Sponsor
Daniel Scott Sullivan
Senator · R-AK
Senator · R-AK
Official title: Reduce trawl gear impacts on bycatch and seafloor habitat in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Gulf of Alaska, to establish gear performance standards, seafloor contact detection, and salmon excluder requirements, to improve Council transparency and participation, to prioritize ecosystem analyses, to modernize electronic monitoring, to prohibit unsustainable foreign seafood imports, and to establish a Bycatch Mitigation and Habitat Protection Assistance Fund.
Introduced June 24, 2026 by Daniel Scott Sullivan · Last progress June 24, 2026
The bill strengthens fisheries conservation, science, and transparency—supporting healthier stocks, consumer protections, and innovation—but does so by imposing new monitoring, compliance, and retrofit costs and administrative burdens that fall disproportionately on small fishing operations and increase federal spending.
Commercial, subsistence, and recreational fishers (including Alaska Native and rural communities) will face new gear standards, seafloor‑contact limits, and salmon‑excluder requirements that reduce bycatch and seafloor damage, supporting healthier fish stocks and more sustainable fisheries over the long term.
Fishermen, gear developers, and coastal communities gain access to grant funding, workforce training, technical assistance, and testing facilities (including a flume tank) to develop, trial, and adopt bycatch‑reducing and monitoring technologies, accelerating conservation innovation.
Managers, scientists, and the public will get better, standardized science and monitoring (baseline reports, National Academies review, electronic monitoring data, tagging/genetic analysis and public decision‑support tools), improving stock assessments and evidence‑based management.
Small commercial vessel owners, processors, and other fishery participants will face substantial upfront and near‑term costs to buy, install, and maintain new gear, electronic monitoring, or salmon excluders — and rapid phase‑in deadlines could reduce catch or income during the transition.
The bill increases federal and administrative spending (grants, flume tank, research, monitoring systems, certification and compliance work), which raises taxpayer costs and may divert NOAA and other agency resources from other priorities unless offset.
Requirements for near‑real‑time or frequent electronic monitoring, public data publication, and private cooperative research raise confidentiality and proprietary‑data risks — potentially exposing fishing locations or sensitive business information and deterring participation.
Based on analysis of 10 sections of legislative text.
Creates funding and new gear, monitoring, import, research, and transparency requirements to reduce bycatch and seafloor impacts in North Pacific fisheries.
Establishes a federal program to reduce bycatch and protect benthic (seafloor) habitat in North Pacific fisheries by funding gear upgrades, creating new gear performance and salmon‑excluder requirements, strengthening monitoring and transparency, supporting research and testing, and restricting imports of seafood harvested without comparable conservation standards. It creates funds and grant programs, requires the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA to set performance standards and rules, and directs new reporting, public participation, and independent review requirements. The bill affects vessel operators, fishing industry organizations, communities that depend on fisheries (including Alaska Native and subsistence users), seafood importers, and scientific and research organizations by imposing equipment and monitoring requirements, authorizing new federal and private funding streams for gear innovation, and tightening transparency and enforcement tied to the Magnuson‑Stevens Act.