The Shrinking Giants: How Alaska Pollock Size Has Declined Over 75 Years—and What We Can Do About It

Alaska Pollock (Gadus chalcogrammus), one of the world’s most commercially important fish, has been shrinking for decades. Once hailed as a cornerstone species feeding the world, Pollock are now smaller, lighter, and delivering less value per fish. The causes? Overfishing, warming waters, declining ocean pastures, and ecological stress. But there is a clear path forward—and it begins with restoring the ocean itself.

Why Pollock Size Matters

Smaller Pollock mean:

Fewer fillets per fish
Less economic value per ton landed
Reduced reproductive capacity
Greater energy costs for processing
Ecological ripple effects throughout the marine food chain

This decline is driven by the Collapse of ocean pasture productivity, caused by the long-term loss of iron-rich dust that once fertilized vast plankton blooms. Read more about on Understanding The Cause Of Ocean Fisheries Collapse Is The First Step at this link. https://opralaska.com/?p=526

The fishing and seafood processing industries have raised alarm over this size reduction. Research from NOAA Fisheries and the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council (NPFMC) shows that Alaska Pollock in the Bering Sea are now maturing at smaller sizes, likely due to warming seas and food scarcity. This is not just a biological concern—it’s an industrial problem.

“A smaller pollock isn’t just shorter—it’s poorer. Less flesh, less value, more boats chasing more bony fish.”
— OPR Alaska Editorial

Processing Crisis: Smaller Fish, Bigger Headaches

Seafood processors are feeling the strain:

Filleting and deboning equipment, designed for larger fish, is experiencing increased “fall-through” rates.
Smaller fish yield lower-quality and lower-volume fillets, while increasing waste and labor costs.
Industry leaders such as Trident Seafoods have reported substantial profit erosion due to these inefficiencies.

Trade publications like Undercurrent News and National Fisherman confirm that these trends are driving up per-pound costs and undermining the economics of the fishery.

These industrial bottlenecks are not unique to Pollock. A similar scenario is playing out with Atlantic cod, where studies like Björnsson et al. (2017) show that smaller cod reduce processing efficiency. Scientific work by Helser et al. (2019) and Barbeaux et al. (2020) further supports these findings, directly linking shrinking fish size to climate-driven ecological shifts.

Unless fishing practices and processing technologies adapt—or ocean conditions improve—the continued reduction in fish size may jeopardize the economic viability of the Pollock and cod fisheries alike.

Quantifying the Decline: A 75-Year Trend

Alaska Pollock stocks, managed independently by the U.S., Russia, and Japan, all show the same alarming trend: shrinking fish.

Decade	Avg. Length (cm) – U.S.	Avg. Weight (kg) – Russia	Avg. Length (cm) – Japan
1950s	55	1.4	60
1970s	52	1.2	57
1990s	49	1.0	52
2010s	45	0.8	48
2020s	44	0.7	47

Sources: NOAA (U.S.), Funk & Hobbs (2018) (Russia), Japan Fisheries Agency (Japan)

Price Collapse: Quantity Over Quality

Although catch volumes have remained relatively stable—averaging 1.26 million metric tons annually since 1979 in the U.S.—the value per ton has fallen sharply.

“The average price for the decade ending in 2020 was about $1.28 per pound—roughly half of what Pollock fetched in the 1980s when adjusted for inflation.”
— Craig Medred, craigmedred.news

Smaller fish simply don’t pay. The combination of reduced yield, higher labor and maintenance costs, and reduced throughput efficiency means declining profitability per fish, even when total catch volumes remain high.

Let’s look at the added value proposition

If ocean restoration brings Pollock back to historic size and weight, the data clearly shows the decline in weight from the 1950’s is 50%. Restoring Alaska pollock to their historic size could triple the value of the fishery—even without catching more fish—just by getting more and better meat from each fish.

Let’s run a quick model:

Metric	Today’s Fish (~1 lb)	Restored Fish (~2 lbs)
Meat yield	35%	50%
Meat per fish	0.35 lb	1.0 lb
Value per pound (avg fillet)	$2.50	$2.75
Value per fish	~$0.88	~$2.75
Value multiplier	—	3.1x

Now just do the value math!

Annual catch: 1.3 million metric tons = ~2.87 billion pounds.
Doubling weight at 3.1x value per fish → Potential added value: $6–9 billion per year.

Bycatch of King Salmon: A Collateral Crisis

The Alaska Pollock trawl fleet is also at the center of an ecological flashpoint: the unintentional capture of endangered Chinook (King) salmon.

In 2024, the Gulf of Alaska Pollock fishery was shut down early after two Kodiak-based vessels caught 2,000 King salmon, pushing the fishery near its legal limit of 18,000.
Bering Sea fleets face similar caps and incentive-based bycatch reduction strategies, but conflicts with subsistence salmon needs are intensifying.

“In 2024, the Gulf of Alaska pollock fishery faced an early closure after two Kodiak-based trawlers inadvertently caught approximately 2,000 king salmon.”
— Northern Journal

This bycatch issue further highlights the tension between industrial efficiency and ecological responsibility—a balance that ocean conditions are rapidly tipping out of favor.

Root Cause: The Collapse of Ocean Pastures

Beneath all of this—shrinking fish, falling profits, bycatch crises—is a foundational environmental truth: the collapse of North Pacific plankton productivity.

Since the 1950s, the vital flow of iron-rich mineral dust from Asia has plummeted. Once carried by seasonal winds to fertilize ocean pastures, this dust sustained vast blooms of phytoplankton—the very base of the marine food web.

Without it:

Zooplankton collapse.
Forage fish go hungry.
Pollock and salmon shrink.

The Solution: Ocean Pasture Restoration

There is a proven way to restore ocean productivity—replenishing missing iron to revive natural plankton blooms.

“With ocean pasture restoration, we will bring back the plankton blooms that once made the North Pacific the most productive fishing ground on Earth.”
— OPR Alaska

This nature-based solution mimics what the wind once did naturally: delivering small amounts of bioavailable iron into high-nutrient, low-chlorophyll (HNLC) ocean regions. The results are:

Bigger, faster-growing Pollock with more marketable meat
Stronger, healthier King salmon, better equipped to survive and reproduce
More food for every link in the oceanic food web
A rapid rebound in salmon smolt survival, ensuring multi-year population recovery

“Ocean pasture restoration is not just about saving fish—it’s about saving the future of coastal communities, Indigenous livelihoods, and marine biodiversity.”

The ocean responds within weeks. Plankton blooms return. Fish get fatter. Ecosystems rebound. We’ve seen it before. We can do it again—at scale.

A Call to Action

We cannot manage our way out of starvation. We must restore abundance.

Ocean pasture restoration is ready for deployment. The science is sound. The cost is low. The benefit is immense.

Let us act now—to rebuild the North Pacific’s ocean pastures, put premium pounds back on our Pollock, and ensure that King salmon return in strength, not as a memory.

Let’s restore our ocean pastures—
for Pollock, for salmon, for the future.

Alaska Pollock: Half a Century of Change in Size, Sustainability, and Salmon Bycatch