Alaska’s Next Generation of Potential Fishermen: a Survey of Youth Attitudes Towards Fishing and Community in Bristol Bay and the Kodiak Archipelago

Commercial fishery participants in Alaska are increasing in age, and the next generation of fishermen faces numerous, complex barriers to entry into the industry. Although these barriers are now widely recognized, what remains to be seen is whether or not the youngest generation of coastal residents will choose place-based fishing livelihoods. In this study, we surveyed seventh through 12th grade students in the fishery-dependent Bristol Bay and Kodiak Archipelago regions of Alaska to explore what factors best predict students’ attitudes about commercial fishing and their communities. We used multinomial logit models of Likert-scale responses predicted by geographic, demographic, and social variables, as well as conditional inference trees to understand the direction, magnitude, and importance of the relationships among the predictor and response variables. Positive attitudes about fishing were best predicted by student experience in the commercial fishing industry, whether the student wanted to be involved in fishing in the future, and the importance of subsistence fishing to the student’s family. Age, how the student felt about their life, the importance of subsistence activities, and whether the student grew up in the community in which they were surveyed were all strongly related to the student’s positive attitude about their community. Youth surveyed in this study were highly uncertain about their futures, but key periods of exposure through community and family ties to fishing emerged as important mechanisms for engagement among the next generation of potential fishermen.