09-03-2026 RDC Breakfast Forum: Alaska Seafood:

We're pleased to have Sam Murphy moderate our panel today. Sam is the Vice President of Communications for the Alaska Pollock Fisheries Alliance. He works to advance public understanding of Alaska's pollock fisheries and the science, people, and communities behind it. Based in Seattle, Sam spends significant time in Alaska engaging with fishermen, communities, industry, and Alaskans across the state. His work centers on bringing great context and understanding to one of Alaska's most important and often misunderstood industries.

You know, fish in Alaska is personal. Fish in Alaska can be passionate. One thing we Alaskans don't have an issue with is sharing our opinion, and that's fantastic. I am very confident that we're gonna have varying opinions in this room. There will be question and answer session afterwards as long as we have time.

And my ask, and the ask of RDC, is we just ask in civil way and be respectful. And with that, I'm gonna ask that Sam introduce the panel and we get this thing rolling. Thanks, Scott, and good morning to everybody here. Thanks for joining us. Scott, on this first Thursday of September.

How is it already September already? It's always weird when you wrote a bio about yourself and then you hear it. So appreciate the intro, Scott. I'm going to introduce the folks to my left, your right. Really good panel this morning, and we're gonna, we're gonna kind of broaden the scope about Alaska seafood but really dive in on pollock.

And these three bring expertise in their lanes. So to my left is Nicole Kimball. She's the Vice President of the Pacific with the Pacific Seafood Processors Association. The acronym is PSPA. We're gonna give you a lot of acronyms this morning, so try to remember them.

To the left of Nicole is a man that probably does not need introduction in this room, but his name's Rick Wickbeck, and he's the executive director of The Truth Alaska. And then to Rick's left is Luke Fanning, who's the chief executive officer of the Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association. And the acronym for that is a PICTA, and that's one of the 6 community development CDQ programs in the pollock fishery, and we'll talk about that a little bit more. So again, thanks for joining us. That's the panel.

We're going to get into Alaska seafood and really dive into pollock, and then we'll get right into it. I know we're on a time clock here. I want to— Like Scott said, we will take questions and answers at the end, so please jot down any thoughts. That may come your way, and we'll be happy to field those at the end. So I think it's important as we enter this conversation for me to set the stage a little bit to set up our panel here.

We want to establish the broader importance of seafood, the Alaska seafood sector nationally, right? So when we're looking at the seafood sector as a whole, and this includes all fisheries, this— Alaska is this nation's leading seafood-producing state, right? So we're looking at roughly 60% of the volume that's processed. And what that encompasses is, you know, over 40,000 jobs, $5.2 billion in economic activity happening. And so, you know, that trickles down the stage.

And so it— these numbers are important, especially as you think about the time that we live in, in the political environment, especially the Trump administration, where, you know, they've made it a priority to have American seafood competitive— competitiveness back on the table, and especially when we're looking at our ability to complete— compete in global markets. And, and so I think, you know, context here for Alaska, that's not, you know, an abstract federal policy in, in this state. That, that matters to fishermen, communities, and processors. And so kind of just So take that as the baseline as we move forward here. And a big piece of what we're going to talk about today is that interdependence.

And I think, you know, this is one way to frame it, but we really feel that the seafood sector in Alaska is a three-legged stool, essentially. And, you know, all of these sectors depend on healthy other sectors. So when we're looking at this analogy, we're looking at the fishermen who harvest the resource responsibly, processors take that responsible harvest and turn it into marketable products, right? And then none of that happens if you don't have the coastal communities across the state whose infrastructure, workforce, and local infrastructure make that all possible. So it's really an interconnected system here, and I think that's something that gets lost sometimes.

In the conversation. And so you'll hear a little bit more specifics of what that looks like at the community level, especially from Luke. I think we're looking at this from a broader scope, but at the community level, there are certainly microcosms that reverberate, and Luke's— Luke's— can certainly give an example of that from his communities.

