Wednesday August 27, 2025
KTOO —
Amid the hubbub of President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Alaska summit last week, Gov. Mike Dunleavy, posting on social media, posed a provocative question.
“Alaska is a leader in fresh caught wild salmon. We could also be a leader in the farmed salmon industry. Why not do both instead of importing farmed salmon from Scotland?,” he wrote, sharing an article about the value of fish farming in Scotland, where Atlantic salmon are raised in net pens in the ocean. “This would be a great opportunity for Alaska.”
The answer from scientists, wild salmon advocates, restaurant people and regular salmon-eating Alaskans has come swiftly, full of alarm and often along the lines of one of the early commenters on his post, who wrote, “Are you insane?”
Love for wild salmon cuts through partisan politics. No food is more important to the state’s culture, diet, identity and economy. As such, Alaskans don’t look kindly on farmed fish. It’s tough to find it in stores and few, if any, restaurants serve it. Farming salmon and other finfish has been banned since 1990 over concerns about environmental threats to wild stocks and economic competition. But Dunleavy, who has become increasingly interested in Alaska’s food security since the pandemic, is curious about bringing in fish farms.
Last legislative session, his office introduced a bill that would authorize land-based farming of non-salmon species like trout or tilapia. That bill faced an avalanche of opposition in committee. But his recent post went further, signaling a shift feared by fisheries advocates, from a narrow focus on land-based farms to a broader look at farming salmon, the vast majority of which happens in net pens in the ocean.
A number of people sent the governor’s post on the social media platform X to state Rep. Louise Stutes, a Republican from Kodiak. Last session she chaired the House Fisheries Committee, which heard the fish farming bill.
Alaska’s politicians should be focusing all their energy on shoring up the state’s fishing industry, she said. In recent years the fishing sector has been upended by global politics, market fluctuations and weak runs.
“Introducing farmed salmon into coastal waters, to me, is just an unacceptable risk,” she said. “It’s outrageous to think that we could become a leader in farmed salmon.”
She said it was very unlikely the bill would find the support it needs.
Dunleavy, in an interview this week, said he is always looking for economic opportunities, including fish farms.
“The article came up, and I figured I’d post it just to see what the response is, not to irritate people, but just to see what the response is,” he said.
He anticipated it would stir criticism, he said.
“The problem is, and I’ll be quite frank, is it gets very emotional. It makes it difficult to have a conversation,” he said. “Quite frankly, it’s tough to have a conversation about a lot of topics today, it’s tough to have a conversation where facts can be the decider.”
Fish farming could be done in concert with wild salmon fishing, he said.
“Does that then mean that wild-caught is done? I don’t believe it does. I think, actually, wild-caught is an amazing brand,” he said.
Dunleavy didn’t have a specific plan for how salmon in Alaska might be farmed, he said. Land-based salmon farming, something some environmental groups support, is being tried in a few markets but can be cost-prohibitive. There are concerns over open-net pens that need to be addressed, he said, as well as concerns about what species of salmon might be raised.
Salmon is the second-most popular seafood in the country, just behind shrimp, and roughly 75% to 80% of the salmon Americans eat is farmed Atlantic salmon. Atlantic salmon in the wild have almost disappeared due to overfishing and they cannot be fished commercially. Alaska provides the lion’s share of the wild salmon in the country’s fish markets. But in the world, Dunleavy pointed out, Russia provides the largest share of salmon. Farming fish might be a way for Alaska, and the U.S., to occupy a larger position in that marketplace, he said.
“What I’ve said is, basically, is the discussion worthwhile that Alaska has today, in 2025, to visit the idea of Alaska being part of that game of a new sector?” he said.
At-sea fish farming has gotten cleaner in recent decades, thanks to advances in technology and feeding practices that minimize the impacts of effluent, said Caitlyn Czajkowski, executive director of the National Aquaculture Association, a Florida-based aquaculture trade association.
“There’s a lot of things about the ocean that we know now that we didn’t know 20 years ago,” she said.
Some non-salmon operations also now farm fish that are genetically sterile, so that if they escape, they can’t mix with local populations. That technology is still under development for salmon, however. There are a number of places that used to have commercial salmon fisheries in the Atlantic region, including Maine, Canada and a number of European countries that now farm Atlantic salmon. There isn’t another place, like Alaska, where salmon farming is happening in tandem with a robust wild salmon fishery, Czajkowski said.
At Crush Bistro, a high-end restaurant in downtown Anchorage bustling with tourists this week, Rob DeLucia, owner and general manager, said he was dumbfounded by the governor’s post. Guests come into the restaurant every night and say they came to Alaska for two reasons: to see Denali and to eat wild fish, he said.
“It is crystal clear when you get a piece of salmon at a restaurant in Alaska, that thing was swimming around in the last couple of days out in the wild blue ocean, and now we’re going to have guests be like, ‘Well, is this farmed or is this wild?’” he asked.
Atlantic farmed salmon, from a culinary standpoint, is inferior in taste and texture, he said. It made no sense to promote it.
“(Dunleavy) should have his Alaskan card revoked,” DeLucia said.
Melanie Brown is a Bristol Bay fisherwoman and outreach director at SalmonState, an organization that advocates for wild salmon. She penned a recent editorial against fish farming and was unsurprised by Dunleavy’s post about farming salmon.
Open net pens cause pollution from fish waste and medications, which hurts wild fish, she said. The farmed fish also eat a meal made from other fish — often anchovies caught in developing countries, where there are concerns about overfishing and the local food supply.
She bristled at the way fish farming undermines the preciousness of wild fish, which are particularly important in Alaska Native culture. She often tries to explain the importance of Alaska’s fisheries in Native communities by comparing fishing to a school, where people pick up essential skills, and a church, which brings fellowship with a community and a connection to something larger, and a museum, where people learn about history and culture and craft, she said.
“It’s so much more than money and it’s so much more than food,” she said.
Michelle Stratton, a fish biologist who heads the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, which represents fishermen and scientists, was outlining a blog response to the governor‘s post Wednesday while her commercial setnet soaked off Kodiak Island.
“Farmed salmon collapsed prices once already, spreads disease and pollution, and risks erasing the Wild Alaska brand that fishermen depend on,” she wrote in an email. “Other regions are shutting fish farms down; replacing our wild advantage with farmed salmon would be a grave mistake.”
Dunleavy noted that he’s got a little more than a year left in office and may not have success with his fish farm bill in that time. He hoped his successor would convene a conversation among fishermen, chefs and others involved with salmon about how to farm fish while protecting the wild-caught brand.
“I think you can,” he said. “I think there’s ways to do it.”