Alaska’s Senate race has become embroiled in a bitter dispute over declining salmon stocks, with Indigenous communities blaming offshore trawlers for catches that are increasingly failing to reach rivers in western Alaska.
The contest between Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan and Democratic challenger Mary Peltola is being fought in a state where salmon remain essential to food, culture and livelihoods. The result could also help determine the balance of power in the US Senate.
On the Kuskokwim River, Evon Waska’s smokehouse and drying racks would normally be filled with salmon. Instead, they have stood empty as too few fish return from the Bering Sea.
Government agencies frequently close the river to fishing in an effort to conserve stocks, including to people who rely on the catch to feed their families. Mr Waska blames industrial trawlers operating offshore.
“They don’t close the trawlers. They close me and my people first,” he said.
The pollock industry, much of it based in Seattle, is worth about $1 billion. Its vessels tow nets up to a quarter of a mile long, with openings as wide as a football field, to catch pollock.
Salmon and other valuable fish can also be swept up unintentionally, a practice known as bycatch. The issue has become a prominent feature of political advertising in Alaska.
Mr Sullivan has been an ally of the pollock industry, but is now promoting legislation that he says would tackle the problem. “It’s the most comprehensive bycatch legislation ever to reduce bycatch, protect seafloor habitat,” he said.
Ms Peltola, who is Indigenous and comes from the Kuskokwim region, has called for a ban on factory trawlers, including the largest vessels in the pollock fleet. She has dismissed Mr Sullivan’s proposal as an election-year manoeuvre.
“Dan Sullivan reeled in over $300,000 from trawlers and waited until the 11th hour for a half-hearted and half-baked solution,” she said.
The trawler industry rejects the suggestion that eliminating pollock fishing would restore the salmon runs. Heather Mann, who leads a trawler association, said the available science pointed to only a limited effect.
“Even if you were to eliminate pollock, the chances of salmon runs being restored, what the science shows us is it would have a minimal impact,” she said.
Pollock trawlers say they have caught 40,000 Alaska salmon so far this year, a tiny proportion of their much larger pollock harvest. In villages along the Kuskokwim, however, the bycatch remains a source of deep anger.
In Kwethluk, subsistence fishing is the main occupation and a central part of community life. Tribal president Mary Nikolai said the lack of salmon had left smokehouses unused across the village.
“Most of the smokehouses are like this. And it’s like a slow trend of closing our workforce out,” she said.
President Trump is also attempting to pre-emptively block election results in Alaska if Mr Sullivan loses. Whatever the outcome, Ms Nikolai hopes the closely fought Senate contest will draw attention to the threat facing western Alaska’s fishing communities.
