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ABSTRACT We examine the coloniality of Alaska pollock (Walleye Pollock Gadus chalcogrammus) trawl fisheries governance and its role in enabling salmon bycatch, highlighting the resulting impacts on Alaska Native communities and subsistence practices. We expose how the systemic marginalization of Alaska Native voices and knowledge in federal fisheries management perpetuates dispossession, oppression, and is a barrier to food sovereignty and environmental justice. Alaska Native communities have long attributed the decline of salmon populations, particularly Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha and Chum Salmon O. keta, to bycatch from the pollock trawl fishery—a concern ignored for over a decade. The repeated failure to meet salmon escapement goals has led to subsistence and commercial fishery closures, deepening food insecurity, health crises, and cultural disruption for Alaska Native peoples. Meanwhile, industrial trawl fisheries persist with minimal accountability, exacerbating ecological harm by capturing nontarget species, such as salmon, halibut, and crab, further impacting local, nonindustrial fisheries. We advocate for urgent reform of Alaska’s federal fisheries governance to center Alaska Native voices, integrate Indigenous knowledge, and address inequities in salmon allocation. Specifically, we call for revisions to the national standards of the Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to ensure policies that respect Native sovereignty, promote sustainability, and mitigate the ecological and social consequences of industrial trawling. This approach is critical to achieving equitable and sustainable fisheries management that upholds environmental justice and Alaska Native rights.
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Endeavoring to engage in cooperative fisheries research in a contentious socio-political climate
Abstract Cooperative Fisheries Research (CFR) aims to incorporate different types of knowledge into fisheries science through the convergence of diverse perspectives, skills, and expertise. CFR can facilitate knowledge co-production and the salience, credibility, and legitimacy of science, yet it can be difficult to operationalize. In Maine’s American lobster fishery, where CFR is a hallmark of the fishery, pressure to implement conservation measures to protect North Atlantic right whales, one of the world’s most endangered large whale species, poses a major challenge for harvesters. Endeavoring to follow best practices associated with CFR, our research team set out to work with state management and fishing industry partners to evaluate the socioeconomic impacts of new whale conservation regulations on the fishery. We co-defined relevant and actionable research questions and designed a sampling approach that included multiple efforts to contact industry participants. Although the process we engaged in had some of the key ingredients for success, ultimately participation was too low to achieve our research aims. We use this paper to discuss our failure and draw on the theory of scalar politics from critical geography to reflect on challenges we encountered, including how the contentious socio-political backdrop within which the initiative transpired impacted our research.
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- PAR ID:
- 10556919
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ICES Journal of Marine Science
- Volume:
- 81
- Issue:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 1054-3139
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 1931-1940
- Size(s):
- p. 1931-1940
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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