So as we talk about the importance of the seafood sector um, in Alaska, there's really two species driving that, and we're looking at this from a value and volume proposition. And the two species are salmon and pollock. And together, roughly, those two species account for, you know, three-quarters, 75% of Alaska's seafood harvest annually. And those numbers don't really fluctuate dramatically year to year either. And so This is important because when you're looking at the breakdown here, volume allows processors to process year-round.

And then, you know, we're looking at the value proposition too of the species. So I think there's a really good connection here between fisheries, and this goes back to the interdependencies, and we'll, we'll talk about this, but the volume allows for you know, infrastructure across Alaska to be supported year-round. And if there's one thing in my open that I'd like you to, you know, try to remember, and I think this is maybe an easy one too, you know, now that we've established kind of the two pieces, the two species that drive the seafood sector in Alaska, let's— we'll take a closer look at pollock here. And so this is kind of what we call the 5-4-3 analogy, and these are rough numbers, but it really helps illustrate the importance of pollock to the state specifically. So rough numbers again, right, but on annual, about 5 billion pounds of Alaska seafood are harvested.

5 Billion pounds, right? Of that, 4 billion pounds come from trawl fisheries. That's 80%. Of that total, 3 billion pounds are pollock. So we're looking at 60% of the fish harvested in Alaska !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is just a picture of, in too many words, but on how the fishery itself is managed.

And I think the important part, you know, this all comes from the Magnuson-Stevens Act. So Senator Ted Stevens, this is his legacy. But the Alaska pollock fishery is managed pretty conservatively. I put this figure up here so you can see the adult biomass of pollock. It is pretty tremendous in the Bering Sea.

This is Bering Sea only. And so you can see like the most recent year here is 2024, and it's almost 10 billion— sorry, 10 million metric tons, so that's 22 billion pounds. Scientists are the ones that set the catch limits, or the overfishing limits and the acceptable biological catch limits. That's baked into federal law. So the scientists are setting that red line of overfishing.

They're setting the green line, which is the acceptable biological catch, basically how much catch could you take over time and continue to have a sustainable fishery. And then the catch limit, what people are allowed to harvest, is that teal-y line on the bottom. And so I think the overall point here is that the Bering Sea pollock fishery harvests usually 13 to 15% of the total adult biomass, and there's just a huge biomass of pollock in the Bering Sea. In 2026, those harvest limits were about 30% below what could have been biologically sustainable. So this is— happens every year.

There's an annual stock assessment, and the scientists set these overall numbers to ensure that there's sustainability throughout time. Next one.

Another piece of the picture on management is habitat impacts, and I think this is something maybe people don't recognize. This is also part of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, so it's required by federal law that NOAA, federal government, looks at impacts to habitat and the ecosystem for every fishery in federal waters. So they do what's called an essential fish habitat analysis. They do it every 5 years. At the end of their 5-year evaluation, they put out a report.

They take a small break, and then they do another 5 years. And it's a cumulative effect analysis, so they can see over time what kind of impacts are all fishing gears, not just pelagic trawl gear, but all fishing gears having on essential fish habitat or bottom habitat. And so the footprint for the pollock fishery, I mean, the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands is pretty huge. The cumulative footprint for the fishery is about 1% of that region, and in the Gulf of Alaska, it's a little bit less than 1%. But overall, like, the last evaluation for this is that 5% of the cumulative habitat in the Bering Sea was disturbed by all gear types.

So that's looking at whether those impacts are more than minimal or more than temporary. So that is inclusive of all gear types, including pollock trawl. 5% In the Bering Sea and about 1% in the Gulf of Alaska. The federal government is doing a new evaluation of this right now, so in another year or two we'll have a more updated look, but it hasn't really changed that much over time.

This is a big flashy slide for a very boring topic, but this is pretty important in understanding how the fishery works and why we can say things about habitat impact or bycatch impact or what's caught in the pollock fishery, and that's because there's 100% monitoring required by law. So we have transitioned, or the fisheries transitioned, in both the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska to electronic monitoring. So there's multiple cameras on every trip, every pollock trip. And then for catcher vessels, vessels that are delivering into Alaska, that— all those cameras do is make sure that nothing is discarded overboard. That everything's retained on the vessel.

