Alaska's Fisheries Are Collapsing. This Congresswoman Is Taking on the Industry She Says Is to Blame

Full title: Alaska’s Fisheries Are Collapsing. This Congresswoman Is Taking on the Industry She Says Is to Blame.

HOMER, Alaska — The late 1990s and early 2000s were boomtimes for halibut fishermen in Alaska. Over 80 million pounds of the flatfish were being harvested annually. Deckhands could earn $250,000 a season. The small boat harbor in the southcentral city of Homer, known as the “halibut capital of the world,” was bustling.

Erik Velsko, 39, was one of those fishermen. He started buying annual shares in 2001 when the halibut population was at near historic highs. But within a few years, the stock plummeted by more than half and the quotas for commercial fishermen were slashed accordingly. Velsko’s share has gone from 12,000 pounds annually to less than 4,000 pounds. His brother-in-law, who also fishes out of Homer, has had his quota cut from about 90,000 pounds to 20,000 pounds. Many fishermen have gotten out of the business altogether.

“That whole dock was all long liners, you know, 15 years ago,” Velsko told me last year, pointing to a row of idled boats in the harbor. “It’s two or three now. My brother-in-law and another one.”

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This years-long dispute between the directed fisheries and the trawl industry has been confined to meetings of obscure state and federal agencies and has received only local coverage for the most part. But in November, amid a groundswell of anti-trawl sentiment in the state (a popular Facebook group launched in 2020, Stop Alaskan Trawler Bycatch, now has more than 20,000 members), Alaskans elected Mary Peltola as the state’s only member of Congress. Peltola, the first Alaska Native to serve in the House of Representatives, campaigned on a platform that placed issues of bycatch and the viability of smaller commercial and subsistence fisheries at the forefront of her legislative agenda. She posted frequently about the impacts of trawl fishing on the environment to her tens of thousands of followers on social media and elevated the issue to national attention. The first sentence of Peltola’s “story” on her website reads: “I’m a Yup’ik Alaska Native, salmon advocate, and Democrat.”

more at:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/03/03/alaskas-fisheries-collapsing-peltola-industry-blame-00066843