Fish Fight Shapes Alaska's Tight Senate Race as Salmon Runs Fade

In Alaska's closely watched U.S. Senate race, one of the loudest arguments is about fish. Salmon that have long fed Indigenous communities are failing to return to some rivers in the western part of the state, and the question of who is to blame has become a fixture of campaign ads, NPR reported.

The outcome could help decide which party controls the Senate, even though the people who feel the loss most directly live in remote villages far from Washington.

What is happening to the salmon?

According to NPR, too few salmon now return from the Bering Sea to the Kuskokwim River in most years. To protect the remaining fish, government agencies often close the river to fishing, including for families who fish to feed themselves.

Evon Waska, who lives on the river, told NPR that his drying racks should be full but are empty. He blames industrial trawlers working miles offshore and says regulators shut down people like him first, not the boats.

Why are trawlers at the center of the dispute?

NPR described the pollock fishery as a $1 billion industry, much of it based in Seattle. Trawlers tow a sock-shaped net a quarter mile long, with an opening as wide as a football field, to catch pollock, a white fish used in products such as imitation crab.

The nets also scoop up valuable king salmon and other fish that are not the target. That accidental catch, known as bycatch, is discarded, and NPR said Alaskans are increasingly angry about it.

Heather Mann, who leads a trawlers association, argues that blaming the pollock fishery will not help western Alaska. She told NPR that, according to the science, eliminating pollock fishing would have only a minimal effect on whether salmon runs recover. Trawlers say they have caught 40,000 Alaska salmon so far this year, which NPR noted is a tiny percentage of the enormous pollock harvest.

Where do the Senate candidates stand?

Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, who NPR said has long been an ally of the pollock industry, is promoting a new bill this year. He described it as the most comprehensive bycatch legislation ever, aimed at cutting bycatch and protecting seafloor habitat.

Democratic challenger Mary Peltola, who is Indigenous and from the Kuskokwim region, says she would ban factory trawlers, the largest vessels in the pollock fleet. She calls Sullivan's bill an election-year ploy and says he took more than $300,000 from trawlers before offering what she called a half-hearted solution.

Ads on both sides reflect the split. One praises Sullivan for pushing to reduce bycatch, another says he takes big money from out-of-state corporate trawlers, and a third accuses Peltola of telling fish tales to win votes.

Why does it matter to people in Alaska?

For many communities, the stakes go well beyond one election. NPR reported that subsistence fishing is the main occupation in the Kuskokwim River village of Kwethluk and the backbone of its culture. The tribal president there described walking into a neighbor's smokehouse that sat unused all summer and said most smokehouses in the village look the same.

She called it a slow trend of closing the community's workforce out. Families who depend on salmon for food face closed rivers and empty racks, and the lost harvest affects both their diet and a way of life that has been passed down for generations.

She told NPR she hopes the close race will make the wider world aware of the threat her community faces, whoever wins.

What is at stake nationally?

NPR said Alaska could help determine the balance of power in the Senate this year. That gives a regional fisheries fight unusual national weight: a state with a small population has become a place where a question about industrial fishing, Indigenous food security and campaign money could affect who holds a Senate seat.

Waska put the grievance in plain terms, saying regulators close the river to him and his people before they ever restrict the trawlers. Mann and the industry reject the idea that pollock fishing is the main cause of the salmon decline, and the two sides have not found common ground.

Around Prague, based on reporting by NPR