It's brought back to a shoreside processing plant, and then everything is counted, weighed. Every single salmon is counted. It's a census of salmon. And then they do genetic sampling on those salmon. The salmon caught in the bycatch, as you might know, are Chinook and chum, not other species of salmon.

So there's a genetic sampling program that's done annually. So you know where those fish came from or where they were destined to go. Was it Alaska or was it somewhere else?

This is just a quick one on the composition of the bycatch. I put 98 to 99%. That's historical, but really in recent years it's 99%. Oops. I didn't do it.

So the majority of what's caught in this fishery is pollock. That's why NOAA has on their website that it's a— one of the cleanest fisheries in the United States because most of it is pollock. But this is the breakdown of that 1%. I believe this is 2025, so it does vary each year, but you can see that the vast majority are non-marketable species, jellyfish and squid, and then the rest of that 1% is made up of other species.

This is also important, and it goes with that monitoring slide. This is something that is done every year by NOAA scientists and Fish and Game scientists. It's the genetic sampling of the bycatch. So what we care about a lot, obviously, in Alaska and in the United States are salmon. And so the Chinook salmon and the chum salmon caught in the bycatch, we do genetic sampling so we understand what proportion of that is coming from Alaska River systems and what is coming from other systems.

So this is just the Bering Sea pollock fishery, but pretty consistently about half of the Chinook bycatch is coming from coastal western Alaska, and I have a slide that kind of shows the aggregate systems that those comprise. And then for chum salmon, it's pretty different. It averages about 15% of the chum are from western Alaska. The vast majority are hatchery fish from Russia and Asia. And that makes for a more difficult management problem because you're trying to reduce your impacts on western Alaska chum, but you don't care as much about Russian and Asian hatchery fish.

So how do you keep having a fishery that meets the letter of the law, has optimum yield, produces benefits for the United States and for Alaska, but minimizes impacts on the salmon that we care about.

This is just a breakdown, really, it's not important to focus on the numbers so much as just to focus on what you can say by the— through the data. So this is one year, this is 2024, and this is in number salmon, but you can break it down to the estimates. Scientists do this and present it, not me, but break it down to see how many of those salmon that were caught in the bycatch came from the lower and middle Yukon. So in this year, 12. The Upper Yukon, Yukon, Canada, 74 fish.

You can see that coastal western Alaska aggregate region, it goes from Norton Sound all the way inclusive of Bristol Bay, 4,000 fish. So you can do this every year with a level of data and accountability that's provided in the fishery. This is all required by law.

And because I was asked to talk about the management, it's not just here's the data and what can we do with it, but But we have hard caps in this fishery. There's a hard cap that's annual. There's also a lower cap that the fisheries manage to, so it's a double cap system. I did put in here the total Chinook. I should have put a longer time series.

It would have looked more dramatic, but I didn't. It's just the last few years, last 6 years. But you can see the blue line on the bottom that goes up and down. That's the total Chinook bycatch. And then you can see the red line is the Western Alaska component of that bycatch.

And I think what's important to understand is that because we do all the data collection, we know the numbers, we know the age, the scale samples of these fish, the genetics of the salmon bycatch, then scientists can regularly calculate the impact of the pollock bycatch on Western Alaska salmon runs. So we don't really do that in a lot of other fisheries. With this fishery, we can because it's such an enormous amount of information and because salmon are so important. So on average, the pollock bycatch has a 1.9% impact on those western Alaska runs. And that means if the pollock fishery didn't exist at all, you might expect to see 1.9% more returns to that western Alaska component, all those systems in— from the Norton Sound area through Bristol Bay.

So what we're doing in management is trying to improve on that 1.9%. Can we get that lower than 1.9%? There's also caps and closures that were just approved in 2026 for Western Alaska chum bycatch. I mean, I could answer questions about that, but we don't really have time to go into that. But that's a totally new management system for— to reduce impacts on Western Alaska chum.

