Unalaska, AK – The state's Board of Fisheries is considering closing Unalaska Bay to all trawling year round. At present, the pelagic trawl fleet is allowed to harvest in the Bay during pollock B season, from June 10 to November 1. Many local residents and the Unalaska/Dutch Harbor Fish and Game Advisory Committee want the area to be closed to all trawling year round. This week, city council also unanimously approved a resolution supporting the closure.

More boats began trawling in Unalaska Bay in 2002, taking any where from 400 to 57 hundred metric tons of pollock. That's less than half of one percent of the total harvest; in some years it is less than a tenth.

Along with the harvest came varying rates of salmon bycatch. According to Alaska Department of Fish & Game biologist Forrest Bowers, the pollock harvest from Unalaska Bay in 2009 was 1488 metric tons and 287 Chinook and 530 chum were caught as bycatch. That gives rates of 0.19 Chinook per metric ton and 0.36 chum per metric ton. Over the past six years, Chinook salmon bycatch rates in Unalaska Bay ranged from 0.03 to 0.69 Chinook per metric ton of pollock. One of the highest rates for the entire Bering Sea, in 2007, was 0.09 Chinook per metric ton.

Bowers said when fishing in the bay, the pollock fleet is catching juvenile salmon from other places, not local salmon. But community members and local subsistence fishermen, like Walter Tellman, are still concerned about where the boats are going.

"For one thing, they're trawling pretty close to Broad Bay and Nateekin Bay. Those are pretty important salmon rivers here. As the fish are coming in to spawn, they're out there dragging these huge nets around."

Tellman said he's seen changes in general since trawlers started fishing in the bay more frequently, too. "With all that activity, all that fishery activity, it's putting a lot of catch effort against the amount of fish we have in the bay. We're seeing less and less fish, and I suspect it's due to all the effort."

The trawl boats are also catching gear from smaller boats. Unalaska residents who subsistence and commercial fish in Unalaska Bay say they have gear conflicts between their longlines and pots and the larger trawl nets. Residents argue that it's hard to take smaller boats and skiffs far from town to fish whereas large trawlers can travel out past the bay more easily. Supporters of the closure say Unalaska Bay should be reserved for the community as it traditionally was.

Tellman also said that the trawlers could affect the local marine mammals, such as sea lions, seals, and otters that live here year round and the pods of whales that transit through in the summer, when the pollock fleet is allowed in the bay.

However, at last weekend's fish and game advisory committee meeting, Sinclair Wilt from Alyeska Seafoods said that many in the trawl fleet dislike the proposed closure. They fish in the bay because it takes less fuel and time to catch the fish, and they get more money for their catch because it is fresher.

The only person to speak against the closure at the city council meeting was Dave Boisseau, who heads Westward Seafoods. He said his boats rely on pollock from the bay, and the community relies on that revenue. Boisseau argued that it's an extraordinary measure to close an area to fishing without data saying that it hurts the bay.

The Board of Fisheries will decide whether or not to institute the closure at their meeting in Anchorage on February 2. They are still accepting comments on the issue.