Takeaways from AP’s report on Alaska’s growing fight over trawling and bycatch

THE BERING SEA (AP) — Alaska pollock is the second-largest fishery on Earth and supplies everything from McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwiches to fish sticks and imitation crab. The fishery uses methods that it — and McDonald’s — say are aimed at minimizing environmental impacts, but the nets that catch pollock catch other marine life, too.

That bycatch — the marine life caught unintentionally while fishers target something else — has become especially contentious as salmon runs across western Alaska have collapsed, leading to a seven-year ban on Chinook fishing along the Yukon River, where dozens of Alaska Native communities have relied on salmon for generations.

In Rampart, a Koyukon village on the Yukon, Janet Woods told The Associated Press that before the ban, her family's summers revolved around checking nets, cutting fish and tending the smokehouse.

“You think back in history how they tried to destroy us,” she said. “Taking our language, our ceremonies, and now our culture, and it’s been forever a fight for us just to hang on to what very little we have."

Scientists say warming waters and changing ocean conditions, not trawl bycatch, are the primary causes of the declines. But bycatch is one source of salmon mortality managers can directly control, and critics say even small losses matter when runs are depleted.

Over the last 10 years, Bering Sea pollock trawlers caught an average of about 18,000 Chinook and 288,000 other salmon a year, nearly all of them chum.

“The people that bear the brunt of the conservation measures are people along the river,” said Andrew Seitz, a fisheries professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Here are some takeaways from AP’s report.

Pollock captains stay in close contact with other vessels throughout each trip to share information about salmon concentrations, while the fleet receives weekly voluntary closure areas based on reports from the fishing grounds. Every pollock vessel also carries a salmon excluder, a device that gives salmon a way out of the net.

“The amount of science and management effort that goes into improving it is basically unprecedented anywhere,” said Matt Tinning, CEO of the At-Sea Processors Association, which represents five Alaska pollock companies.

Every fish, including salmon, caught by the Bering Sea pollock fleet is counted. Trawlers are monitored by observers or cameras, as are deliveries at shoreside processing plants.

Genetic testing shows that most chum salmon caught by pollock trawlers do not originate in western Alaska. But even a relatively small percentage can still represent tens of thousands of fish from struggling runs.

Small commercial halibut and crab fishers, along with charter operators, have echoed the grievances heard along the Yukon. They too have faced shrinking catch limits and closures as stocks decline, while groundfish trawlers continue to catch both species as bycatch.

The debate extends beyond what trawlers catch to how their gear operates.

Pollock vessels use pelagic, or midwater, trawls, designed to fish in the water column rather than along the seafloor like bottom trawls. But pollock often swim close to the bottom, so the nets can make substantial contact with the seafloor.

Yet some areas closed to bottom trawling to protect corals, sponges, crab and other marine life remain open to pelagic trawlers, prompting calls for tighter restrictions.

Anti-trawl sentiment has attracted Democrats, Republicans, commercial and sport fishers, and Alaska Native communities — constituencies that don’t often line up on the same side of resource debates.

At least 10 of the original 19 candidates in this year’s crowded governor’s race took positions critical of trawling or bycatch. The issue has also become a defining one in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.

Follow Annika Hammerschlag on Instagram: @ahammergram.

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

Crew members haul in a catch aboard the F/V Progress in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Wednesday, July 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Fishing vessels, processing infrastructure, fuel storage tanks and shipping containers line Dutch Harbor, Alaska, Friday, July 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Members of the Woods family unload food and other supplies from their boat after arriving in Rampart, Alaska, from Fairbanks, Friday, July 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Maverick Blake, captain of the F/V Progress, monitors screens in the wheelhouse that help track fishing conditions in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Wednesday, July 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Pollock spill from a trawl net alongside large amounts of jellyfish bycatch aboard the F/V Progress in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Thursday, July 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Crew members work on deck after hauling in a catch aboard the F/V Progress in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Wednesday, July 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

A federal immigration officer shot a Dominican man in the neck as he drove in a car with a 5-year-old boy Thursday afternoon, officials said.

An irate New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the shooting an outrage, and spent two hours Thursday night pressing President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to release the wounded man, and urging them to stop immigration enforcement operations in the city.

Meanwhile, Trump said Thursday that he will not order a resumption of military strikes on Iran before the Nov. 3 midterm elections in the United States. Trump, while stumping for Republicans this week, has hinted that he was confident an endgame to the war could come in the days before or after the election, while also hinting that he remained open to resuming full-scale military operations against Iran.

Here's the latest:

Marcos Charles, who heads Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s enforcement removal and operations division, said ICE officials attempted to arrest the Dominican man, whom officials have identified as Oscar Belgal, and attempted to use their vehicles to block him in.

Speaking to reporters, Charles said Belgal “refused to exit his vehicle” and accelerated, smashing into two government vehicles and moving toward officers, which prompted officers to fire weapons.

Facing backlash after a federal immigration officer shot a Dominican man in the neck as he drove in a car with a 5-year-old boy in New York on Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin doubled down on the Trump administration’s criticism of so-called sanctuary cities.

There’s no clear definition of sanctuary jurisdictions, but the term is generally applied to state and local governments that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Sanctuary politicians and cities “create an environment for criminal activity to thrive, not for the American citizens to be safe,” Mullin said in a news conference Friday.

For about nine decades, executions in the U.S. have been private affairs, often shrouded in secrecy. The stunning Pentagon announcement Thursday that the first military execution in more than 65 years will be livestreamed could change that.

Allowing the world to watch Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan face the firing squad in December would make it the first public execution since two hangings in the 1930s in Kentucky and Missouri drew crowds.

In 1936, a man who reportedly confessed to the rape and murder of a woman was hanged in front of thousands in Owensboro, Kentucky, while the following year, hundreds watched a man in Missouri be hanged.

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Trump said Thursday that he will not order a resumption of military strikes on Iran before the Nov. 3 midterm elections in the United States.

Trump, while stumping for Republicans this week, has hinted that he was confident that an endgame to the war could come in the days before or after the election, while also hinting that he remained open to resuming full-scale military operations against Iran.

For weeks, Trump has been threatening that a post-midterm election escalation in the seven-month-old war remains a viable option, despite his initial promises to Americans of a military campaign that would last a matter of weeks.

But Trump in a social media post on Thursday said the U.S. “will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd.”

Trump added that his team has been “having productive discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

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A federal immigration officer shot a Dominican man in the neck as he drove in a car with a 5-year-old boy Thursday afternoon, officials said. The Department of Homeland Security said it was seeking to arrest the man in a “targeted enforcement operation,” but protesters and local officials decried it as an example of the dangers of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

DHS said in a statement that it was seeking to arrest a “criminal illegal alien” with a grand larceny conviction and a history of other arrests. But an irate New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the shooting an outrage.

The mayor said he had spent two hours Thursday night pressing President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to release the wounded man, to no avail, and urging them to stop immigration enforcement operations in the city. He said that late Thursday night, federal authorities removed the man from the hospital and took him away.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, said in a statement that she had delivered a similar message to Trump and Mullin by phone.

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President Donald Trump arrives to speak at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani talks during a news conference near the scene of a shooting on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)