The salmon crisis is Alaska’s crisis: Draggers can’t keep fishing like nothing’s wrong

For many years, I had the privilege to live and work in the community of Sitaisaq (Brevig Mission). I loved learning about the Inupiaq community’s subsistence lifestyle there, and learning how to participate in it. My favorite part? Salmon fishing in summer.

As I set my nets and (clumsily) cut fish, it felt like nothing would ever change. The salmon would keep coming year after year, as they had as far back as anyone could remember. Occasionally I read news reports of collapsing fisheries on the Yukon, but that was far away. It couldn’t possibly happen here.

You can imagine my shock in 2024 when friends told me that for the first part of the summer the waters off of Brevig were closed to set-net fishing, the primary type of fishing in the community, for the first time ever. The reason gi