing 747-8s” filled with these species. In reality, approximately half of pollock fishery bycatch were encounters with other managed species, such as Pacific cod, flatfish and Pacific ocean perch. Most of the rest were non-managed species, overwhelmingly jellyfish and squid. Of the remaining Prohibited Species Catch (PSC) portion, the majority was herring. That leaves salmon (mostly foreign hatchery salmon), halibut and crab bycatch – not enough to fill two Boeing 747-8s, in the course of producing more than three billion seafood meals.
Fourth, the focus on volume is at the expense of information about sustainability. Bycatch in U.S. North Pacific federal fisheries is managed through the most rigorous, science-based process of any fisheries globally. A highly precautionary cap is applied to all managed species, and bycatch of those species across all fisheries must remain under that cap. Similarly, there is no conservation concern regarding unmanaged species. The same is true for herring: only a very small (single-digit) percentage of the Bering Sea biomass is harvested each year.
Only anti-fishery activists aggregate unrelated fishery bycatch data, obscure the species that actually constitute bycatch in the fishery, use emotive metaphors like Boeing aircraft to mislead readers about bycatch, and fail to share science and management information that ensures that the harvest of both target and non-target species are sustainable. Why is the Associated Press adopting their playbook?
6. Allegations regarding pollock gear impacts on benthic (seafloor) habitat.
The best marine benthic habitat science in the world is focused on the U.S. North Pacific. The Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) mandate periodic review of fishery impacts on important benthic habitat. For decades, the impacts of Alaska pollock fishing gear on the predominantly sandy and muddy seafloor where we fish have been analyzed by scientists and the Council. Those impacts have repeatedly been judged by experts to be temporary and minimal. NOAA’s Fishing Effects Model, as reported in the agency’s 2022 Evaluation of Fishing Effects on Essential Fish Habitat, estimates that 94.6% of the eastern Bering Sea continental shelf (<1,000 meters) is undisturbed by fishing activity by any gear type – a remarkable metric for a region that produces 60% of U.S. wild-capture seafood. NOAA Fisheries describes the pelagic trawl gear used in the Alaska pollock fishery as having “minimal impact on habitat.”
None of those experts or findings appear in your reporting. Rather, two anti-pollock fishery activists are quoted. One asserts that pollock fishing causes habitat damage that is “really insidious and long lasting” – a claim directly contradicted by the “temporary and minimal” findings recognized as the best available science by the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. The second person quoted is an Oceana campaign director, who claims that pollock nets are “dragging … habitat conservation areas” closed to bottom trawling, defeating their purpose”. Yet the only place in the eastern Bering Sea where substantial pollock fishing occurs in an area closed to bottom trawl gear is the Red King Crab Savings Area. And that area was closed to bottom trawling not to achieve benthic habitat conservation objectives but rather to minimize bycatch and thus conserve the crab biomass that was previously concentrated in this area. The area was not closed to conserve benthic habitat. Numerous other areas of the eastern Bering Sea closed for this purpose do indeed preclude pelagic trawl gear.
Does it meet Associated Press standards to report on a topic as critical as benthic habitat impacts by quoting two activist voices but no experts? And to leave readers with conclusions about benthic habitat damage that are directly contradicted by the facts?
7. The American Empress II photo caption.
Your article features a photo of the American Empress II. The caption refers to it as a “trawler that fishes in Alaska’s Bering Sea”. That is false. Your reporter was told that American Empress II only participates the Pacific hake (whiting) fishery, which occurs off the U.S. West Coast. The vessel’s exclusive participation in the hake fishery is also shared with the public on the American Seafoods website. We are perplexed that a photo of this vessel was nonetheless included in your reporting with an erroneous caption.