EventWestern Alaska’s chinook and chum salmon runs have collapsed in recent years, a trend linked to decades of pollock trawl bycatch and a management framework centered on the flawed “maximum sustained yield” model. The new opinion piece argues that this approach treats the ocean as a static factory, ignoring climate‑driven changes that undermine escapement goals and call for a shift toward conservation safeguards.
Michelle Stone Bittner argues that Alaska’s maximum sustained yield fishery policy treats the ocean as a static factory, risking salmon decline, and calls for permanent conservation buffers.
The piece argues that decades of pollock trawl bycatch, without meaningful caps, have driven the collapse of Western Alaska’s chinook salmon stocks, impacting subsistence communities and underscoring the need for stricter regulation.