A bill that aims to reduce the pollock fleet’s bycatch of salmon, halibut and other species passed the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday.
Sen. Dan Sullivan is the sponsor of the Bycatch Reduction Act. He said it would tell the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council to change how it treats the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska trawlers, to limit their impact on the marine environment.
“This sets out timelines. It sets out standards,” he said in a phone interview. “It sets out direct action to reduce bycatch, to limit — and, in many ways, do away with — trawl gear contact with the seafloor, and setting clearer standards.”
The bill also reconstitutes a group from a 2022 Sullivan bill, the Alaska Salmon Research Task Force Act. Sullivan said it will give Alaskans a direct say in what the federal government studies.
“It's the most comprehensive bycatch bill that's ever been voted out of committee in Congress,” he said.
Trawler bycatch has become a major issue in Sullivan’s reelection campaign. He’s in a tight race with Democrat Mary Peltola, who has focused on fish and bycatch in four campaigns, dating to 2022.
Among the nearly 60,000 members of Stop Alaskan Trawler Bycatch, an influential Facebook group, opinions vary about Sullivan’s legislation. Some say it’s a do-nothing bill because it doesn’t order a trawl ban and calls for a lot of research. Moderator David Bayes, though, believes it would be meaningful law.
“It essentially picks four or five things that need to be studied,” said Bayes, a halibut charter boat operator from Homer. “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.”
The bill cleared the 26-member committee, with four Democrats voting no. They include Sen. Maria Cantwell, the highest ranking Democrat on the Commerce Committee. She represents Washington state, where major elements of the pollock industry is based.
The pollock industry has objected to the bill, particularly a part that calls for reducing the incidence or impact of pollock trawl nets on the sea floor.
“Moving pollock fishing higher in the water column may reduce bottom contact, but it will increase encounters with salmon,” three pollock fishery associations said in a joint statement Wednesday. “Requiring vessels to fish longer to catch the same amount of pollock will mean more time on the water, greater fuel use and higher bycatch rates.”
Sullivan is the sole sponsor of the Bycatch Reduction Act. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s spokesman said she “supports efforts to build on the work already underway by improving data collection, expanding research, and giving fishermen practical tools to reduce bycatch and protect critical habitat.”
A spokesman for the Peltola campaign called Sullivan’s current bill, introduced in June, “eleventh hour, election year legislation.” A Sullivan campaign representative countered that the bill has made more progress than any action on fisheries Peltola has taken.
Sullivan said he’s trying to get the bill passed in the Senate, “maybe as early as next week.”
That’s as far as the bill could go for a while, because the House is in recess until after the November election.
