\u201cFamilies must now replace salmon and rely on expensive, store-bought food that cannot replace the nutritional or cultural importance of wild salmon,\u201d said Brian Ridley, who is Han Gwich’in and lives in Eagle, Alaska. \u201cElders worry that without fish camp, our kids won\u2019t know how to live anymore.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Ridley and other fishers, the anger isn\u2019t directed towards Yukoners or the leaders who crafted the restriction, but the commercial fisheries that trawl in federal waters off the coast of Alaska. <\/p>\n
The practice involves dragging fish nets, in some cases larger than a football field, through the ocean. <\/p>\n
![\"Dust](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782796761_161_default.jpg\")
A bottom trawler scours the ocean floor. (Silverback Films and Open Planet Studios)<\/p>\n
According to the non-profit Salmon State, fisheries targeting flatfish like sole and flounder are the worst offenders for bottom trawling, which can be particularly destructive.<\/p>\n
And while the pollock fishery mainly uses midwater or pelagic trawl nets, intended not to scrape the ocean floor, critics say this often happens anyway.<\/p>\n
Salmon are often caught unintentionally with these methods. As of June 25, the number of chinook caught as bycatch so far this year was 21,970.<\/p>\n
That number has been rising each year for the past three years. By the end of 2025, 38,923 had been caught.<\/p>\n
Not all of those fish would have been bound for the Yukon. In 2021, a Yukon River Panel technical report showed only 493 chinook from the river were caught as bycatch in the Bering Sea.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But at a state committee meeting earlier this spring, a series of delegates expressed grave concern about the impacts of industrial fish trawling on Yukon River salmon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Like clearcutting a forest\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are responsible for getting salmon across [to Canada] to spawn,\u201d said Janet Woods, a Koyukon Athabascan elder. \u201cAnd if we don\u2019t stop the trawling in our waters, there is going to be no fish, absolutely no salmon. They\u2019re killing them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the same meeting, Tlingit and Haida president Richard Peterson said it\u2019s unfair to ask rural fishers to shoulder the burden of conservation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSubsistence harvest has been reduced to zero, yet large scale ocean interception of those same fish continue earlier in their life cycle,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen subsistence needs go unmet year after year, while harvest continues elsewhere, public trust erodes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just chinook \u2014 trawlers frequently sweep up hundreds of thousands of crab, halibut and herring as bycatch, and occasionally catch protected species like orcas and sea otters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mel Erickson, a fishing guide in Cook Inlet, said Alaska\u2019s Department of Fish and Game issues emergency orders to close certain areas to sport fishing for species like yelloweye rockfish, but those orders don\u2019t get issued to larger players.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can go out behind some of these trawlers in Prince William Sound and other places, and there\u2019s just floating yelloweyes, dead yelloweyes, all over the surface that they\u2019re dumping out of their nets,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the Canadian side, the focus of research and salmon advocacy has in large part been on salmon travelling in Canadian freshwater. But Elizabeth Macdonald, manager of fisheries with the Council of Yukon First Nations, said salmon also rely on the open ocean to feed and mature. She believes more information is needed about how trawling affects salmon throughout their life cycle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just about the number of fish coming back to the river, it\u2019s also about the habitat that\u2019s out there,\u201d she said. \u201cSo trawling, particularly bottom trawling, has been described as kind of like clear cutting a forest, but you can\u2019t see it because it\u2019s underwater, so nobody is aware of it or concerned about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Macdonald said trawling could present a \u201chuge habitat concern\u201d for salmon if it renders swaths of the ocean floor and pelagic zones inhospitable to them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Yukon Salmon Sub-Committee, which helps manage the salmon count on the river, declined an interview with CBC for this story.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trawling becomes an election issue<\/p>\n
While a proposal earlier this year to ban bottom trawling died in committee, trawling has become a top issue in the run-up to Alaska\u2019s primaries this August.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Calling for bycatch to be reduced has long been a moderate position for Alaskan leaders, but outright criticism of trawling is more controversial. Trawling supports the multi-billion dollar fishing industry along with thousands of jobs \u2014 and industry leaders often help fund Alaskan election campaigns.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But now, multiple candidates for governor have pledged not to accept campaign contributions from those involved with trawling. Some are also calling for an end to trawling in state waters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782796762_356_default.jpg\")
Mary Peltola, who is Yup’ik from the Yukon\u2013Kuskokwim Delta and became the first Alaska Native elected to U.S. Congress in 2022, on the campaign trail in May 2026. (Mary Peltola)<\/p>\n
Mary Peltola, one of the top candidates for U.S. senator on the Democratic ticket, has made banning factory trawling a key part of her election platform \u2014 and she’s found agreement across the aisle.<\/p>\n