The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) has advanced a set of five alternatives for reducing chum salmon bycatch in the U.S. state of Alaska’s pollock fishery, setting up a vote on implementing new protections as soon as December 2025.
Chum salmon populations in Alaska have plummeted in recent years; in the Yukon River, for instance, the fall chum salmon run is 97 percent below its historical average. The low abundance levels have led to fishery closures and bans on subsistence fishing in parts of the state.
“Available science indicates recent declines in chum salmon populations across many regions of the North Pacific, including Canada, Japan, Russia, Korea, and the U.S., appear to be driven by warmer water temperatures in both the marine and freshwater environments which impact juvenile surivival, prey availability and quality, metabolism and growth rates, and reproductive rates,” NPFMC noted in a press release. “However, Western Alaska chum salmon are also taken as bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock trawl fishery, reducing the amount of salmon that return to western and interior Alaska rivers, and the council is considering action to address these impacts.”
Conservation groups, salmon fishing advocates, and regional Tribal government point to incidental takes of the species by trawlers fishing for pollock as a primary factor.
However, the pollock sector has bristled at being blamed for declining chum salmon populations, pointing to environmental factors and the high percentage of foreign-origin chum salmon in their bycatch as evidence that their impact on Alaska salmon isn’t as big as opponents state.
The fleet has also adopted salmon avoidance plans to help reduce bycatch; NPFMC noted that the pollock sector has “reduced its chum bycatch by nearly 95 percent over the past four years.”
According to conservation NGO Oceana, nearly 3 million chum salmon were taken as bycatch by vessels fishing for pollock from 2015 to 2024, with nearly half a million being Western Alaska chum salmon. Most of the chum bycatch, however, is hatchery-origin Russia and Asia chum salmon, according to genetic sampling.
Salmon fishers – both commercial and subsistence – have called on regulators to ...
