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

[RandySF]

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.”

“For 30 years, this industry has been tossing over juvenile salmon, halibut and crab by the metric ton,” she said to POLITICO and Type Investigations. “At some point we have to imagine that that is not sustainable. That that catches up with us.”

Peltola is quick to acknowledge the role climate change and warming waters have played in impacting Alaska’s fisheries but says the trawl industry and the council that regulates it have not done enough to reduce bycatch or expand habitat protections for vulnerable species. The council, which sets bycatch quotas and manages commercial fisheries up to 200 miles from shore, has been captured by the largest industry players, Peltola says. Subsistence users and smaller commercial operators have been pushed to the margins. Economic interests rather than sustainability have come to dominate the decision-making process.

“The council works well if you are from the biggest, wealthiest most connected among us,” Peltola said.



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

[2naSalit]

1. K&R

[CrispyQ]

2. What's not sustainable is 8 billion people trying to live large.

That said, I'm glad she's giving this issue attention.

[Auggie]

17. +1

[Haggard Celine]

32. We really can't go on like this.

The population is going to double again before we know it. What would be ideal is for people to voluntarily stop having kids, or at least have fewer of them. I don't think it would work to have the population reduced voluntarily, however. It would need to be mandatory, with some sort of enforcement.

[Celerity]

40. Researchers Say Earth Is Headed for "Jaw-Dropping" Population Decline

"It's extraordinary, we'll have to reorganize societies."

https://futurism.com/global-birth-rates-falling-precipitiously

People around the globe are having way fewer babies. By the year 2100, that might turn into a pretty big problem for humanity — rather than the relief one might expect. If they aren’t already, dozens of countries’ populations will be going into decline in this century, according to a new study published in the Lancet this week. 23 countries are expected to feel this effect intensify, with their populations dropping to half of what they are now by the year 2100.

The global population will peak at 9.7 billion around 2064, according to the new projection, and then drop off to 8.8 billion towards the end of the century. “That’s a pretty big thing; most of the world is transitioning into natural population decline,” Christopher Murray, co-author and researcher at the University of Washington, Seattle, told the BBC. “I think it’s incredibly hard to think this through and recognize how big a thing this is; it’s extraordinary, we’ll have to reorganize societies.”

The reality is that with more women receiving an education and entering the work force, combined with the wide availability of contraception, fertility rates are dropping, sometimes precipitously, around the world — a stark reversal of the baby boom following the Second World War. Countries including Spain, Portugal, and Thailand will have their populations more than halve by the end of the century — “jaw-dropping,” according to Murray.

But aren’t fewer humans better for a ravished world that’s rapidly being drained of its resources? The researchers suggest that there may be fewer babies being born, but any positive consequences for the environment would be offset by the challenges of a rapidly aging population. Much older populations “will create enormous social change,” Murray told the BBC. “Who pays tax in a massively aged world? Who pays for healthcare for the elderly? Who looks after the elderly? Will people still be able to retire from work?” “We need a soft landing,” he added.

snip

Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study

https://tinyurl.com/ybadb2q7

snip

Findings

The global TFR in the reference scenario was forecasted to be 1·66 (95% UI 1·33–2·08) in 2100. In the reference scenario, the global population was projected to peak in 2064 at 9·73 billion (8·84–10·9) people and decline to 8·79 billion (6·83–11·8) in 2100.

The reference projections for the five largest countries in 2100 were

India (1·09 billion [0·72–1·71],

Nigeria (791 million [594–1056]),

China (732 million [456–1499]),

the USA (336 million [248–456]),

and Pakistan (248 million [151–427]).



By 2050, 151 countries were forecasted to have a TFR lower than the replacement level

183 were forecasted to have a TFR lower than replacement by 2100.

23 countries in the reference scenario, including Japan, Thailand, and Spain, were forecasted to have population declines greater than 50% from 2017 to 2100

China's population was forecasted to decline by 48·0% (?6·1 to 68·4) by 2100.

China was forecasted to become the largest economy by 2035 but in the reference scenario, the USA was forecasted to once again become the largest economy in 2098.

