Salmon, Seafood, and a Seat at the Table: Bearing Witness in D.C.

By Jamie O'Connor, AMCC Deputy Executive Director

Surrounded by moving totes for my seasonal departure from Homer and with my head already halfway home to Bristol Bay, I received a text from D.C.:

“We have a hearing coming up June 4 that I’d love to chat with you about—it’s on the seafood EO and general fisheries issues. I think you could be an amazing witness.”

Ten days and dozens of partner collaboration calls later, I found myself in a Capitol Hill basement with Michelle Stratton and Hannah Heimbuch, eating 2 a.m. southern fried chicken and waffles and moving calendar events and Hill meetings around like an ever-intensifying round of Tetris. The salmon were swimming home, and we—three Alaska set-netters—had just flown nearly 4,000 miles in the opposite direction.

We came to bear witness. 

The June 4 hearing, “Restoring America’s Seafood Competitiveness,” before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries, was a rare opportunity to elevate the voices of small-boat harvesters and coastal communities in a room that too often hears from everyone else first. I was honored to testify as both a fifth-generation fisherman from Ekuk Beach and as Deputy Director of AMCC. I carried with me not just my own story, but the stories of thousands of fishermen from Bristol Bay to Maine, working to hold onto a way of life that is under increasing pressure.

My message to Congress was simple: America's seafood future hinges on a fully staffed and funded NOAA. That’s not red tape—it’s the foundation of our food supply, ocean science, and coastal economies.

We are living in a moment of extraordinary risk and opportunity. Small-boat fishermen like me are seeing our margins squeezed by rising costs, climate volatility, and foreign seafood imports that fail to meet our environmental and labor standards. At the same time, federal programs and permitting systems are faltering—delayed surveys, outdated stock data, long waits for disaster relief and permits. These failures aren't abstract—they’re threatening our livelihoods.

I told Congress: we’re not asking for a handout. We’re asking for a fair shot. We want a seafood system that rewards stewardship, equity, and local investment. That means treating working waterfronts as strategic national assets and recognizing seafood as a key component of food security under the Department of Agriculture. That means investing in young fishermen, infrastructure, small business tools, and intergenerational access. And it means restoring NOAA’s capacity to do its job—so we can do ours.

We also need implementation, not just intention. I expressed optimism around the Executive Orders aimed at restoring seafood competitiveness, but cautioned that streamlining must not come at the cost of equity or ecological integrity. Deregulation done right is inclusive, not extractive. We can modernize without consolidating. We can compete globally while staying rooted locally. But only if fishermen are invited to the table from the start.

Flying back west, I carried exhaustion, hope, and a folder full of notes. But we weren’t done with meeting season in the fishery policy world just yet. My flight path to the Nushagak detoured through Newport, Oregon, where the North Pacific Fishery Management Council was meeting on key issues like the definition of “mid-water” trawls that spend most of their time fishing on or near the seafloor. But even as we turned our attention to other fights, my words stayed behind in Washington, hopefully doing their part to help Congress remember: fishing isn’t just a job. It’s a lineage, a livelihood, and a living food system worth fighting for.

You can read my written testimony and watch the hearing on the Committee website.