Kawerak Resolute Against Proposed ‘NETS’ Study

At their 2023 fall meeting, the Kawerak Board of Directors passed a resolution in opposition to the Northern Bering Sea Effects of Trawling Study (“NETS”) proposed by NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

This experiment, scheduled for August of 2024, would use commercial bottom-trawl fishing gear inside the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area to look at the impacts of bottom-trawl gear on the bottom of the ocean and the animals that live there.  Kawerak’s Board is concerned about the direct impacts of this experiment, the implications it has for future lifting of current bottom-trawl bans in the northern Bering Sea, and the lack of Tribal consultation conducted to-date.

Decades of research and hundreds of peer-reviewed western science articles have clearly demonstrated the negative impacts and destructive nature of this gear and fishing method. Kawerak and region Tribes have for many years consistently declared that we are opposed to bottom-trawling in the northern Bering Sea because of risks to the ecosystem and our food security and food sovereignty.  Several Tribes have recently issued a Notice of Intent, along with the Center for Biological Diversity, to sue about this project.

More information about the NETS study can be found at: https://www.aleut.com/consultation/