Africa is by the main dystopian nightmare in terms of far too high birth-rates:

2.1 is replacement level.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fertility-rate

1 Niger 6.9
2 DR Congo 5.9
3 Mali 5.9
4 Chad 5.7
5 Angola 5.5
6 Nigeria 5.4
7 Burundi 5.4
8 Burkina Faso 5.2
9 Gambia 5.2
10 Uganda 5
11 Tanzania 4.9
12 Mozambique 4.9
13 Benin 4.8
14 Guinea 4.7
15 South Sudan 4.7
16 Central African Republic 4.7
17 Cameroon 4.6
18 Ivory Coast 4.6
19 Zambia 4.6
20 Senegal 4.6
21 Mauritania 4.6

22 Afghanistan 4.5 Highest Non African

23 Guinea Bissau 4.5
24 Equatorial Guinea 4.5
25 Sudan 4.4
26 Republic of the Congo 4.4
28 Togo 4.3
29 Sierra Leone 4.3
30 Liberia 4.3
31 Sao Tome And Principe 4.3
32 Ethiopia 4.2
33 Malawi 4.2
34 Comoros 4.2
35 Madagascar 4.1
36 Eritrea 4.1
37 Rwanda 4
38 Gabon 4
41 Ghana 3.9
46 Zimbabwe 3.6
52 Kenya 3.5
53 Namibia 3.4
54 Egypt 3.3
57 Lesotho 3.1
59 Algeria 3
60 Eswatini 3
65 Botswana 2.9
73 Djibouti 2.7
79 South Africa 2.4
80 Morocco 2.4
96 Tunisia 2.2
97 Libya 2.2

The highest European nation is France, 2nd highest is Sweden. We here in Sweden have had large programmes to raise it up in the past, but both here and in France, it is non European descent Swedes and French who are raising it higher, with the amounts of non European immigrants in Sweden being a fairly new thing, only really happening in the last 20-25 years or so to any truly large degree, other than Persians and Chileans, who came here due to the US empiric CIA coup d'etats in 1953 and 1973, respectively, plus small amounts from other various post WWII US empiric wars and coups before the big ones (and I mean non European conflicts, not talking about the Balkans in the 1990's, which really impacted Sweden too) hit in the 2000s onward.

2.1 is replacement level

117 France 1.9
126 Sweden 1.8

132 China 1.7
133 United States 1.7
134 Brazil 1.7
135 United Kingdom 1.7

The lowest birth-rate nations:

178 Italy 1.3
179 Spain 1.3
180 Ukraine 1.3
181 Moldova 1.3
182 Bosnia And Herzegovina 1.3
183 Cyprus 1.3
184 Andorra 1.3
185 Macau 1.2
186 Malta 1.2
187 Hong Kong 1.1
188 Singapore 1.1
189 South Korea 1

[modrepub]

3. Happened to Cod In North Atlantic

in 1992. We'll see if we learned anything (probably not).

[roamer65]

12. Yup. The cod fishing moratorium is still mostly in place from 1992.

[Historic NY]

18. A month or two ago Atlantic Cod was in short supply

at the several markets I go to was smaller. These places bring it from the dock to the store. Sea Scallops 39.00 a pound. I don't even look a crab any more.

[BumRushDaShow]

20. It happened with oysters in the Chesapeake Bay

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2017.00127/full

I grew up with my mother talking about when she was growing up (including into young adulthood) during the '30s - '50s, how there were oyster "houses" and "bars" (little take-out restaurants) all over Philadelphia, and how these were as prolific as you see the burger or chicken places today. That and the "tomato pies" were the fast food then. That phenomena dated back to the city's founding in the 1600s through the Revolutionary War, and until the 1960s when the whole thing began to crash.

[Evolve Dammit]

22. Exactly. Norway did the right thing with a multi-year moratorium and it rebounded. We aren't capable

[jaxexpat]

4. Two things we should, as a species, think about banning:

1. The Commercial Fishing Industry
2. The Human Fertility Promotion Industry

[Trueblue Texan]

27. commercial fishing means something very different today than...

...it did in my grandfather's day. He raised 15 children, most through The Great Depression, as a commercial fisherman. They did not eat well, but they survived. In his long career, he seldom had a boat with a motor and could navigate a sail boat better than most could a motored boat. His sons, also commercial fishermen on the Gulf Coast of Texas, helped keep my family fed after my dad died. They didn't have a fleet, but they each had a shrimp boat. Their livelihoods were similar to a small farmer's, subject to the whims of weather, algae blooms and other threats to marine life, and machinery that didn't always work. They supported sustainable practices on the waters because their livelihoods depended on it. Nowadays, I doubt they'd be able to make a living at all.

