Fishing is a key issue in Alaska's tight U.S. Senate race
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Alaska's U.S. Senate race is embroiled in an emotional fight over fish. Many in the state rely upon salmon to feed their families but those fish and others are increasingly hard to find.
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President Trump is trying to preemptively block election results in Alaska if the Republican incumbent loses. But in that state, the big issue in the Senate race has been an emotional fight over fish. And that's because the salmon that have long sustained Indigenous people are not returning to some Western Alaska rivers. While people living in remote villages feel the loss of salmon most acutely, the issue could ultimately affect the balance of power thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C. Alaska public media's Liz Ruskin reports.
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LIZ RUSKIN, BYLINE: Evon Waska lives at the water's edge, where he says his parents settled when they gave up their nomadic life.
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EVON WASKA: Well, this is my smokehouse, and this is where we make smoke, right?
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RUSKIN: Waska's drying racks should be filled with salmon, but they're empty. Most years now, too few salmon return from the Bering Sea to his river, the Kuskokwim. To conserve fish, government agencies often close the river to fishing, even to those like Waska who fish to feed their families. Waska blames trawlers, industrial fishing boats miles offshore.
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WASKA: They don't close the trawlers. They close me and my people first.
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RUSKIN: Waska is up against a $1 billion industry, much of it based in Seattle. Picture a sock-shaped net that's a quarter mile long with an opening as wide as a football field. That's what trawlers tow to catch pollock. The white fish is served to you as imitation crab in McDonald's Filet-O-Fish. But also scooped up in those nets are prized king salmon and other fish. They're caught by accident and wasted, a problem known as bycatch. Alaskans are increasingly angry about it. Now, in a year where Alaska could decide the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, fish are all over political ads here.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #1: Senator Sullivan is championing legislation to reduce bycatch and strengthen Alaska's fisheries. Call Senator Dan Sullivan. Thank him and tell him to keep fighting for Alaska fishermen.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #2: Dan Sullivan is taking big money from out-of-state corporate trawlers.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #3: Mary Peltola tells a lot of fish tales to get votes.
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RUSKIN: Republican Senator Dan Sullivan has been an ally of the pollock industry. But this year, he's touting a new bill.
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DAN SULLIVAN: It's the most comprehensive bycatch legislation ever to reduce bycatch, protect seafloor habitat.
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RUSKIN: Democratic Senate challenger Mary Peltola is Indigenous, from the Kuskokwim. She says she'd ban factory trawlers, the largest of the pollock fleet. She calls Sullivan's bill an election year ploy.
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MARY PELTOLA: Dan Sullivan reeled in over $300,000 from trawlers and waited until the 11th hour for a half-hearted and half-baked solution.
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RUSKIN: Heather Mann (ph) leads a trawlers association. She says scapegoating the pollock fishery won't help western Alaska.
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HEATHER MANN: Even if you were to eliminate pollock, the chances of salmon runs being restored, what the science shows us is it would have a minimal impact.
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RUSKIN: So far this year, pollock trawlers say they've caught 40,000 Alaska salmon. The waste is a tiny percentage of the massive pollock harvest.
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RUSKIN: But in the Kuskokwim River village of Kwethluk, it's galling.
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RUSKIN: Subsistence fishing is the main occupation here and the backbone of the culture. Tribal president Mary Nikolai steps into a neighbor's cold smokehouse. It pains her to see it was unused all summer.
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MARY NICOLAI: Most of the smokehouses are like this. And it's like a slow trend of closing our workforce out.
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RUSKIN: Regardless of who wins, she hopes this close Senate race tells the world of the threat they face.
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For NPR News, I'm Liz Ruskin in Kwethluk, Alaska.
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