I might have one more slide. Yeah. And then this is, this is a pretty important part. Caps are one thing that, you know, that's an upper limit so that you can't go beyond that or you close the fishery. But this is what tries to keep salmon bycatch low throughout the season, no matter what the conditions are, no matter what salmon conditions are, salmon run conditions, no matter what pollock trends are.

And so salmon excluders are required. That's an excluder that you put on your gear, you put on your net. We have some really great gear experts at APU, actually. They're required in the Bering Sea. So that's supposed to let the pollock come into the net and be efficiently catching pollock.

But having an opportunity for salmon, which are much stronger swimmers, to get out of the net before the net's brought on board. So those are required.

Captains are required to share all of their location and bycatch. I mean, if you know fishermen, you wouldn't really do that voluntarily, but this is a requirement. Everybody signs a contract. There's penalties for it. And you basically have to share all your information so that you can identify hotspots of salmon.

Salmon aren't staying in one place at one time. And so this is actually probably the most important part of the management piece is that those fishing areas, when they do see those hotspots, are closed on a rolling basis throughout the whole season. So they're closed from 4 to 7 days depending on what the hotspot looks like, how big it is, what the numbers of salmon are. But that means that you're trying to identify places and times of year to avoid throughout the entire season. Just because a fixed area closure doesn't make much sense for a salmon that moves all the time.

There's also a new genetic lab in Dutch Harbor. This is paid for primarily by the Bristol Bay CDQ Group, but now by other industry groups. They provide weekly genetic data on chum bycatch to identify whether the chum are from Alaska or whether they're from Russia, Asian hatcheries. And that really is helping people on the water know when to move. If you get a bunch of chum, you're— Oh, big alert, but if it's all Russian chum, you're probably not gonna close that area.

You're gonna keep fishing. If it's Alaska chum, a bigger proponent of Alaska chum, then you close that area and move. So this is on the water in near real time, and it's probably the most important piece of the management system. As Sam said, I could talk for a long time on how this fishery's managed, and I hope you got some high points. For me, the take-homes are really We know a lot about this fishery.

It's managed very conservatively as a pollock fishery, but we know more about it than any fishery in the United States. It has the highest monitoring and accountability, maybe than any fishery in the world. So that's why we can answer these questions. So I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. I'm just trying to show you the data available to answer the questions that people might have.

It's also a fishery that's in a constant state of improvement. It's not a static management system, so there have been changes and improvements and more restrictions on the fishery for at least the past decade. I'm glad to answer any particular questions, but I hope that gives you a little bit of an overview on how the fishery is managed.

Really appreciate it, Nicole. So much insight there, and we can continue that. I, I, I, I, it, it's always baffling to me when you showed the slide on the biomass just to see how much pollock is out there. It's, it's kind of unfathomable to the human mind usually. I do have one question for you.

I think if you can answer it quick, promise. Okay, um, I, I think, you know, sometimes when we— it's important to distinguish here, you know, spiel, uh, the theme is well managed. Um, that's different than saying there's nothing left to improve, right? Um, so what's the pollock sector doing to ensure, you know, that there is continuous improvement even when the fishery has, you know, for decades operated within a federally managed fishery that set very conservative limits.

I guess, and I don't speak for the pollock fishery, but what I see is, you know, this movement toward electronic monitoring. That was a huge improvement that's fairly recent that allows you to do a better census of all fish, not just salmon. The industry I know is working on a chum excluder. The Chinook excluders are already required. Chum are different.

They're different in the water column, different swimmers.

So they're working on their own. I know work— maybe Luke can speak to this— on a chum excluder, which could work in tandem with a Chinook excluder. I think this last point on the mobile lab, like, that was developed by industry, developed by Bristol Bay folks. It's a huge improvement in terms of being able to move people around when it makes sense. That was all an initiative from the Pollock industry.

And then I know that they are working with APU Lab to identify more specific bottom contact, like how, how much bottom contact does each vessel configuration have. Every, every gear type in Alaska has bottom contact, but being able to identify that bottom contact and then potentially reduce that if there are concerns about habitat, that's something that industry is taking on and the North Pacific Council is taking on with a lot of help from APU, I should note. So those are a few, few examples. That was efficient and quick. Thank you.

