KODIAK — Cole Hockema, operator of the 104-foot Pacific Storm, is disappointed that pollock fishermen like him have no champions in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.
“It's just such easy, low-hanging fruit, essentially, to get votes, is to be against trawling,” he said.
The pollock industry, America’s largest fishery, has been hit with a tsunami of popular discontent in Alaska this election season, with loud demands for a ban on trawling. The problem is bycatch — the thousands of salmon and metric tons of halibut the pollock fleet catches by accident. Anger about these wasted fish has sparked a movement that’s flexing its political muscle, and it could be decisive in Alaska’s tight Senate election.
Amid the barrage, the pollock industry — the source of the fish in fish sticks and McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish — is feeling misunderstood.
Trawl opponents focus their harshest critiques on the biggest players in the pollock fleet — the massive catcher-processors, floating factories that are homeported mainly in Seattle, and the substantial number of trawlers owned by out-of-state corporations.
Hockema wants Alaskans to know that not all trawlers are the same.
“I mean, this is a family-owned boat, local to Kodiak,” he said. “All our revenue stays here in Kodiak. Every bit of gear and fuel and groceries we buy is all bought here.”
Kodiak, he said, needs pollock.
“It's a trickle-down effect that a lot of people won't understand when they say ‘ban trawling,’” he said. “They don't realize that that'll trickle down to less boats, less businesses, and then we're not buying the thousands of gallons of fuel, so that's going to make it more expensive to ship fuel to town.”
Pollock keeps the local fish plants operating outside of salmon season. Without it, groceries would cost more, he said. People would move away.
Courting the anti-trawl vote
Both major Senate candidates — incumbent Dan Sullivan and challenger Mary Peltola — are vying for the anti-trawl vote. But the movement is divided on which would be more effective at cracking down on bycatch
Peltola is calling for a ban on Lower 48 factory-trawlers.
“Our fight is not against small and mid-sized boats that keep communities like Kodiak strong,” she said at the Kodiak Fisheries debate in September. “It's against the out-of-state corporate greed that leads to wanton waste and damage to our seafloor.”
Meanwhile, Sullivan, who has been a favorite of the pollock industry, introduced a bycatch reduction bill in June that trawlers object to.
Heather Mann, who leads a trade association headquartered in Newport, Ore. called Midwater Trawlers Cooperative, said the bill is unrealistic and also unnecessary.
“People just have this view that bottom trawl and/or midwater trawl that touches the bottom is sort of clearcutting the ocean, and that's just not true,” she said.
Mann said Sullivan’s bill seems to be a response to election-year pressure.
She said she feels anti-trawl pressure, too. She and others in the industry say they face a deluge of online distortions. And malice. Mann says she’s had death threats.
“It’s creating a really dangerous and toxic environment, and it’s based on misinformation,” she said.
Studies show factors like climate change and ocean warming are the main drivers of salmon crashes in western Alaska, but Mann said science doesn’t make a dent in popular opinion. She knows it’s an emotional issue for people who miss their salmon, but Mann said scapegoating the pollock fishery won’t help.
“Even if you were to eliminate pollock, the chances of salmon runs being restored, what the science shows us, is it would have a minimal impact,” she said.
Ask all sides why trawl is such a powerful issue this year and they’ll point to a Facebook group called Stop Alaskan Trawler Bycatch.
60,000 strong
Homer halibut charter operator David Bayes is the moderator. He said the membership ballooned when Peltola ran for U.S. House in 2022 on an anti-trawl platform. The group now has 60,000 members. Not all of them are Alaskans, but if they all lived in one city it’d be almost twice the size of Fairbanks.
“Dan Sullivan didn't have much choice but essentially meet or beat her on that issue, if he was going to win this campaign,” Bayes said.
Members of the group argue fiercely about the candidates. Some say Peltola had her turn in the House and didn’t deliver. Others doubt Sullivan’s commitment, and say his bill does nothing but research. Bayes, though, contends Sullivan’s bill would be huge.
“It essentially picks four or five things that need to be studied,” he said. “But with those are things that — my take is that the regulators have sort of intentionally not studied over the years because they're the things that could get trawl shut down if the study was really fleshed out.”
He said trawl defenders may seem to have science on their side, but that’s because research dollars aren’t directed at the right things.
Pollock hits the pavement
The pollock industry is fighting back, on multiple fronts.
Rick Whitbeck, a former state director for Congressman Nick Begich, launched a pollock public relations blitz called “The Truth Alaska.”
He posts polished infographics showing the bycatch of thousands of king salmon is small — relative to the 3 billion pounds of pollock harvested per year. He posts reminders that western Alaska coastal communities get millions of dollars from the pollock fishery, through a community quota program. Whitbeck calls the Stop Alaskan Trawler Bycatch group a Facebook echo chamber.
“We've chosen to address Alaskans a little differently, and we've chosen to do it person to person,” Whitbeck said. “You know, on the ground.”
Whitbeck has a team going door-to-door to sell Alaskans on the virtues of the pollock industry and dispel myths. They aim to hit 50,000 households.
He said he’s making headway in his defense of pollock but won’t, for strategic reasons, share his poll results.
Nevertheless, the very existence of his campaign is a sign that the anti-trawl movement is too strong for candidates and industry to ignore.
Previously: Industry, Senate race and culture collide in fight over fish
