Bering Sea pollock fleet nears its 2026 limits as salmon bycatch debate continues

The Bering Sea pollock fleet is closing in on its 2026 harvest limits, according to NOAA's latest Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands catch report, covering fishing through Oct. 3.

The Community Development Quota sector has taken 99% of its allocation, 137,788 of 139,400 units. That federal program sets aside a share of the Bering Sea catch for six regional nonprofit groups representing 65 western Alaska communities within 50 miles of the coast.

Other sectors range from 85% to 96%, including the largest, AFA inshore, which has caught 509,567 of its 602,050-unit quota. That sector is made up of catcher boats that deliver pollock to shore-based processing plants, under the federal American Fisheries Act's division of the catch.

Pollock fishing also catches salmon. NOAA's 2025 groundfish report recorded 19,773 Chinook and 151,334 other salmon caught incidentally in directed pollock fisheries.

How much that matters to western Alaska rivers is disputed. The Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission's 2023 overview says managers allowed nearly unrestricted marine salmon harvest even as Yukon subsistence fisheries stayed closed. Nicole Kimball of the Pacific Seafood Processors Association told a Resource Development Council forum that pollock bycatch has "a 1.9% impact on those western Alaska runs." Karma Ulvi, chief of the Native Village of Eagle, has testified that the declines stem from many causes, bycatch among them, not bycatch alone.

Interior Alaska tribes have asked NOAA, through consultation, for weekly chum bycatch reports. NOAA renewed a permit in June to test salmon excluder devices. It has also closed the Winter Herring Savings Area to directed pollock trawling from Sept. 30 through March 1, a closure meant to protect herring, not salmon. The Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission says new chum bycatch rules are not expected before June 2028.