Luke, we're going to get on to you, and I think you're going to give us some insight on how the fishery interacts with itself and other fisheries, specifically from the CDQ lens. And I think it's important to note that Alaska pollock benefits communities all across coastal Alaska, but you're going to highlight the CDQ elements of that. Yes, thank you, Sam. I can certainly do that. I think one thing to know about me coming into this conversation is I do work for a CDQ group, and I'm here representing APTA today.

And what that means is I'm serving subsistence-oriented communities in western Alaska. I'm also heavily involved in fisheries on a personal basis. I still captain a small boat longline vessel for salmon and halibut and am involved in charter fisheries as well. So I think what I bring to the table here is the unique perspective of a person who is coming from the center of a Venn diagram that includes multiple different perspectives. And I think a really unique thing happens when, when we try to take a step back away from the user groups and try to see things from a perspective that includes how all of these pieces might fit together.

Is my mic working okay? It feels like it's cutting out. Okay, great. So the CDQ program itself was created in 1992 with the passage of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, and in its simplest form, the job of the program was to take 10% of the fishing rights of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands fisheries and reserve those rights for positive community development for 65 villages in western Alaska. So today the CDQ program serves over 30,000 people in communities that are represented from Atka in the very left, just east of Adak Island, which is one of our communities, all the way to Diomede, which is served by the Norton Sound Economic Development Corporation.

So there are 6 groups that received 10% of those fishing rights, and from there we're going to talk a little bit about what our our mission is and, and what CDQ looks like today. The Magnuson-Stevens Act had 4 goals for us. The first was to provide an opportunity for our communities to participate and invest in the Bering Sea fisheries. The second was to support economic development in these communities, to alleviate poverty and provide social and economic benefits, and finally, to achieve sustainable and diversified local economies. So our mission in CDQ is a mile wide And when you think about the nature and the fabric of these 65 communities that we serve, this is a really difficult mission, creating sustainable local economies in communities that have incredible fuel prices and transportation and logistics issues.

And, you know, you can go on and on. It's a really difficult mission. So an important thing to understand is how each of our groups serves each of our communities varies widely by region.

Today, CDQ is almost entirely self-sustaining. We are funded by these fisheries and the investments that we have made. So apart from a very small number of state-associated programs that are ultimately going to research or scholarships, we are self-funded, and our mandate is to make investments that are largely within fisheries. So today we own over $1.4 billion in assets between the 6 groups combined and account for $350 million or more in annual revenue. One of the concepts that we talk about is, is the Alaskanization of fisheries.

When you look at how this program was created, we started with 10% of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands fisheries. Today we've increased that ownership to over 33% in the Bering Sea pollock fisheries and nearly 30% of each the Bering Sea cod and Pacific cod longline fisheries. What that means is that the CDQ program is the most successful example in our state's history of increasing Alaskan ownership of these fisheries. And not only that, but that ownership is held by the 65 communities that live closest to these fisheries. The picture that we've got here is of our chairman, Mark Sniggeroff, and that picture is particularly meaningful to me because it represents someone who grew up in a subsistence village in Atka and has been a small boat open skiff commercial fisherman.

And he's sitting at the helm of the Arctic Prowler, which is the flagship of our Pacific cod longline fleet. So that represents how this program has taken a program envisioned with the passage of the Magnuson-Stevens Act and elevated it into a program that is controlled, driven, and managed by residents of these 65 villages. So these are people who care very deeply about not, uh, ones to make decisions that fail to consider the needs of subsistence communities or salmon-oriented communities. These are people who live along the Bering Sea and have a tremendous, uh, regard and responsibility for what's taking place in these fisheries.

Today, CDQ accounts for about $80 to $100 million on average in spending in these western Alaska communities. That's not total economic impact. That's not revenue. That's just the component that's spent in our regions, which is one of our primary metrics.

