By Dr. Michael Williams, Sr. and Jim Ayers (Images added by Alaskafishnews)
April, 23, 2026
Coastal Villages Region Fund has hired a professional communications hit man, Rick Whitbeck, and his April 8 Anchorage Daily News opinion piece, “The $70 million engine most Alaskans aren’t talking about,” is an opening salvo that smears just about every Alaskan who is voicing concern about trawl and working to restore and maintain our salmon, crab and halibut fisheries.
Whitbeck is both tied to the trawl industry and comes straight from the state office of Rep. Nick Begich.
Rick Whitbeck is the former Alaska State Director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs.
In the piece, Whitbeck attempts to portray truthfulness by name-dropping respected Alaskans in a familiar way, actually referring to “Uncle Ted and Don.” He fails to mention that Community Development Quota groups, of which Coastal Villages is one, are not Native tribal organizations, and that neither he nor CDQ groups speak for tribes despite his suggestions otherwise.
[CVRF owns the Northern Hawk, one of the largest pollock factory trawlers that is homeported in Seattle.]
His opinion piece reflects trawlers’ insidious campaign to convince Alaska Natives and other Alaskans that what we are seeing and experiencing isn’t real.
MIKE WILLIAMS AND JIM AYERS
Tellingly, Whitbeck fails to mention it was “Uncle Ted” who ushered in two of the major amendments (1996 and 2007) we have seen to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which governs federal fisheries. He did so because he realized the MSA has significant holes and ambiguities that over time become clear. The 2007 amendments specifically included a focus on the impacts on fishing communities, especially in Alaska, from fishery management decisions. Several other major holes have since emerged — for example, the 10 national standards which fisheries managers must adhere to include the phrase “to the extent practicable” in directives to reduce bycatch and limit federal fisheries’ impact on communities and other fisheries. The trawl industry, its allies on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, and the National Marine Fisheries Service have used that language to avoid imposing any meaningful curb on trawl bycatch and its impact on Alaskans’ subsistence, sport, local commercial and personal use fisheries, allowing the industry unsustainable, unbridled exploitation of our river-to-sea fisheries and marine habitat.
n his 2005 address to ComFish in Kodiak, Sen. Ted Stevens spoke of the importance of ecosystem-based management, sustainable fishing practices, and protection of habitat and non-target resources for Alaska communities’ well-being and environment. If he were alive today, he would be holding field hearings and designing legislation to close the loopholes and ambiguities allowing the decimation of Alaskans’ fisheries. He would likely lecture in harsh tones about how Alaska became a state.
Whitbeck fails, of course, to mention the hundreds of millions going to Outside trawl corporations at Alaskans’ expense…any reference to the total costs of trawling to Alaska tribal and other rural families’ subsistence, or the costs to local commercial fisheries, Alaska sport fishermen and businesses, or to Alaska personal use fishermen from the losses of salmon, crab, halibut and other river-to-sea life. There is no mention of the future lost opportunity costs to Alaskans from the downturn in these populations.
MIKE WILLIAMS and JIM AYERS
Then Whitbeck extends the attacks, trying to sow divisions among the Alaska Native community and ultimately all Alaskans, going so far as to refer to “myopic Native groups that aren’t part of CDQ,” “scalp(s) on the wall,” and “chum in the water.” He says tribes are being “myopic,” near-sighted, if they’re focused on protecting their families, their tribe, their culture, their food security and their well-being. The trawl industry is making it clear that tribes and other Alaskans who fight to restore and maintain Alaska fisheries will be targets of their communications attacks, and this will extend to any individual or organization who dares to support them.
The kind of treatment Whitbeck shows toward tribes and people living here is very disrespectful. We are going through an unbelievable amount of pain, especially on the Yukon. People are not well. Alaska Native peoples have been testifying for years on this issue, asking for a limit to trawlers’ activity to rebuild stocks.
Dr. Michael Williams Sr. is chief of the Akiak Native Community and a subsistence fisherman who has run 15 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Races, 29 Kuskokwim 300s, and been named three times as the Iditarod’s most inspirational musher.
Jim Ayers, now retired and a consultant, has served as deputy commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game; chief of staff for Gov. Tony Knowles; executive director of the Exxon Valdez Restoration Trustee Council; and the vice president of Oceana.
