From frustration to pay dirt.

• Author: Gay, Joel
• Position: Alaska's fishing industry

Record runs, closed fisheries and new regulations give the state's fishing industry a rollercoaster ride.

Commercial fishermen who worked in small boats off Alaska's coasts will remember 1994 as a good year, when salmon prices began to rise again in spite of another record harvest and the end of derby-style halibut seasons.

Those who fish the big boats on the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska will recall last year as another 12 months of increasing competition and tension over allocations. As usual in Alaska's fishing industry, 1994 was a year of frustration for some and pay dirt for others, depending on where and how they fished.

The state's 1995 fishing season promises more of the same.

Salmon Soars

As it has been for more than a century, salmon was the primary seafood purchased in Alaska last year, in value if no longer in volume. Fishermen landed $430 million worth in 1994, up about $40 million from the year before. Part of the increase stems from catching more fish, and each fish weighed slightly more. But more importantly prices began climbing out of an abyss that opened in the late 1980s.

Following the simplest laws of economics, demand for Alaska salmon fell because world seafood markets have been flooded. Natural production in Alaska has reached stratospheric levels for reasons that biologists can only guess. The results have been startling: The statewide harvest record was broken eight times in the last 15 years, including last year, when 196 million salmon were landed statewide. At the same time, salmon farms from Chile to Norway to Puget Sound have doubled and tripled their output. The result has been a buyer's market. A 6-pound Cook Inlet sockeye worth $25 in 1988 had dropped to $5 by 1993.

Many expected the lower prices to continue in 1994 because another huge catch was predicted in both Alaska and British Columbia, and little had changed in the marketplace. But Canada's runs came in weaker than expected, and Alaska's runs were late, setting off a buying spree.

For example, Bristol Bay sockeye fishermen, who hoped for the 65 cents a pound they received the summer before and were prepared to receive as little as 50 cents a pound, sold their fish for nearly $1 a pound. Pink salmon, selling for 12 cents a pound the last several years, got bumped to a statewide average of 17 cents a pound. That nickel a pound may seem like small change, but it translates into a 35 percent increase. The other salmon species followed suit.

The salmon...