So put another way, CDQ accounts for more spending on average than the state of Alaska's Power Cost Equalization program and community assistance programs combined. So when we talk about this fishery, this is a self-sustaining, self-funding fishery that provides a very significant impact to western Alaska communities. And unfortunately, we won't have time to really do this justice, but that spending is layered out in many different ways. Job creation and workforce development is a key element of all of our, uh, platforms. We invest a lot, over $3 million a year, in education, job training, and scholarships.

We account for roughly $30 million on average in infrastructure spending, and we support over 1,400 jobs in region. And it's been estimated that that's over 5,000 jobs in total, including the secondary impacts. Importantly, we also provide access for small boat fisheries. So a lot of the small boat fisheries exist or are supported by, uh, Pollock in the end. And those are things like open skiff halibut fisheries or setnet fisheries.

The picture that I've got here is one of the first community development grant projects that we did when we launched a new program a few years ago. And that was in the community of Nikolski on Umnak Island, where residents needed access to new equipment to provide safe drinking water. So the program took village labor, provided them training, provided equipment costs, and the cumulative result is a new drinking water system. A lot of the things we invest in, they're not highly visible, they're not sexy projects, but it's basic community infrastructure without which the state or someone would, would not have a reasonable alternative to provide that funding.

One of the things that we'd like to share with the audience and that we're also sharing with candidates is that There's a lot of campaign messaging taking place right now that is oversimplifying complex issues. As you heard from Nicole, there is a lot of very important research taking place, and the scientists are doing some of the most important research of our time to leverage new, new tools to help us make better decisions and identify how we can protect the fish we really need to protect without causing undue harm to the economic basis of this fishery. The Community Development Quota program is one of the state's most important rural development programs. And when we talk about trawl fisheries, when we talk about pollock specifically, one-third of that is owned by these communities. An important point to remember too is that healthy salmon and sustainable commercial fisheries are not mutually exclusive.

What we need to do is we need to figure out how to balance measurable and meaningful conservation benefits alongside the community and economic impacts in these fisheries. And I just want to touch on this picture. This was taken a few weeks ago out in the community of Nelson Lagoon. The fishermen in this small boat skiff fishery are fishing for sockeye salmon. Their access to that fishery is made possible largely by the commercial fisheries, the large-scale fisheries, including Pollock, because we provide gear grants that give them access to working equipment better nets.

We also provide ice and tendering service, without which this community would not have access to a market to sell their fish. So Sam mentioned the interdependence of these fisheries. I want to underscore how important that is and how the money that comes from the pollock fishery is also making possible many other fisheries ranging from crab to salmon and so on. Thank you, Sam. Yeah, thanks, Thanks, Luke.

That's an incredible background on the CDQ program. And I know we're tight on time, but I do feel like a question is in order here. So if you can be quick as well, you know, I think most folks would be— it would be news that, you know, CDQs are required by law to invest in federal fisheries. And so, I mean, you also support very small-scale fisheries in your region. On paper, that seems like maybe different interests.

How do you guys balance that? Well, that's a great question, Sam. Um, yes, our mandate is to allow these communities to participate and invest in fisheries, and the people who are the decision makers behind these fisheries also live in these communities. They're very interested in the sustainability of the fisheries and how they're managed. But when it comes to making those decisions and providing that kind of economic opportunity, we also we can't do it without larger-scale fisheries that provide the revenue to support that.

And in many cases, uh, we might be providing as much as 70% of a community's municipal budget. So there's a need to have balance between the large-scale fisheries to make the smaller-scale fisheries possible, and there's also a need to be very transparent and clear with what the impact of those fisheries are so that our stakeholders feel good about the decisions that we're making in the business businesses that we're involved with. Thanks, Luke. That's helpful. We will get into our final piece here, and he's been gracious and sat through the whole panel here.

Luke spoke to that oversimplification we're seeing in the political ecosphere here. Rick, I'm hoping— I think you're going to talk to us a little bit about some of the polarizing false narratives and what the fishery in this wild, unprecedented political environment is doing and particularly what Alaskans should be looking for. So if you would have told me 30 years ago that I'd be doing fish politics right now, I would have probably asked you to stop me. But I am not from this world. I've done pretty much everything else.

