Alaska's lifeline: A look at the Pacific Northwest ports that ship much-needed cargo to Alaska.

• Author: Campbell, Melissa
• Position: Industry Overview

The small tugboat pulls the giant ship away from the docks nestled in the Puget Sound. As the ships ply the waters toward the open sea of the Pacific Ocean, crews inside the massive vessel conduct the final preparations for a nearly week-long journey to the northern waters of Alaska.

A few times a week, year-round, ships and barges travel the waters of the Pacific to bring Alaskans practically everything we need to live. Roughly 80 percent of the goods that 90 percent of all Alaskans consume, wear, drive, sit on and build with are shipped here from ports along the Pacific Northwest.

"Alaska depends so much on the products and goods we bring on our ships," said Eric Britten, business planning manager for Horizon Lines of Alaska. "How long we could go without shipping services is anybody's guess, but I'd say within a week, people would really notice the shortages."

Some 4 million tons of cargo a year comes through the Port of Anchorage alone, from where it is shipped, trucked and flown throughout the Railbelt, said the Anchorage port's Roger Graves. On a lesser scale, the Alaska ports of Dutch Harbor, Kodiak and Whittier, among others, also receive cargo from the Northwest.

It's not a one-way business deal, said Ed Engelhardt, senior director of trade development at the Port of Tacoma.

"About 30 percent of our business in any given year relates to the Alaska trade," he said. "The relationship is more of a strategy; the success of Alaska foretells the success of Tacoma.

The same could be said in varying degrees to the ports of Seattle, Bellingham, Prince Rupert and others across the Northwestern coastal region.

PORT OF TACOMA

By far, the greatest marine partnership with Alaska is through the Port of Tacoma. This port, in Washington state, handled nearly $25.5 billion in trade last year, about $3.4 billion of which represented Alaska business. That ranked Alaska at No. 3 among the port's top trading partners last year, according to statistics in its annual report. Japan topped the list, at more than $9.6 billion, with the China/Hong Kong regions at No. 2, with $5.8 billion.

Domestic ocean carriers at the port represent 33 percent of its business. While Hawaii and Guam employ a portion of this volume, the vast majority is with Alaska, according to a port spokesman.

The Tacoma port is the sixth largest in North America, and is the leading container port and the leading auto-handling port in the Pacific Northwest, ahead of Seattle, Vancouver and...