Two Kodiak trawlers inadvertently caught 2,000 king salmon. Today, an entire fishery is closed.

Federal managers shut down a major Alaska fishery Wednesday after two Kodiak-based boats targeting whitefish caught some 2,000 king salmon — an unintended harvest that drew near-instant condemnation from advocates who want better protections for this species in difficulty.

The Kodiak-based trawler fleet caught just over a quarter of its seasonal quota of pollock – a whitefish that is typically made into fish sticks, fish pies and surimi, the paste used to make imitation crab .

But around 20 boats will now be forced to end their season just weeks before it closes on November 1, with hundreds of jobs at onshore processing plants also at risk, to ensure the fleet does not exceed its cap annual on its involuntary king. salmon harvest – some 18,000 fish.

“From a community perspective, it’s huge,” said Julie Bonney, who heads a trade group, the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank, that represents trawlers and processing companies. “No one is happy about the closure, but they understand the reason.”

The incident is sure to draw more attention to the issue of bycatch – an industry term for the unintentional harvest, usually of salmon or halibut, by boats targeting other species.

For several years, tribal advocates and conservation groups have made increasingly urgent calls for managers to crack down on bycatch from trawlers, which can scoop up salmon in the nets they drag into the ocean. water, targeting pollock and other less valuable species. .

These groups have largely focused on bycatch from pollock trawlers in the Bering Sea.

The salmon caught Sunday were caught using the same type of nets used by Bering Sea trawlers, but in a different ocean area, the central Gulf of Alaska.

Most salmon caught bycatch in the Gulf come from British Columbia and the U.S. West Coast, according to genetic data released by federal scientists.

But some also come from neighboring Alaska rivers, notably from southeast Alaska but also in small proportions from the Copper and Kenai rivers.

King salmon in many of these Alaska rivers have struggled in recent years – leading to closures and restrictions on other fishermen, and even a petition to list Gulf of Alaska kings as endangered.

(Federal agency launches year-long review to determine whether to list Alaskan king salmon as endangered)

The two Kodiak trawlers caught the salmon on Sunday. Bonney and federal managers declined to identify the two vessels, but a co-owner of one, the Evie Grace, confirmed that he caught more than 1,200 kings in an event he described as “love at first sight”.

Up to that point in the season, the most king salmon caught by the Evie Grace on a single trip was 53, and its total catch over 11 trips was 270, said Kent Helligso, 69 years old. The vessel is owned by a company based in Kodiak. family partnership, with some of Helligso’s grandchildren working as the fifth generation of his family in the industry, he said.

“The weather was breaking, they set up and did a tow and yeah, probably towed way too long, we certainly know that now,” he said. “But it was just a bit of bad luck, the luck of the draw.”

Bycatch in the mid-Gulf trawl fishery is managed under a complex federal framework in which only a portion of vessels have salmon bycatch numbers independently verified.

As the counts of the two vessels involved in Sunday’s incident were verified, their numbers were extrapolated to the unverified vessels, putting the entire fleet beyond its annual limit of 18,316 fish, Josh Keaton said , a senior federal official at National Marine Fisheries. Service.

This is the first time the annual cap has been reached since it took effect in 2012, Bonney said.

The official closure was only announced Wednesday morning, but the fleet had stopped fishing in the meantime, knowing the cap was at risk of being exceeded, Keaton added.

“I think it’s important to recognize that the fleet voluntarily withdrew,” he said. “They care about this data as much as we do.”

Data from processors covering the entire trawl harvest, which has not been independently verified, shows the fleet’s total king salmon bycatch for the season is still less than 13,000, according to Helligso.

But federal managers rely only on verified data to make their closure decisions, according to Keaton of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Next year, he added, new federal rules regarding onboard video cameras should allow a much larger fraction of the fleet to have its catch numbers independently verified.

Each of the salmon caught by the two vessels was also genetically sampled, Keaton said.

The data that comes back could provide new information to managers, he added, helping to determine whether kings mixing with a single school of pollock come from a single population or from multiple regions.

Meanwhile, fishermen and processing companies are still trying to determine whether the Kodiak trawler fleet could move to other fisheries.

But amid an economic crisis in Alaska’s seafood industry, it’s unclear whether fishing for other available species, like redfish, will continue, Bonney said.

“I have a feeling there are going to be some pretty painful checkbooks here soon,” she said.

Nathaniel Herz is a journalist based in Anchorage. Subscribe to his newsletter, Northern Journalhas northjournal.com. Contact him at [email protected].