The Alaska Marine Conservation Council works to ensure that fisheries and other uses of the ocean are managed for  long-term health of marine ecosystems. AMCC promotes clean fishing practices and supports measures that protect habitat, minimize waste and prevent overfishing. 

Protecting the health of our marine ecosystems demands that we also address the significant threat of climate change to the marine environment and our coastal communities.

Limit bottom trawling to protect habitat and minimize bycatch

Bottom trawling is an industrial fishing practice in which large nets weighted with chains are dragged along the bottom of the ocean. The impacts of bottom trawling include damage to seafloor habitat and high amounts of bycatch. Bottom trawling damages living seafloor habitats by overturning boulders, crushing corals and other habitat-forming structures and altering biological communities. 

In addition to altering seafloor habitat, bottom trawling is a wasteful fishing method. The large nets catch not only the target fish species, but everything else in the net's path including large amounts of unwanted fish and other marine life. Once hauled aboard the vessel, the unwanted species are discarded dead or dying as bycatch.  In Alaska’s waters, hundreds of millions of pounds of unwanted marine life is thrown back into the sea each year. AMCC supports solutions to minimize bycatch.

In 2005 AMCC helped to win protection of globally significant cold-water coral and sponge gardens in the Aleutian Islands.  Now, over 60% of the fishable grounds in the Aleutian Islands are closed to bottom trawling, marking the first ever closures in the ecologically important Aleutian Islands archipelago.

AMCC is now working with western Alaska communities to develop a bottom trawl zoning plan for the Bering Sea to preempt the expansion of bottom trawl fisheries northward. Fish populations are moving north as a result of climate change. Bottom trawl fleets are likely to follow moving fish populations into previously unexploited waters.

In the Gulf of Alaska, fishery management plans now under developed include an expansion of bottom trawl groundfish fisheries. An increase in bottom trawling effort will increase pressure on the recovering Kodiak Tanner crab population either through bycatch, unobserved mortality due to rolling trawl gear over crab or by impacting sensitive habitats.

AMCC is working with fishermen to protect Kodiak Island Tanner crab. Kodiak fishermen are mapping habitat areas important to Tanner crab around Kodiak Island to identify places that may need protection from bottom trawl gear.

Prevent overfishing of rockfish

Rockfish have been called the "elders" of fish society. Some species of rockfish can live to be 100 years old. Scientists have aged rougheye rockfish to 205 years old, making them one of the longest-lived species on earth. The unique characteristics of rockfish make them especially vulnerable to overfishing and create special challenges for fishery management and rockfish conservation.

AMCC is working to conserve rockfish in the North Gulf Coast and Bering Sea/ Aleutian Islands.