[jaxexpat]

28. I lived in Galveston county 1977-81.

It was when the a Vietnamese refugees came and tried to ply their shrimping business in coastal Texas.

There definitely was no room for their competition to the status quo even then. Not sure hoe it eventually worked out. Are the Vietnamese still in business these days?

[Trueblue Texan]

29. That's about when I left Galveston County...

As far as I know, the Vietnamese refugees still get blamed for killing the crabbing industry in the Gulf. They were blamed for never culling their catch, but keeping everything to feed their families. I can't say if that's actually true or if as you say there was just not much to go around to start with. There was a lot of discrimination against them from the native population, but they were hard-working people trying to feed their families just like the rest of the fishermen.

[PatrickforB]

5. FINALLY!!!! Look at what happened to the peaceful Somali fisherpeople.

They are now pirates. Why?

The trawling 'industry' depleted their waters and then European corporations worked with organized criminals (hard to tell sometimes who is who) to dump radioactive waste off the Somali coast.

Now we blame the Somalis for piracy and you can see ships fight them off in their little motorboats with firehoses and rapid-fire naval artillery in any number of supposedly 'amusing' YouTube vids.

This is how capitalism rolls. 'Industry' exploits the weak for shareholder profits, and then the weak are blamed when they rebel, demonstrate, strike, or otherwise try and find some other way to make a living.

Heck, we have been blaming the victims for centuries now! It's how we roll!

[KPN]

16. THIS!

[yonder]

19. +1.

[niyad]

6. KNR

[albacore]

7. The salmon... given half a chance... will come back.

Come back as far as climate change will let them, that is. And the species has show they can adapt surprisingly well.
What salmon... and the others... can't take is the continued pressure of industrial fishing.
By-catch is a national shame.

Incidentally... I have NO idea of how to feed the billions of people in our overcrowded world. I just know we can't survive as a species by driving other species to extinction.

[Kaleva]

8. Think how much food restaurants and stores throw out.

"The average family was found to waste nearly one third of the food they buy, which is the equivalent of 250 pounds of food each year"


https://www.earth.com/news/family-wastes-food/

[MontanaMama]

9. Kick.

I had no idea this was happening.

[OMGWTF]

10. Thank Goddess there's a Democrat in power.

Rethuglicans DGAF about anyone or anything that doesn’t give them more power or money.

[dembotoz]

11. ponder thisas you munch on your no meat lenten dinner

[roamer65]

13. 8 billion is TOO MANY.

[Kaleva]

33. Climate Change will rectify that.

[pandr32]

14. Good for her!

She is exactly what is needed.

[onethatcares]

15. reality teevee

brought to you by McDs filet of fish sammiches and the deadliest catch.

It's what's for dinner....

tune in while capt sid leaves Alaskan Bering sea waters and goes to rape the Russian fisheries.

[Cha]

21. TY & Rep Mary Peltola!

[republianmushroom]

23. Good luck Ms. Peltola

[Samrob]

24. I confess that I have to do some reading about this issue and i will. But I have a question and it

may not be related to this so I am asking.

Observation: today at the grocery store of a big chain and yesterday at another grocery store of another big chain I noticed that seafood in both stores was selling at huge reduction (especially "farm raised&quot shrimp, crab legs, scallops, flounder, trout, and salmon.

I stopped buying seafood because of it outrageous prices for the past two years. It appears that in both stores there was an abundance of seafood delivered and they were trying to sell it as fast as they could. Has anyone here noticed similar situations at your grocery stores? Just curious. Was it high prices or something else causing this price drop?

[LT Barclay]

25. Depends on the species and the source. A lot of it is coming from overseas. The part of the story

that wasn't told here is that once the big commercial firms destroy a fishery, they pack up and move on to another area they can easily exploit, leaving hungry people and unemployed fisherfolk in their wake.
Farmed seafood is a whole other can of worms. Very destructive to the waters where they are farmed, as the wastes are concentrated and go directly into the water. The salmon farms are especially bad because salmon are predators, so fish are caught to feed to farmed salmon, disrupting multiple species by taking fish lower on the food chain. Another example of this is the Menhaden fishery in the Gulf of Mexico. I don't know if it survived Katrina, but before the hurricane, Omega Protein was sweeping the Gulf clean of a fish that many game fish and commercial fish depended on for food. The menhaden were used for fertilizer and dog food.
But farmed seafood is CHEAP. Basically like any other consumer product, if it is cheap, either destruction or exploitation is hidden somewhere. Doing things right costs more. Land based farmed seafood is an improvement, but would require wastewater to be treated before it is recirculated or returned to the environment.
There are probably more current works on the topic, but the book I really enjoyed is called "Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World".

