Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democratic challenger Mary Peltola vied to outdo each other as champions of Alaska fishermen at the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce fishery debate Saturday.
The debate sponsors included major players in the pollock industry, but that didn’t stop both candidates from vowing to crack down on the trawlers’ bycatch of salmon and other species.
Sullivan leaned into his record.
“My bill for establishment of the Seafood Policy Office is in the Farm Bill right now. That helps with regard to enabling fishermen to have access to all the programs that farmers have,” he said. “And finally, getting my bycatch bill over the goal line next week in the Commerce Committee.”
(Sullivan’s Bycatch Reduction Act, filed in June, is scheduled for a vote in the Commerce Committee on Wednesday. He is the sole sponsor.)
Sullivan repeatedly pointed to foreign fleets as an adversary he’s tackled, and said he secured a ban on Russian seafood imports.
“This took relentless work. This has helped our fishermen across not only Alaska but the country,” he said. “And now we are going after China with regard to the same ban. Why? Because Russian trawlers, Chinese trawlers, ravage the ocean. They compete unfairly.”
Peltola focused on the Seattle-based pollock catcher-processors as a foe. She knocked Sullivan for accepting some $300,000 in political contributions from the trawl industry and for coming late to the anti-bycatch movement.
“We don't need a senator fueled by corporate greed of Lower 48 out-of-state factory trawlers and only offers half-hearted solutions when an election year rolls around,” she said.
The candidates pledged in advance to keep their answers focused on fish. Peltola, though, found a way to criticize Sullivan’s support for the war in Iran, saying it raises costs for fishermen and processors, and suggested he was overly loyal to his party.
“This war in Iran is driving up our gas and diesel prices. Dan Sullivan has voted for the war in Iran over 10 times, 10 times to jack up your prices,” she said. “We should not be going to Washington D.C. to fight for one party or another. We should be fighting for our fishermen.”
One moment that made an instant splash on social media came during a paddle round. The question was: “Do the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA Fisheries adequately consider impacts on subsistence users, salmon migration, habitat and indigenous ways of life?”
Peltola raised her red “no” paddle.
Sullivan, apparently thinking the round was over, had set his paddle down and was shuffling papers on the table in front of him.
“Mr. Sullivan, sir. Yes or no?” one of the moderators asked.
Sullivan glanced sideways to look at Peltola’s paddle before raising his red paddle, too, generating chuckles from the audience in the Kodiak amphitheater.
In a separate debate Saturday, the leading candidates for U.S. House also went after the pollock fishery for bycatch. Republican Congressman Nick Begich blamed that fishery for many years of poor salmon runs in Western Alaska.
“So primary causes for decline for king and chum salmon? I believe it's largely bycatch-related,” Begich said. “I think that's been an ongoing pressure on these species, particularly in parts of Alaska. You look at the Yukon, you look at the Kuskokwim — those runs are way down.”
Independent candidate Bill Hill agreed with that assessment, but said other factors are at work, too.
“In addition to bycatch, climate change is a real thing, and we need to start mitigating for that,” Hill said. “But yes, we need to end bycatch.”
While the two House candidates often agreed on fish policy, their dress was a study in contrasts. Begich wore a blue blazer with a congressional lapel pin, emphasizing his office. Hill, a commercial and subsistence fisherman, wore a hooded shirt and a zippered vest, as well as a cap with a Grundens logo, a nod to a life spent in raingear.
