The bitter back-and-forth between Republican US Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola over the future of Alaska’s trawling industry isn’t just about fish.
Well, it’s mostly about fish.
But it’s also part of a bigger fight over the influence that massive corporations wield over the state’s fisheries and beyond that Democrats hope will help flip control of the US Senate. Peltola has been keen to point out that distinction in her pledge to crack down on trawling and bycatch—when salmon and other fish get caught in trawl nets pulled along the ocean floor.
“Our fight is not against small and mid-size boats that keep communities like Kodiak strong. It’s against the out-of-state corporate greed that leads to wanton waste and damage to our sea floor,” Peltola said at the Kodiak fisheries debate earlier this month.
Peltola’s point about corporate greed is underscored by a new report detailing a trend of corporate consolidation in the state’s trawl industry.
The report, commissioned by the political group Alaskans Against Big Trawl (an offshoot of the 907 Initiative), links together public records of the fleets, finding that ultimately, out of 163 total vessels operating in the state’s trawling industry, more than half are owned by a handful of corporate groups. It notes that 15 ownership groups own 98 vessels, with most of those companies based out of Washington, where bottom trawling has already been banned in state waters.
The report also notes that while those 15 ownership groups own 60% of the vessels, they own virtually all the other infrastructure, including all 20 at-sea mothership processors and 42 of 43 combination trawler/processing ships.
Calling out corporate connections
Peltola, who is Yup’ik, has made her heritage and childhood on the Kuskokwim River central to her campaign message, tapping into Alaskans’ anxieties about declining fish populations. In Alaska, much of the blame for poor fish runs falls on bycatch from corporate fishing vessels—many owned by Outside companies that extract profits from the impacted communities.
And she argues that Sullivan’s tendency to side with corporate interests makes him weak on the issue, noting that he has taken nearly $400,000 in contributions from groups and individuals connected to the trawling industry. She says the whole fixation on making money misses the critical value of people who rely on subsistence fishing.
“We are only trying to feed our own families. We’re down to 20% of what we historically harvested. We do not contribute anything to the gross domestic product or ex-vessel value. We’re just trying to feed our families,” Peltola said at a 2021 congressional hearing as the then-executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.
The Alaskans Against Big Trawl report argues that the outsized influence Outside corporations have in Alaska’s fishing industry has far-reaching impacts that may be hard to measure.
“The consequences extend beyond ownership itself,” the report argues. “This creates a fundamental geographic and economic disconnect: those who control and profit from the resource are often not the same people or communities that live alongside the resource, depend on it or bear the consequences of its use.”
The messaging is part of a broader theme that Democrats are seizing on in this year’s elections, casting incumbent Republicans like Sen. Sullivan and Republican US Rep. Nick Begich as willing to use their cozy corporate connections to enrich themselves. Peltola has also slammed Sullivan for his repeated support of President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, which has sharply driven up fuel prices and strained fishermen.
“When I smell the scent of diesel, the first thing I think of is my dad’s Volvo Penta inboard motor. … That diesel is getting more and more expensive for our fishermen, more and more expensive to make ice, more and more expensive for our processors to process these fish,” she said at the Kodiak fisheries debate. “We need a break here.”
On Thursday, Sullivan once again voted against reining in the war.
For his part, Sullivan has sought to save face with his own bycatch bill, which seeks to provide subsidies to trawling companies to limit bycatch. That bill cleared the US Senate Commerce Committee last week, but it has met a frosty reception from Alaskans skeptical of trawlers.
Alaska fisheries writer Laine Welch noted that the legislation has faced a notable lack of backlash from industrial trawlers, suggesting that they prefer his lighter-touch approach to the hard limits Peltola has proposed.
“The trawl sector apparently views him as its strategic shield against Peltola. If they aggressively attack his bill, they could politically weaken their strongest ally in Washington,” she wrote, noting that many of the Alaska-presenting groups in favor of trawling have questionable industry connections.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
