When you VOTE on NOVEMBER 3rd, be sure to support the candidate backed by ALFA and other fishing organizations: JKT for Governor
Op-Ed: Healthy Fisheries Are a Choice… Look to Sitka and Southeast Alaska
Davey Lubin
Spanning five decades, I have been making my living on and around the marine waters of Alaska. I’ve worked as a biologist on foreign fishing trawlers in the Bering Sea; a commercial fisherman throughout the Gulf of Alaska and inside waters of Southeast Alaska; a botanist; natural history teacher; and as a marine charter owner/operator in the Sitka area, where I specialize in wilderness and wildlife excursions, scientific research logistics, and marine debris cleaning operations. And, I am a dyed-in-the-wool subsistence hunter, fisher, and gatherer.
In my daily life, I am continuously reminded that Sitka Sound remains one of the rare places on Earth where a healthy marine ecosystem can still be fully experienced. Humpback whales abound and salmon fill the sea and spawn freely and plentifully in countless streams, rivers, and lakes, year after year. Sea otters drift through thriving kelp forests. Sea lions haul out in droves on rocky islands. Seabirds fatten their bodies and support their young with healthy populations of sand lance and herring. Locally harvested halibut, lingcod, and sablefish fuel the local economy and fill subsistence freezers.
These marvels and this abundance are nothing short of magnificent, and clearly, the result of decades of disciplined choices to manage our local fisheries conservatively and to protect the waters that sustain our communities.
But here's the uncomfortable truth: what we experience in Southeast Alaska is no longer the reality across much of Alaska's waters. Large-scale industrial trawling does not operate in Southeast Alaska's waters. Sitka's fishing economy is built around small boats using selective gear with carefully managed fisheries. We understand that healthy fisheries are worth more than one good season. Our livelihoods and our treasured way of life depend on there still being fish tomorrow, next year, and for years to come, into perpetuity.
Just beyond our horizon, however, federal waters of Alaska are treated very differently. Across the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea, enormous factory trawlers pursue pollock and other groundfish on an industrial scale. Many are owned by companies headquartered far from Alaska. The profits may leave the state, but the ecological consequences do not. Fish don't recognize management boundaries, and neither do the impacts of industrial fishing.
What I Saw Aboard Factory Trawlers
I know this because I saw it firsthand.
Shortly after graduating from college, I worked as a foreign fishery observer aboard industrial fishing vessels. I spent time on several factory trawlers, ranging from 175’ to 400’, that processed pollock and other species either by direct catch or in full trawl nets transferred directly from American catcher boats. I watched industrial-scale harvesting unlike anything I would come to know with Alaska's small-boat fisheries. What I witnessed has stayed with me for decades.
On one particular vessel, during just two months, I documented dozens of dead sea lions and scores of king salmon, halibut, and king crab caught as bycatch — fish that originated from river systems stretching far and wide, from as far south as California to up north along the great rivers of Western Alaska. I saw fisheries that prized only certain products while treating the rest of the catch as waste. It showed me that industrial efficiency often comes at an ecological cost that coastal and river communities eventually pay for dearly and with unimaginably devastating consequences.
Expect the unexpected: An evaluation of climate impacts on Alaskan fisheries
Like a rampant rumor, word of low catch traveled through the Sitka Sound fleet. It was, to most local fishermen, the worst king salmon opener they had ever experienced. And it should be, to all, absolutely terrifying.
Knowledge accumulated from decades of commercial and subsistence fishing proved futile as salmon simply could not be found. Empty hooks despite weeks of work deeply affect the livelihoods and well-being of individuals, communities, and local industries.
Working as a deckhand with longtime Sitka fisherman and conservationist Eric Jordan, I heard the solemn word "dystopic" muttered more than a few times. It is the profound uncertainty of what future years will bring – a new degree of variability and unpredictability in the ocean ecosystem – that paints a distressing picture for Alaska's fisheries.
This past spring semester, I studied aquatic community dynamics in Iceland, where professors, researchers, and marine experts discussed impacts of increasing climatic and oceanic instability. A central concern is the weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, a system of global ocean currents regulated by salinity and temperature. In a report released this year, the Icelandic Meteorological Office predicts that a collapse of this current system may be approaching sooner than previously thought.
