Science of Salmon.org
Dominic Bova and Paul Drennen
Dec 17, 2025
Recent anti-trawl op-eds in the ADN used half-truths to mislead Alaskans and influence public opinion about this critical Alaskan fishery. The misinformation and misrepresentation only serve to delay action that can meaningfully protect salmon.
Recent anti-trawl op-eds in the ADN used half-truths to mislead Alaskans and influence public opinion about this critical Alaskan fishery. The misinformation and misrepresentation only serve to delay action that can meaningfully protect salmon.
It would be an easy policy solution if the trawl fleet were to blame for Western Alaska’s salmon declines. The numbers tell a very different story, however. Pollock fishery bycatch represents only a tiny fraction of the chinook and chum salmon runs. We know that every fish counts. But if you want to place blame for declining runs on the pollock fishery, the numbers just don’t add up.
The impact rate of the pollock fishery on coastal Western Alaska chinook is 1.9% and 0.6% for the Upper Yukon stock. That means if the bycatch did not exist, the run of coastal Western Alaska stocks would only be 1.9% higher, and Upper Yukon would be an undetectable 0.6% higher.
In 2023, the year with the most complete data for all fisheries, the pollock fishery caught 5,627 Western Alaska chinook, and 35 upper Yukon chinook. That’s right, 35 upper Yukon chinook. In the same year, there were 41,365 chinook harvested in subsistence fisheries on the Yukon/Kuskokwim and nearly 10,000 caught in the sport fisheries.
2023 data shows that the pollock fishery caught 11,786 Western Alaska chum while 56,485 chum were harvested in subsistence fisheries on the Yukon/Kuskokwim rivers. Overall, the pollock bycatch of Western Alaskan chum is 1% of the total returns to the Yukon/Kuskokwim Rivers.