[SonofDonald]

26. I was a Trawl Fisherman in Alaska

From 1987-1992 after six years as a crab fisherman in the Bering

The “Council” from what I can tell (I didn’t read the article) is the “North Pacific Marine Fisheries Council”, I may be wrong on the name but they may have changed it a bit in the last 40 years.

The problem is that the council has actual fishery companies executives on it, it’s like giving the keys to the henhouse to the foxes themselves, this has been going on since at least the early 80’s, I was there at the start when they kicked out other countries fishing boats beyond the 200 mile limit from shore, it was called the “Americanization” of the fishery as you had to use a ship built in the USA to participate, at least something like the keel and a percentage of the hull.

I saw every bad thing they were doing out there up close and personal

This disgusted me to the point that I quit trawling in 1992

When I went from crabbing to the trawl fishery there were maybe four factory processing ships and 20+ crabbers that were converted into being able to trawl also, they would then make a trawl and deliver the cod end to one of the Processors

It was the same thing in the earlier days but the factory ships were foreign hulls and it was called a “JV” for “Joint Venture”, the last one of those I fished in was for the Yellowfin Sole season in 1988, the Bering Sea was then an actual city at night there were so many ships, I had crabbed for years but I never saw anything like that before that year.

They were in reality raping the Bering Sea and I mean RAPING IT

I could see the results of that practice in real time and by the third year I trawled we had to head up north beyond the Pribiloff Islands to even find Pollock, it’s what they make “Surimi” (fake crab, etc) from

At the start of my joining the trawl fishery we would make a 3-4 hour trawl and deliver around 100 metric tons each day to our processor, that’s like 220,500 pounds

Each and every day, caught by ONE 110 foot trawl boat, we would do this for 30-40 days at a time, then we had to go back to Dutch Harbor for fuel and food and any repairs we couldn’t do at sea.

Then we would head back out and do it again.

Within a few years there were dozens and dozens of trawlers involved and I watched the amount of fish caught go downhill and the distance traveled to find them increasing all the time.

I quit in 1992 as I was so disgusted watching what was happening, luckily I had a great shore job waiting for me so it was an easy choice for me, I just could no longer be involved in something I could find no justification doing.

Years later I saw “The Deadliest Catch” and I could be out on deck with the crews again without being tired beyond words or soaking wet, not bleeding somewhere everyday wasnt a bad thing either.

But then one day they tried to do a series on the trawl boats, I only saw one episode filmed on about a 220 foot trawler/processor, they had the net down for quite awhile from what I remember.

They pulled back and there was about five (5!) tons in the codend.

You would think it was the greatest day of their lives, for a 20th of the amount we did in a few hours every day of the week.

I know it’s a long ramble but I haven’t posted in a few years, I’m here reading everyday but the above post is actually something I know something about.

It’s absolutely true, the Foxes are in charge of the henhouse and have been for nearly forty years in my experience.

It’s the bycatch among other things killing the biomass of anything that swims or crawls on the bottom.

They’ll kill it all and wait till the very last moment to look for some way to bring it back.

I saw the future collapse of the fisheries in the Bering Sea around 30 years ago.

You know they did too, and they did nothing, in my opinion there is zero excuse.

NONE

[yourmovemonkey]

30. Thank you so much for sharing this.

[RandySF]

31. +100000

[panader0]

34. Great post--thanks for the up close and personal insights.

[betsuni]

39. +1

[Kid Berwyn]

35. "If you want to get along, go along."

“The council works well if you are from the biggest, wealthiest most connected among us,” Peltola said.

[SonofDonald]

36. There are two basic types of trawls

They are the bottom trawl used for fish that pretty much live on the bottom, these nets are the most destructive as they are made to drag across the bottom to catch the fish there, in doing so they also catch anything else down there and pretty much destroy any type of environment that exists there.

