Riding the waves of commercial fishing.

• Author: Gay, Joel

Waves triggered by the tumultuous events of 1991 continued to wash through Alaska's commercial fishing industry last year. But the waves' force was all but spent, and the fleet, instead of rocking violently as the waves passed, bobbed gently in their wake.

For the state-managed fisheries of salmon, herring and crab, 1992 was a year with no strikes or major price disputes, just quiet resignation that the high prices of the 1980s are over and marketing is critical to the well-being of the coastal fleet.

In the federal fisheries, 1992 will be remembered mostly as a year of final decisions -- mostly -- that capped nearly a decade of bitter and divisive discussion. The industry has all but completed its transformation from open-access, first-come-first-served fishing to a tightly controlled business accountable to many masters, from large trawlers to small communities.

A Decent Year for Salmon. Evidence of continued cooling in the Japanese economy bore itself out when salmon fishermen found prices were not as high as they had hoped. Japanese seafood consumers have less money and more choices than in recent years, and farmed salmon from Chile and Norway are making inroads into the market.

In Bristol Bay, where the sockeye run is so big it sets the base price for all five species of Pacific salmon, processors opened the season at $1 per pound -- up slightly from the post-strike prices of 1991 but below fishermen's expectations. A record run to the Egegik District fueled the fourth highest catch ever for the bay and boosted the total value of the catch to $191 million.

Cook Inlet had the most surprising season of 1992. Biologists had predicted an uneventful year, but the sockeyes flooded back in near-record numbers and the fleet earned $105 million. The mighty Kenai River is suffering from excess salmon escapements in the late 1980s, and the next several years are expected to be among the worst ever.

Kodiak fishermen had a good year, too, landing $38 million worth of reds and pinks, but Prince William Sound suffered another miserable year. Not only did pink salmon fetch just 18 cents a pound, but the run failed. Seiners there earned just $5 million, whereas a good year would net the fleet more than $20 million. Southeast Alaska fishermen saw half as many pinks as they did in 1991, landing 34 million.

The middling prices -- an average $1.28 for sockeyes and 16 cents for pinks -- were balanced by relatively good catches statewide, and 1992 will go...