I know most of you guys in here. But this is important. And when I was working for Congressman Begich last year, this came up. Up regularly. This conversation was part of every week, uh, calls into the office.

And the more I learned about CDQ, the more I learned about the pollock fishery, the more I understood the underpinning of the entire commercial fishing world by pollock, the more I realized that the story needed to be told a different way. And so earlier this year, um, I started an organization called The Truth Yes, it's a bold name choice. We focus on 4 things: facts, data, science, underpinned by the fact that this fishery is important. Go ahead, Sam. The whole goal— and I'm going to shout out Adam Trombley in the back, who is my— the yin to my yang.

He's a super partner on this— is to restore trust in the fishery. There's so There's so much misinformation out there from well-funded, mostly outside money coming into Alaska, no different than we've seen in any other industry in the state of Alaska. It's the Arabellas, it's the Gates, it's the Packard, it's the lower 49, shut 'em all down, turn Alaska into a park, forget about development, it doesn't matter. Messaging aimed at the, at the fishery for the last 5, 6, 7 years. Since 2019, $30 million has been spent trying to beat down this fishery, and it's time that the fishery fights back.

So we're going to restore trust to the pollock fishery through a very aggressive— and have started this this year— door-to-door campaign. We've knocked 29,000 doors in Southcentral and Interior Alaska. Talking to policymakers, talking to community groups, and realigning the fact that this fishery is not ruining the ecosystem. It's not some cowboy-driven, haphazard, nobody cares about the water, nobody cares about the communities, Wild West environment. It's exactly the opposite.

Nicole and Luke have given you that. And then elevate Alaskan voices, right? How many times as Alaskans do we hear, "We're from the outside and we're here to save you"? Does that sit well with anybody? But that's exactly what's happened over the last 5, 6, 7 years.

And so it's time to change it. So the truth— before you flip the page— the truth has heard, and you guys have all heard this wonderful number from the opponents of the fishery that 74% of Alaskans would love to ban trawl.

And if you haven't heard it, well, I don't know how because the opponents love to push that number. 74% Of Alaskans in a push-poll driven by Data for Progress, which is the same left side of the aisle, anti-development, pulling company from outside, that somehow thinks that 58% of Alaskans don't like ANWR or that 70% of Alaskans don't support mining or that 80% of Alaskans think that the Cook Inlet should be saved for beluga whales and not oil and gas development. Same group, but now they're taking on the fishery with this 74% number. So before we did anything else, we did a poll and we used Dittman, Matt and Justin Larkin and crew, because I think they're the most credible, most easily polled group in Alaska. And I want to show you the results of this.

That is right, 75% of people that were polled back in February believe that there's an acceptable path to overall trawl.

That's not a mistake number. So whereas the left side anti-development crew touts 74%. The Alaskan polling group says that 75% say that there's an acceptable path. Even so, there was first a question asked in the poll, kind of an uneducated, no, no information given, and it was 50/50. Even after that, um, which I was happy with that number because it was definitely different than 74.

33% Of the people who said it should be banned had come around to a different side when we were done with explaining the things that Nicole talked about, salmon excluders and bycatch rates, the things that Luke talked about, CDQ investment, the number of jobs, the number of, the $2.5 billion that this fishery brings to the US every year. 75-15, That's a real number. So What I would say is this, um, I fight, this industry fights for a better Alaska, for a more sustainable, um, set of circumstances. We use technology, we use, um, science, facts, and data to drive this fishery, and I'm proud to be part of it. I've had a lot of fun.

I tell people it's the most fun I've ever had in a job. And I've had a lot of fun jobs, but it's great to be part of this and it's great to be here with you guys this morning.

Thanks, Rick. And for the sake of time, I hope you don't mind if I skip forward here, close things out. I want to leave time for a brief question and answer segment. So before we do that though, I appreciate all the panelists up here with me this morning. Hopefully, you know, it was insightful for you guys.

