The Anchorage Daily News reports on the pollock fishery that produces the fillets that end up in McDonald's fish sandwich. The harvest is the biggest tonnage fishery in North America, carried out by trawlers that tow gargantuan nets through the Bering Sea.
Once dominated by Seattle-based fishing companies, some of the pollock fleet is now controlled by nonprofits that represent western Alaska communities.
In recent years, the pollock fleets' incidental catch of small numbers of salmon has emerged as a bitter point of contention in some western Alaska communities, where these fish have been on decline amid climate change. And tribes representing the Indigenous people who depend on those salmon for subsistence harvests are pushing for a bigger say in how the Bering Sea harvests are managed.
