Alaska's seafood processing industry: providing strong economics from state waters.

• Author: Goforth, J. Pennelope
• Position: FISHERIES

Alaska's seafood processing industry is holding a steady course as 2015 winds down. Recognition of the industry has been growing over the last decade as economic analyses reflect a more inclusive view, counting both direct and indirect fiscal impacts. Studies also show the industry includes more Native Alaskan participation than ever.

Earlier this year a Maritime Workforce Development Plan was approved to bring more Alaskans into the sector. With a few hiccups, most species of commercially valuable fish caught in Alaska waters this year came from healthy and well managed stocks even as the volume and value of exports are on the rise. Again, Alaska ports took top spots in the national lineup of landings and values.

When the numbers are all in, the tax reports will show that the seafood processing industry will likely pay in excess of $290 million in various fees and taxes to the state coffers. Overall the economic scene is strong, representing billions of dollars in revenues, higher exports, and increasing job opportunities.

A Look Back

Seafood processing has been a staple of economic activity in Alaska waters for more than two hundred years: Whaling and fishing interests from Japan, Korea, Russia, and later the American "Boston Men" fished the North Pacific, Bering Sea, and even up into the Arctic waters. Cod fishing was the first major commercially targeted species in Alaska's history, stretching back even before the cession of Russian America. San Francisco merchant Captain Matthew Turner pioneered the effort in the 1850s, bringing the first load of salt cod to the market. Cod fishing stations were established throughout Bristol Bay and the Aleutian Islands for salting the cod in the days prior to refrigeration.

Not long after the United States took possession, salmon became the red "gold" of the new territory. By the late 1880s canneries the size of small towns had sprouted up in Southeast Alaska, north along the coast, and up into Bristol Bay. Both salmon runs in the millions of fish and the efficacy of fish traps made for a thriving business. In the 1900s fleets of small fishing vessels were dispatched north annually from Seattle for halibut as well as cod and salmon.

Bilateral agreements with Japan and Russia over the abundant groundfish fisheries in the Bering Sea ended with the establishment of the Exclusive Economic Zone and the Fishery Conservation Zone in the 1980s. This enabled American seafood processors to lay exclusive claim to the world's most productive and sustainable fishing grounds. Today the largest and most successful seafood processing interests are still based in Seattle where they dominate several fisheries like groundfish (pollock), salmon, and shellfish (crab). Halibut and herring round out the five commercial fisheries in Alaska.

An Evolving Business

Today's seafood processing company is complex, vertically integrated--operating every aspect of the business from fishing to processing to shipping to marketing--and run like a corporation. While small mom n' pop outfits and local fishermen's cooperatives proliferate in Alaska, they are dwarfed in volume by the established Seattle-based seafood corporations. CEO/CFO types with international reputations sit on the boards of most seafood companies. Debt and asset management have replaced talk of gear work and the latest high-tech navigational toys in these boardrooms. And with good reason. Modern processing plants, both at-sea and shore-based, are marvels of...