Ray Hilborn
Lavoie et al. (2025) demonstrate the impact that the dramatic decline in western Alaska Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha and Chum Salmon O. keta has had on Native communities. Further, the authors make a very good case that Native peoples have been largely excluded from decision making in the management of federal fisheries, especially as these fisheries may impact subsistence users. All knowledge systems show that this decline in Chinook Salmon and Chum Salmon happened and had a terrible impact on rural Native communities. The impact of the decline in Chinook Salmon and Chum Salmon to western Alaskan communities is a concern to all, and every forms of knowledge need to brought to bear to understand what has caused it and help find solutions. However, Lavoie et al. (2025) focus on a single cause, bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fisheries and dismiss the knowledge acquired by decades of western science about the impact of trawl bycatch as “NMFS [National Marine Fisheries Service] scientists are passing off their fantasies as science.” These “NMFS fantasies” are derived from large-scale research programs on the extent of bycatch from the observer program, and the region of origin of the fish determined by state-of-the-art genetics. The average number of Chinook Salmon caught per year in the trawl fishery from 2011–2013 was 18,314 and the number of Chum Salmon was 268,776 (North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, 2024). The most important issue in evaluating the impact on western Alaskan salmon is that the majority of Chum Salmon and half of the Chinook Salmon caught as bycatch are not destined for western Alaska. Genetic analysis shows that roughly half of the trawl bycatch is western Alaskan Chinook Salmon and 19% of the Chum Salmon bycatch is from western Alaska (North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, 2024). The number of western Alaskan Chinook Salmon caught has averaged 8,777 and the number of Chum Salmon is 46,982. The total return to the river in western Alaska Chinook Salmon from 2011–2023 has been 400,000–500,000 (Ianelli, 2024) and for Chum Salmon, the return has been 2–4 million until 2020, when there was a dramatic decline in both the number of Chum Salmon returning to western Alaska and in the trawl bycatch of western Alaska Chum Salmon (North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, 2024). Yet, Lavoie et al. (2025) cite total numbers of bycatch and dismiss the genetics “even if many of those fishes are not from Alaska rivers and have Asia origins as claimed.” In addition, much of the bycatch is made up of young fish that have several years of ocean mortality to encounter before they return to the rivers, so the realized reduction to the return to the rivers are substantially less than the raw bycatch numbers indicate. Thus, to calculate how many western Alaskan fish are caught as bycatch that would have returned to rivers, you must multiply the total catch times the proportion headed to western Alaskan rivers, and then reduce that number based on expected natural mortality in the years before those fish would have matured and returned to the river. Overall, the fraction of the returning Chinook Salmon and Chum Salmon to western Alaskan rivers that were caught by the pollock fishery is estimated to be 1% for Chum Salmon and 2% for Chinook Salmon (Ianelli, 2024). While the several thousand Chinook Salmon and tens of thousands of Chum Salmons would have been very valuable to local subsistence users, a 1 or 2% difference in returns is so small that even if trawl bycatch was totally eliminated, conservation closures implemented would not have changed. For instance, the Yukon River Chinook Salmon return the river averaged about 50,000 fish from 2022–2024 and a total return of 150,000 would be needed to meet the escapement goal (Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 2025a). An additional 1%–2% would not meet the threshold to allow harvest. Fall Chum Salmon have also averaged roughly half of the minimum escapement goal, so an additional few percent return would not have met the escapement goal and allowed fishing (Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 2025a). Only the summer Chum Salmon have supplied significant subsistence catch on the Yukon averaging 16,662 fish from 2021 to 2024 (Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 2025b). A 1% increase would have amounted to 167 fish per year. A 1 or 2% impact by trawl bycatch cannot be considered a significant cause of the decline of either species. Lavoie et al. (2025) did not provide any critique of the methods used by the NMFS to do these calculations or bring any additional knowledge to the estimates of how many western Alaska fish would have returned if the trawl bycatch was totally eliminated. Of equal concern is that Lavoie et al. (2025) do not mention or dismiss other hypotheses about the cause of the Chinook Salmon and Chum Salmon decline. One hypothesis concerns the increased numbers of both wild and hatchery Pink Salmon O. gorbushka and Chum Salmon from other parts of Alaska and Asia (Ruggerone et al., 2021, 2023), which has been shown to have decreased the size of salmon throughout the Bering Sea. A second factor not mentioned is the period of high ocean temperatures (often known as “the blob”) that led to the collapse of the Bering Sea snow crab fishery (Szuwalski et al., 2023) and is associated with particularly poor condition of juvenile Chum Salmon in the Bering Sea (Farley Jr. et al., 2024). It seems likely that multiple factors have been acting to cause the decline of western Alaskan Chinook Salmon and Chum Salmon. Lavoie et al. (2025) repeatedly refer to the “damage to the Bering Sea ecosystem” caused by bottom trawling, but provide no evidence. The total harvest of fish in the Bering Sea has constituted only about 7% of the fish community each year (Siddon, 2022). Only about 9% of the continental shelf of the Bering Sea is trawled each year (Amoroso et al., 2018), and this has resulted in a 5% reduction in the abundance of the epifauna and infauna (Pitcher et al., 2022). This suggests that the benthic ecosystem in the Bering Sea has not been changed in a major way by trawling. I agree that the decline in Chinook Salmon and Chum Salmon to western Alaskan communities has had horrible impacts on Indigenous communities. But we need to bring both western and Indigenous knowledge to find solutions. Lavoie et al. (2025) dismiss knowledge based on western science as “fantasies” and, yet, they suggest no Indigenous knowledge that relates to the causes of the decline. Certainly, Indigenous knowledge, including memory and oral tradition, is important in understanding that the decline is unprecedented, but where is the Indigenous knowledge about the causes? The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council mandate is to manage the major marine fisheries of Alaska and its composition includes the major commercial interests. The majority of residents of the Bering Sea coastline are Native peoples, but are primarily involved in the major marine fisheries though the Community Development Quota program. Every effort should be made to bring the Native subsistence communities into an understanding the way that the impact of the trawl fishery is assessed on their communities. So, let us respect all forms of knowledge, and use the knowledge that does exist to focus on finding a solution to a very real problem. This could perhaps be achieved by a joint working group, independent of the Council process, which could bring NMFS, the NPFMC and Indigenous communities together to deepen understanding of the impact of trawl fisheries on communities from both perspective. No new data were assembled for this paper None declared. I thank three anonymous reviewers for very useful comments on a draft of this paper.