The Future of the Alaska Seafood Industry.

• Author: KNAPP, GUNNAR
• Position: Statistical Data Included - Industry Overview

The Alaska seafood industry is big by world standards. Over the past five years, Alaska fishermen harvested an average of 2.2 milliontons of fish from Alaska waters. That harvest was worth more than $1 billion to fishermen, with an average wholesale value to Alaska processors of more than $2.5 billion. The Alaska harvest would rank 12th in the world if Alaska were an independent country.

The seafood industry is a big part of Alaska's economy. Alaska's seafood industry provides about 20,000 jobs in fishing and fish processing (measured on an annual average basis), and directly supports thousands more jobs in transportation and other sectors. The seafood industry pays tens of millions of dollars in taxes to state and local governments. Back-haul opportunities from shipments of seafood products out of Alaska help reduce freight rates for products shipped to Alaska.

Some Alaskans downplay the importance of the seafood industry because many processing companies are headquartered outside Alaska and many processing workers and fishermen are nonresidents. But the same points could be made about Alaska's oil, mining, tourism and timber industries. While Alaska doesn't capture all the benefits of the seafood industry, the benefits that the state does capture are enormous. And they are particularly important for rural Alaska, where fishing and fish processing are often the only significant private-sector activities.

The past few years it seems like there's been lots of bad news coming out of the Alaska seafood industry. Unexpected shortfalls in the Bristol Bay sockeye salmon harvest and the collapse of Yukon and Kuskokwim River salmon runs have led to successive disaster declarations. Salmon prices have fallen as farmed salmon captures a growing share of world markets. Crab fishermen have had their quotas slashed in the lucrative Bering Sea opilio crab fishery. Pollock fishermen have been excluded from vast areas of prime fishing grounds because of declining Steller Sea Lion populations. The big, new Alaska Seafood International plant in Anchor-age-in which the state has invested tens of millions of dollars-is off to a rocky start.

With all this bad news, what is the future for the Alaska seafood industry in the 21st century? Can Alaska's seafood industry survive and prosper despite fluctuating resources and changing markets?

To answer that question, it helps to have a little historical perspective. The Alaska seafood industry has been around for along time. Before gold miners...