Bristol bay blues: where's the bottom?

摘要

How low can Bristol Bay go? Alaska's beleaguered salmon industry was pondering the thought after this year's fishery. Low run forecasts proved painfully accurate, though fishermen managed to scratch up slightly more sockeye than predicted. The weakharvest and a repeat of last season's dismal .40 dollar/lb. combined to produce an overall fishery value of 25.1 million dollar, the poorest tally since 1977. "This is the worst I've seen it since the Japanese were stealing all our fish on the high seas," says Robin Samuelsen, a fisherman and business leader in Dillingham, one of the Bay's salmon citadels. With any luck, Bristol Bay will never revert to the dark days of the 1970s, when now ousted foreign fleets combined with poor ocean conditions to drive inshore catches to near zero. Nowadays the demon for Alaska is farm-raised fish, predominantly from Chile, that has routed the value of Alaska's wild sockeye in the key market of Japan. Though some fishermen still don't buy it, that's the big reason ex-vessel prices are so low, processors say. The total commercial harvest through July 18 was 10.4 million fish, compared to last year's catch of 14 million, for a value of about 38 million dollar. The Bay's 20-year average coming into the season was 25 million fish. Expecting a bad season, fishermen shunned the Bay like WorldCom stock. About 700 of the Bay's 1,900 drift gillnet permit holders found something else to do this season.