I really want to call out RDC, thanks for giving the Alaska seafood industry the opportunity to have the conversation. You see it on the screen, we mean it when we say let's continue the conversation. This is a proud industry, the people and the operators behind it. And so we're always willing to answer your questions or add additional context. And this is incredibly, you know, it matters, especially in the environment we're operating in, you know, between now and November, these fisheries, if you haven't digested it this morning, are complex, nuanced, and largely interconnected, and you only got a glimpse of that this morning.

So we'd love to continue that conversation. And again, I think Scott said it this morning, we're not asking anyone to agree with us, we're just trying to equip you guys with the facts to make an educated decision on your own. So consider the industry as a resource, and thanks again for your time, attention this morning. Hope you learned a little bit. About Pollock, and I hope this is the beginning of a much longer conversation.

So thanks again, and we're happy to take questions. Awesome. Thanks, Sam. Let's hear it for the panel. First off, time and arriving on time.

I think we have time for 2 questions before we need to close out with remarks. Can anybody have questions? We've got a mic !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If they are worse, why are they certified like you guys are?

Those are great questions. There's a whole— and Fish and Game senior scientists sit on the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission where they work with other countries including Russia. I've sat in a similar situation when I worked for Fish and Game. And I have to say, we know very little about what Russia is taking as bycatch. We know Russia catches everything that we catch.

They catch the same crab, the same cod, the same pollock, the same salmon. We're very similarly situated in terms of harvest species. But we don't know what their bycatch is. They would say they have zero. That's what we were told previously.

They don't categorize it like that, something that they didn't intend to catch. So it's very, very difficult to get information or data out of Russia. I think your second question was on certification. As most people know, you need to have sort of independent third-party certification to sell almost any species of salmon globally. And we do have that.

Almost every species or commercial fishery is sustainably certified. It's also business. And I think the Commissioner of Fish and Game has made a point of this as well. I appreciate the question, Mead.

Those certification systems, they want to provide as many— have as many clients as they possibly can. That's how they make money and how they stay in business. So it is not the same standards applied to everyone. And I think the state of Alaska has made that a very definitive point, that we have much higher labor standards, environmental standards, monitoring, since we have observers and they don't. All of those standards are over and above what Russia has in their fisheries, but they're still certified under one of the certification groups, MSC.

So it's a pretty unfair playing field when that can get them into the same markets that we do when we have such higher standards. But I think the pushback on that is to start to work with a different certification system which we do have. It's just very hard to transition from a certification system that everybody globally understands and knows and is familiar with, but Alaska's developed their own, which they've now expanded globally. And so that is starting to move into be a more familiar certification. Hopefully we can transition to that because it's a lot fairer system when you actually apply the same standards to all fisheries.

So it's a difficult trade world right now, and that's one of the issues. All righty, I think we're going to wrap this up. Again, um, some housekeeping notes to come your way. I'm not going to speak for the panel, but I'm fairly confident that most, if not all, will stick around if you guys have additional questions afterwards. Um, with that, I want to remind everybody that the BLM opened scoping and public comment period for TAPS last Wednesday.

Public comments close September 10th. We would all, especially our good friends at Alyeska Pipeline, appreciate positive comments if you could get those in. The pipeline's incredibly incredibly important to the state of Alaska. And if you don't know, John will tell you all about it. And with that, we welcome the end of the program.

Thank you all for attending today's breakfast, the first one of the season. As Connor mentioned in his report, we're canceling next week, next week's breakfast, September 17th, and have turned our attention to the gubernatorial debate, which will be fun. Um, the luncheon's co-hosted with our fellow industry partners. On the following Monday, September 21st, season pass holders will be able to use those passes to attend And with that, if you have not registered or if you have not sponsored the 47th Annual Resource Conference, which is going to be held the 11th and 12th of November, please reach out to Connor or the team. They'd love to get you in there.

Booths are selling fast. And with that, I'd like to thank you all again for coming. I think this was a great presentation. And let's hear one more hand— round of applause for the panel.