Alaska fish commerce.

• Author: Ess, Charlie

It used to be that salmon's only struggle was to survive the elements and make an attempt at returning to natal streams. The circuitous route, pre-empted by the commercial fishermen, led to honor on a plate. Times have changed.

There was, of course, the music by the Backstreet Blues, the tone of the saxophone adding ambiance to conversations and beer. These elements in themselves might have been enough to pack 'em into the Glacier BrewHouse on a cold Saturday.

But passersby learned quickly that even the small talk was of immediate focus on tables sprawling with seafood, and all along people were pointing out that the place was crawling with big-name chefs and other culinary royalty.

Setting aside the sampling and the merriment, most were gathered in the making of a point: that there's more than one way to sell a fish. And if that fish, in particular, happens to be a wild salmon - struggling for market share in a global glut of pen-raised fish that can be stunned, bled and shipped to markets and restaurants within a matter of hours - the festivity was probably only the beginning of what's to come in the line of creative sales techniques.

Such has been the evolution of the Symphony of Salmon, an Anchorage event that for the past six years has showcased some of Alaska's most innovative attempts to funnel the five species of Oncorhynchus into various consumer niches.

The show has grown over the years to include retail, food service, gift/specialty, and more recently, pet food categories. In all, 23 variations of the fish laid out at the BrewHouse, the underlying theme was value added, the term given to enhancing the value of a commodity through various steps of refinement - with the hope of creating added employment and revenues along the way.

It's a slightly optimistic model these days, what with the salmon industry set in its ways of large-scale production and sending the bulk of the crop south to the Lower 48 or west to Japan.

High Costs

One argument in the past has been that production costs associated with shipping materials north for value-added operations negate the profits when the remainder of the industry ships raw products south to value-adding companies that play in the same markets.

"Value added can also be cost added," cautions Gunnar Knapp, a fisheries economist with the Salmon Market Information Service at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Yet, he concurs as many, that it is a hard model to overlook, because all the while...