Dan Sullivan

Since he first took office, Sen. Dan Sullivan has been a proud supporter of Alaska seafood. He has been a champion of the science-driven process and Alaska businesses that are the foundation of the “superpower of seafood,” as he likes to call it. From passing pro-fish legislation and banning Russian seafood imports to adding seafood to USDA programs, he has been a torch bearer for the late Sen. Ted Stevens, recognizing that it takes all fisheries and industries to keep Alaska healthy and strong.

All of that is now called into question with the introduction of the Bycatch Reduction and Research Act, which can only be described as a messaging bill aimed at appeasing a group of radical NGOs and an anti-commercial-fishing sport-fishing lobby from Kenai. Those affiliations were immediately affirmed when representatives from those groups took sole credit for the bill and shared photos of themselves with the senator across social media.

The bill itself is riddled with contradictions and conflicts. It promotes science and research while mandating policy change regardless of what the best available science ultimately finds. It implies that there is a transparency problem, yet largely restates policies that are already in place within one of the most accessible and transparent resource management systems in the country. It claims to address salmon bycatch but proposes policies that will increase bycatch. It is described as responsive to the senator’s Salmon Research Task Force, even though there is no public record of the task force making these recommendations. Simply, the bill reads as if it was drafted by compiling grievances from people who have zero engagement in federal fisheries and deeply undermines the regional management framework that has made Alaska’s fisheries the gold standard of sustainability for 50 years. It would be funny if it didn’t have immediate and long-lasting impacts on our management institutions and seafood markets.

It’s clear, of course, why the senator has introduced this bill. He’s losing in the polls, and his opponent, Mary Peltola, is running on a “ban factory trawl” campaign pledge that substitutes real policy with a slogan designed to fuel outrage. The problem is that outrage is insatiable. Mary Peltola knows that. After her first campaign, she distanced herself so dramatically from her anti-trawl positions that people thought she was in the trawl fleet’s pocket. And she’ll do it again if she wins because it takes far more than slogans to govern.

The senator could have taken this as an opportunity to stand firm in his convictions and record of leadership while also calling Mary Peltola out on her blatant attempts to mislead voters. He could have remained the leader we’ve known for the last eight years, someone willing to defend science, Alaska’s fisheries management system and the communities that depend on it. Instead, he’s choosing to race Peltola to the bottom in a contest that neither one of them can win, because the losers are the coastal Alaska communities and businesses that they are supposed to represent.

In the face of increasing uncertainty, the Alaska fishing industry needs leaders who understand the serious consequences of legislating fisheries management from Washington, D.C. Doing so not only politicizes an industry that Alaska communities and businesses are deeply dependent on; it undermines the regional approach that is part of the late Sen. Stevens’s legacy.

Stefan Iankov is a multigenerational fisherman running the F/V Michelle Renee out of Kodiak.