Seafood: Alaska's sustainable bounty.

• Author: Swagel, Will
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: International Trade

When counting fish, Alaska is a world class producer. In fact, if it were a separate country, Alaska would place among the top dozen fishing nations in the world and rank as the sixth largest seafood exporter. Economic studies peg Alaska as producing about $4.5 billion in seafood annually (first wholesale value). More than sixty thousand workers harvest, process, manage, and market Alaska's seafood with in-state net earnings and payroll of about $1.7 billion. That's not counting indirect employment and multiplier effects, which create an additional eleven thousand jobs in Alaska.

It's also not counting quality of life improvements for Alaskans in scores of coastal towns and villages. The commercial fishing fleet provides valuable backhaul for shippers and helps to increase the market for--thus lowering the price of--fuel, food, and other supplies. Local fleets support the banking, telecommunications, and fabrication industries. Tyson Fick, communications director for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI), says he has been told by transportation industry reps that Alaska consumers would have to pay higher freight rates if ships and planes were not using their southbound leg to carry fish.

"Large parts of the state are unaware of how valuable and significant commercial fishing is," says Gunnar Knapp, director of the Institute of Economic and Social Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage (ISER). Knapp has studied the Alaska commercial fishing industry for more than three decades.

"It's an immensely large and valuable industry," Fick says. "This sometimes gets missed by people who don't live along the coast, either outside a fishing area or outside the industry itself."

Quality Leader

Alaska dominates world production of sockeye salmon and Pacific halibut and is a major producer of other species such as Alaskan pollock, Pacific cod, king crab, and pink salmon. Alaska's commercial catch includes a broad number of species: pollock and cod; all five species of Pacific salmon; halibut; rockfish; sablefish; king, opilio, and Dungeness crab; and several kinds of invertebrates, such as geoduck clams and sea cucumbers.

Globally, Alaska produces one to two percent of all seafood and 10 to 13 percent of the world's salmon. Alaskan fishermen typically catch about 55 percent of the entire US seafood harvest by volume.

As Americans eat more and more fish produced on (mostly foreign) fish farms, Alaska-caught products enjoy a worldwide reputation for the highest quality and for coming from a sustainable wild fishery.

"There is a growing preference for wild fish and pristine environments and healthy fish runs," says ASMI's Fick. "That's something that the rest of the world doesn't have. It gives us a huge marketing advantage."

Alaska-caught fish command a price premium over other fish, Fick says. Alaska crab and pollock, for instance, are priced higher than...