Julie Bonney is a longtime, Kodiak Island-based representative of some of Alaska’s trawlers — a type of fishing boat that’s drawn increasing criticism over the years for accidental “bycatch” of salmon, halibut and other species. Last week, Bonney was returning from a trip off the island when Alaska state troopers seized her mobile phone and work laptop. The day before, investigators searched the offices of Bonney’s member-based business, the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank, and seized all of its electronics.Bonney was not arrested and no charges have been filed. But troopers, over the weekend, confirmed an active investigation into allegations that “multiple seafood processors” had been illegally profiting from salmon and halibut bycatch — further fueling scrutiny of an industry that’s already under attack.
“I think everybody’s interested in what’s happening with trawl, essentially because of the hypocrisy,” said David Bayes, a longtime advocate and moderator of the 47,000-member “STOP Alaskan Trawler Bycatch” Facebook group, who flagged the investigation for reporters.
Everyday Alaskans, Bayes noted, can be charged with wanton waste for leaving a single salmon on a riverbank, while trawlers operating in the North Pacific and Bering Sea are legally allowed tens of millions of pounds of accidental harvests each year. The trawlers are typically targeting whitefish like pollock, which is processed into fish pies, filets, fish sticks and fish paste for markets in Asia, Europe and the United States.
The troopers investigation appears to center on processors, not the trawl vessels, as the vessels don’t get paid for their bycatch when it’s dropped off at processors’ plants.
Federal management officials say that processors subsequently sending the trawl bycatch to a meal plant would conflict with a federal regulation barring the fish from being “sold, purchased, bartered, or traded.”
The Kodiak meal plant’s use of the bycatch, industry officials say, was not a secret: Bonney had testified publicly about it last month at a meeting of a federal management board, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.
At the meeting, Bonney said that Kodiak processors have been sending bycatch not fit for charitable donation to the meal plant for more than three decades, under guidance from federal managers that explicitly allows the practice.
A trawl vessel sits alongside a dock on Kodiak Island. (Nathaniel Herz/Northern Journal) She said the amount of bycatch processed at the meal plant is a very small share of the plant’s total volume, less than 1%. Last year’s cap on the number of king salmon that could be taken as bycatch by trawlers in the central Gulf of Alaska, the area fished by the Kodiak fleet, was 18,316, while the total salmon harvest that year exceeded 9.5 million fish.
Federal officials only notified industry in August that the practice was no longer allowed, Bonney said.
Bonney, reached by phone Monday, declined to comment. In a note to membersobtained by Northern Journal, a colleague at the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank said the business “does not have anything to hide.”
Paddy O’Donnell, the skipper of a Kodiak-based trawler, said that law enforcement officials were taking a heavy-handed approach that singles out trawlers when processors may also have allowed bycatch from other types of vessels to be turned into fish meal.
“It’s like cocaine wars — but it’s not. It’s such a minute amount,” he said. “It is an industry-wide issue, and it’s to do with the processors and the reporting mechanism.”
A troopers spokesman, Austin McDaniel, said in an emailed statement that the search of Bonney’s business involved allegations that “large volumes” of commercial bycatch including halibut and salmon “were unlawfully entered into commerce by multiple seafood processors.”
State law and federal regulations ban the sale or commercial use of bycatch “to protect sensitive species, ensure sustainable management of Alaska’s fisheries, and preserve fairness within the commercial fishing industry,” he added.
McDaniel declined to say whether the investigation centered on the processing of bycatch into fish meal.
But a copy of the four-page search warrant obtained by Northern Journal said that the troopers were looking for records related to bycatch, “fishmeal operations, or coordination with processors and regulators,” as well those “showing Ms. Bonney’s personal involvement in shaping, editing, or endorsing compliance positions later used by (processing companies) to justify commercial activity” involving bycatch.
The warrant said troopers were searching for evidence of the crime of a “scheme to defraud,” a felony. It’s the second major fisheries related investigation in Kodiak this year, after a prominent commercial salmon fisherman and local school board member, Duncan Fields, and multiple family members were charged with illegal permit transfers in April.
Officials with Kodiak’s major processing companies either declined to comment or didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The business that operates the Kodiak meal plant, Kodiak Fishmeal Co., declined to comment on the specifics of the investigation through an Anchorage-based attorney, Michelle Nesbett. Nesbett said in an email that the company is “aware of the investigation and is cooperating fully with authorities.”
Kodiak Fishmeal Co. does not appear in state corporate registries, though in the past, regulators have described it as being cooperatively owned by several fish processing plants on the island.
Industry representatives said the desire to dispose of the bycatch as fish meal stems from convenience, not profit motive, given the relatively low market value of meal — typically less than a dollar a pound at wholesale prices.
O’Donnell, the trawl skipper, said that while the investigation plays out, vessels are now hauling their bycatch away from processing plants and throwing it back in the open ocean. The trawlers are required to dump the bycatch at least three miles offshore, which O’Donnell described as a time-consuming and inconvenient process.
While anti-bycatch advocates have been using the troopers investigation as an opportunity to question trawlers’ fishing practices, O’Donnell noted that, under a federal program, his boat’s harvests, and those of nearly all of the other Kodiak-based trawlers, are continuously recorded by onboard cameras.
“We have accountability,” he said.
Bayes, the bycatch critic, said that the trawlers “don’t get any pity from me” for having to return their unintended harvests to the waters of the North Pacific — adding that he thinks the fish are better off decomposing in the ocean environment than sold as meal to distant markets.
“They’re supposed to be doing everything they can to avoid it in the first place,” he said.
Nathaniel Herz welcomes tips at natherz@gmail.com or (907) 793-0312. This article was originally published in Northern Journal, a newsletter from Herz. Subscribe at this link.