High fuel cost, increased cost of doing business, and natural hurdles failed to deter the sales of Alaska’s lucrative seafood industry was well reaching the hundreds of millions of dollars. Veteran commercial fisherman and seafood industry analyst Chris McDowell said he expected the total value paid to harvesters for all seafood taken in Alaska to be around the five-year average of $1.4 billion, down slightly from $1.6 billion in 2007.
According to Chris McDowell part of that decline was driven by pollock prices, but the industry had managed well. He added that a recent decline in prices paid for Pacific cod, due to world market conditions, was balanced by strong prices for the first three quarters of 2008. It is informed that the Lower Yukon, deprived of any commercial king salmon fishery this year, harvested about 200,000 chums, not nearly enough to meet market demand and not anywhere close to what fisheries biologists predicted they would get.
Jack Schultheis, general manager for Kwik’Pak Fisheries, told that to keep fishermen from taking any kings incidentally, state biologists forbid any commercial chinook salmon harvests. He also opined that the biologists had projected a commercial harvest of 300,000 to 500,000 chums, but harvesters netted only about 200,000 chums — 20 percent of the projected harvest.
Paul MacGregor, a Seattle-based attorney who represents the groundfish industry, said that the demand and prices were strong in 2008 for groundfish, with cod probably leading the way. Julie Bonney, of the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank in Kodiak, pointed out that fuel costs were a negative, but she was optimistic with prices up for groundfish and salmon.
Jeff Stephan, director of the United Fishermen’s Marketing Association in Kodiak, admit that high fuel prices had a significant effect on the region’s fisheries economy, but prices for salmon, halibut and Pacific cod were robust enough to make up for the significant amount of gross products sucked off the top for fish prices.
