Gabriel Prout and his family have fished the Silver Spray, a Kodiak-based commercial fishing boat, for about 20 years. But on Thursday, he traded his Xtratufs and fishing gear for a suit to represent Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a trade association that represents the Bering Sea fleet, for a meeting with lawmakers in Washington, D.C.
“This is just my way of doing my part, and when Senator Sullivan’s office calls you and says, ‘We’d like you to testify on this issue,’ It’s hard to turn down,” Prout told KMXT.
Prout testified to the Senate Subcommittee on Coast Guard, Maritime, and Fisheries, which is chaired by Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican. The subcommittee is part of the U.S Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
He was the only fisherman on the panel to discuss the impact of illegal, unregulated and unreported – or IUU – fishing on American fishing fleets.
Prout presented a few ideas to the subcommittee he thinks could help, like better monitoring seafood imports and mandating labels for countries of origin.
Prout also said other countries have more subsidies for fishermen than the U.S. does, and asked for programs to help fishermen facing rising costs.
“Create low-interest loans to help crabbers and fishing fleets modernize gear and remain competitive throughout the world,” Prout told the subcommittee. “Prioritize support for small, independent, family-owned fishing operations like those that I represent.”
Prout said these kinds of programs can help level the playing field when competing in international markets against seafood producers like China, which has used forced labor and other cost-cutting measures to drive down seafood prices.
Competition from foreign fishing fleets has played a role in Alaska’s seafood industry taking a massive financial hit recently. Prout said IUU fishing adds to the problem.
“If you have a product coming into the country that’s cheaper, more readily available, it’s really hard to compete with that,” Prout said on a call. “So that’s one of the big issues about IUU, is that it forces downward pressure on prices and affects small and local fishing families.”
Sullivan said in a phone call after the meeting that taking on illegal fishing is one of his top priorities, and could see some bipartisan support for the issue.
“This brings together people who care about fisheries, human trafficking, slave labor, sustainable oceans, the environment, national security – it’s a combination of many of those issues,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan floated the idea of working with allied countries to monitor fishing fleets in international waters – particularly boats from China.
“Unfortunately, some of our partners and allies in Africa and South America, they don’t have very big coast guards – they have very little navies,” he said. “They’re super vulnerable (to) this kind of intimidation and great fleet activity by the Chinese fleet – but that’s not the same with (the) U.S. and Japan and some of our European allies.”
The Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee recently passed Sullivan’s FISH Act, or Fighting Foreign Illegal Seafood Harvest Act, last month. The bill is co-sponsored by Alaska’s senior senator and fellow Republican, Lisa Murkowski, and was first introduced in 2023.
The bill has multiple goals for targeting IUU fishing, including encouraging partner countries to inspect suspicious boats and establishing a blacklist of fishermen and boats that are caught illegally fishing.
He said he hopes to include some of the provisions from it in a future defense bill.