In Alaska, the food vote is especially important
Twice a week, ships from each of Alaska’s two ocean carriers arrive in Anchorage after a days-long journey from Washington state. They carry most of the food Alaskans buy at the grocery store on the road system and beyond. A dizzyingly complex network of boats, trucks and planes then carries food step by step from Anchorage into the vast reaches of the state. At the same time, other ships are heading to Southeast and to the Aleutians, trucks are coming up the Alaska Highway and planes are flying directly from Outside. All carrying the store-bought food we eat.
Every Alaskan eats. The people we elect this November will help shape our food systems — how our food gets here, what it costs and who can reach it. That’s why the Alaska Food Policy Council built an informational resource to help Alaskans see the roles elected officials play in our food systems. We are nonpartisan organizations, and we take no positions on candidates or ballot measures.
Alaska’s food systems are unusually vulnerable. You’ve probably heard the figure that 95% of the food we purchase is imported. No one has hard numbers, but no one disputes the basic premise. We do know our grocery stores only carry three to five days of food at a time. Disruptions from bad weather, ice, natural disasters, or mechanical issues happen regularly — we’ve all experienced empty shelves. Food insecurity is commonplace across the state and heightened in rural areas. And groceries cost more, too: A cart of basic groceries that costs $45 in Washington D.C., costs $55 in Anchorage, $75 in Nome and $109 in Iliamna, according to 2025 grocery cart project results.
Image credit: Pixabay
Special Update: Protect the Roadless Rule, Protect Our Fisheries!
On August 20th, the U.S. Forest Service released its proposed plan to move forward with removing Roadless Rule protections for the Tongass National Forest (and all national forests). That means more than 9 million acres of the Tongass National Forest will be open to road development and industrial logging and mining. The Forest Service’s proposed removal of Roadless Rule protections ignores strong public support for the Roadless Rule; in 2025, over 95% of public comments submitted to the Forest Service were in support of keeping Roadless Rule protections in place.
Why does this matter for Alaska’s fishermen and seafood industry?
Help Prevent Roadless Rule Protections Removal!
August 24, 2026
We were disappointed to learn last week that the USDA is moving forward with its plans to remove Roadless Rule protections for more than 9 MILLION acres of the Tongass National Forest, opening it up to destructive industrial logging and road construction. This decision endangers Southeast Alaska’s sustainable fisheries and the thousands of fishermen and businesses that depend on it.
In a press statement with Salmon State, Uncruise, and The Boat Company, ALFA executive director Linda Behnken said:
"Fisheries support the economy, culture, and Southeast Alaska way of life. And they do so sustainably, year after year, providing we take care of the forest, rivers and estuaries that the fish depend on. Compromising the fisheries, which annually contribute over $800 million in economic impact to this rural region, for short-term timber extraction funded by the federal government is an unthinkable trade off.”
Rep. Kevin McCabe: Are We Fishing, or Are We Mining
July 9, 2026
Kevin McCabe
Alaska Fish News
“Nobody attacks a mine by talking about what is extracted.
When Alaskans argue about Pebble, we don’t argue about ounces of copper, finite as it is. We argue about the streams, the headwaters, the salmon downstream. The extracted thing isn’t the point. The place it comes out of is the point.”
A clear path forward for Alaska — and the next administration
August 24, 2026
Dan Ortiz
Juneau Independent
”About three weeks ago, Dunleavy administration officials — ADF&G and DEC Commissioners Doug Vincent-Lang and Randy Bates, along with DNR deputy commissioner Brent Goodrum — recently co-authored an opinion piece in the Juneau Independent praising cleanup progress at Canada’s abandoned Tulsequah Chief Mine. That mine has been contaminating international waters flowing into Alaska since before Alaska became a state.
I understand why they’re encouraged. But I also know this issue better than a press release. When it comes to the Tulsequah Chief, it isn’t over until it’s over. Alaska has been receiving promises for years — dating back to the early 2000s—and too often we see progress measured in statements instead of actual cleanup outcomes that protect Alaska’s communities, fisheries, and wild salmon.”
Read the full article here.
