Fishery managers will meet on trawl seafloor contact, with no power to recommend

State and federal fishery managers will meet in Anchorage Oct. 16 to discuss whether trawl gear is contacting the seafloor, in a session structured to produce no recommendations and the first of its kind to take testimony only from people in the room.

The meeting is a joint committee of the Alaska Board of Fisheries and the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. The Council's purpose statement calls it "information exchange and education about the impacts of bottom contact from trawl fisheries," and says the committee "does not generate proposals." The committee has met four times since 2018. The 2018 and 2020 sessions published a toll-free number for participating by phone, and the 2020 meeting was online only. This is the first at which a remote attendee cannot speak — in a state where most communities with fish at stake are off the road system.

The 2009 protocol that created the committee says it provides "recommendations to the joint NPFMC and BOF." October's session disclaims that power.

The question on the table is a gap between what state regulation says and what it measures. Pelagic trawl gear is barred from contacting the seabed. But the Alaska Department of Fish and Game wrote in February that gear "is regulated not by how the gear is operated, but by how it is configured." A net without rollers, bobbins or chafing gear is pelagic by definition, whether or not it drags bottom, and no sensor is required to show it doesn't.

Four proposals to close that gap went before the Board of Fisheries in March: closing waters west of 170 degrees to groundfish trawling, treating state-waters trawl gear as bottom gear unless proven otherwise, requiring seafloor contact sensors, and requiring salmon excluders. The Board took no action on all four, 7-0 each time. Its published record timestamps the votes: the last three took 51 seconds. It records names, votes and times, and no reasoning.

The Board's staff opposed the proposals on workability rather than merit, and urged coordination with the Council, federal fisheries managers and enforcement first. Linda Kozak, commenting for a crab vessel, wrote that "several traditional golden king crab fishing areas have been overrun by large trawlers."

October's meeting is that coordination, without the power to recommend. The three Board members on the committee — chair Marit Carlson-Van Dort, vice-chair Tom Carpenter and Mike Wood — all voted no action in March. No Board record names who requested the meeting, when, or on what vote.

The federal side has moved further: the Council recommended a revised pelagic trawl gear definition in June 2025, with rules expected in 2026 or 2027.

Written comments are due to the Council by 5 pm Oct. 9. The window opened Sept. 8; as of the morning of Sept. 24, the Council's portal showed none filed. The meeting is at the Marriott Anchorage Downtown.