Sustainability

Alaska is the world leader in fisheries management, carefully regulating the catch of each stock of fish to ensure sustainability. All of the salmon runs that we fish are healthy runs sustainably harvested to ensure they will remain healthy for years to come. The Rockfish, Pacific Cod, and Lingcod that we target are managed carefully by the State of Alaska and the Federal Government to ensure a sustainable population.

Our fishing methods result in very little bycatch, which is the unintended catching and killing of non-target fish. Fishing with hooks on individual rods or jigs with only a dozen or fewer hooks allows us to carefully remove and release the few non-target fish we catch while targeting Rockfish, Lingcod, or Pacific Cod. Drift netting salmon also results in very little bycatch, mainly because the nets only catch fish near the target size, and, aside from salmon, there aren't many salmon-sized fish swimming near the surface of the water in the open waters where we drift net. The areas of Cook Inlet open to drift netting are carefully regulated to minimize the catch of King Salmon, which are doing poorly in recent years.

Unfortunately Alaska and the Federal Government currently allow trawling in some parts of Alaska, which is a method of fishing that does tremendous damage to the ocean floor and results in extremely high rates of wasted bycatch. Enormous boats drag even larger nets, often dragging them along the bottom destroying everything in their path and killing far more than they keep to be sold as food. We do not trawl and never sell any fish caught by trawling. The main target of trawling in Alaska is Pollock, and all pollock is trawl caught. It is legal to jig Pollock, but we have never focused on Pollock jigging and we aren't aware of anyone who does. We suggest everyone should avoid trawl-caught fish and avoid Pollock, because they are caught with trawls. Make sure your Rockfish, Lingcod, and Pacific Cod are line caught or, in the case of Pacific Cod also caught using pots, which are traps similar to crab pots.