Then there is the pelagic or midwater trawl, used to catch fish in the water column itself, the problem is that many types of fish are hard on the bottom during certain times of the day, they then run out more wire to collapse and drop the net on the bottom itself when a large concentration of fish are found there by the fish finder.

The net lands on the bottom, the boat knows when this has happened via a transponder that’s in a pouch on the top of the codend, it sends a signal when the codend is full of fish and it’s time to bring it back up, it can also tell the boat that the net is on the bottom, collapsed and barely moving.

The boat then hauls back on the net, it speeds up dragging it across the bottom and then back up into the water column, catching and sucking up anything in front of it, remember it’s supposed to be a midwater trawl not a bottom trawl, but if that’s where the fish are that’s where they’re going to place the net, these nets have an opening the size of a football field when fully open at speed.

This is where the bycatch happens, so you have two types of net both of which can suck up enormous amounts of bycatch, so when they state that using a midwater trawl lessens the bycatch they are lying through their teeth.

I’ve seen walruses, sharks, salmon, crab, halibut, turbot and other fishes laying on a fishing boats deck after the net itself and the intermediate section are detached from the codend, I’ve seen codends being hauled up the stern ramp of the processor that were being shook and moved side to side by something alive in the codend.

As I was on the catch boat I didn’t see what was in the net after they dumped on their deck, but a 100 ton codend does not move around much less be shook from side to side by an extra fish or two.

It had to be a small ? whale or something of comparable size, I can’t think of anything else that could have the size or strength to do that.

I stayed in the fisheries to make money, that’s what I was there for, I didn’t see any of the above until the final two years I trawled, if I had known how bad the bycatch ( among other things ) in the early years I would have quit then, the money did most likely blind me to what was happening at first but at the last I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

Looking back I should have at least openly stated my opinion on what was going on in the fishery and joined any group that was trying to alert the world of the destruction and being ignored, I look back on this as my failure to my fellow man and it still bothers me.

But I worked in the fishery and before and after those days I worked in the support industry for the fishing fleet, you just didn’t say anything if you wanted to keep your job and with a wife and three children at home that was my first priority.

I estimate that the boat I was on caught in the vicinity of 60 million pounds of fish while I was a crew member, how much bycatch went up the stern ramp of the factory ships we delivered to?, how many mammals died for nothing?, how many times did I look away and not let it bother me?.

It bothers me now.

And the foxes still have the keys to the henhouse.

[burrowowl]

37. Good on her!

[flvegan]

38. Here's a thought, and stay with me here

stop fucking eating it. Pretty fucking simple.

[SonofDonald]

41. And we have a winner !

You are correct, I see the word Vegan in your name so I can guess where you’re coming from but that’s the right answer.

The OP talks about the subsistence fishermen/women not being left anything to feed their family’s due to the greed of the powers that be, when you can’t feed your family and are told it’s just the way it is you realize that the reasons they state are nothing but lies.

The fisheries in question are about profit only, they need locals to work in the canneries and processing plants but other than that they don’t care about them.

The fish they take aren’t used to lessen the pangs of hunger anywhere, they are used to make bank accounts larger and when the people in charge destroy the fishery there’s zero accountability for them or their company’s, I’ve watched that happen since 1979 when I moved to Alaska.

They will take a fishery all the way to the edge of extinction before any thought of being a responsible Shepard of it even enters their mind.

They watch it all go downhill, shutter the factory’s and wait until they are allowed to start up the business of raping the ocean again, it’s all about money.



You are correct, if we stopped buying their product it will have repercussions but the real problem is that a huge percentage of what the take from the sea doesn’t end up on the tables of Americans but is shipped overseas to Asia, this is the way it is and always has been.

They need to close the fishery for a few years and hopefully it will recover, I have seen that happen before but with crab, they closed the King Crab fishery in 1983 due to the overfishing of it since about 1976.

I fished the King Crab season in 1984 on the F/V ROLLO, the biomass was so huge that we intercepted the “nursery” on most days, the “Nursery” is the biomass of female crab and the millions of baby crabs that follow the male crabs across the ocean floor in their seasonal movement.

But then of course the crab fisheries are now all closed, so it did recover until they overfished it again, same as it ever was.

I think about the people I met and lived amongst for two decades in Alaska that are the real victims of this debacle, life is hard enough up there without a foreign owned company coming in and destroying the fisheries that have kept them and their family’s alive for generations.

And getting away with it with no repercussions.