Last year longliners holding quota shares of halibut fish have caught nearly 50 million pounds during the eight-month season, a drop of 2 million pounds from last year. Ken Talley of Seafood Trend, a market watcher, said that buyers will scramble to get the fish they need, and it will be expensive.
Troie Zuniga, who tracks the stats for NOAA Fisheries in Juneau, said that the first month of the halibut season is usually the second-lowest for landings, after November. He added that May, June and August were the top three months last year for halibut landings. Market analyst Chris McDowell of the Juneau-based McDowell Group, informed that ex-vessel value only represents 40 percent of the total value of the salmon industry.
According to him the first wholesale includes the full spectrum of economic activity that occurs in Alaska from the salmon industry. He added that there are some interesting trends that show “big bumps” in sales of fresh salmon, 37 million pounds, of which 19.3 million was sockeye.
It is said that twenty percent of all halibut deliveries last year crossed the docks at Homer. Kodiak placed second at 17 percent, followed by Seward, Sitka, Dutch Harbor and Juneau.
