"Alaska lost seafood harvesting jobs for a fifth straight year in 2024, bringing the industry to its lowest job count since data collection began in 2001," the department reports.
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Alaska commercial fishing news and notes
About me
- Deckboss
- I'm a journalist covering Alaska's commercial fishing industry. My real name is Wesley Loy. Reach me at wloy61@gmail.com.
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11 comments:
The world has moved on.
A good salmon season crew share in 1998 was $30,000.
A good salmon season crew share in 2025 was $30,000.
20 years ago a guy could make his year round living working on a boat with a halibut IFQ cap. Now an IFQ cap now is a ok gig for the spring, if you are on a boat that catches fish.
Crab is essentially gone.
The cod price has really improved in 30 years.
The money in dragging isn't exciting, and pollock was a bust this year.
Pretty much spot on. The 30k salmon season back then went a hell of a lot further than now. Current salmon prices are about what they were back in 1980. Now a can of coors lite is same price as what a 6 pack was back then. 🥲
It costs more to replace an engine in a small boat than most of them are worth. They are going to keep disappearing.
Lower margin fishermen have gone by by, survival of the capitalists, in effect.
Let’s face it: hundreds of small boats frantically zigging around to catch salmon that are moving to terminal areas anyway (where they can easily be trapped and processed to perfection) is an abysmally dumb, inefficient way to produce quality protein.
And groundfish delivered to shore plants? Equally dumb, compared to the efficiency of a factory trawler.
Throw in cheap, easily farmed fish substitutes, and the future states us in the face. Economists have been predicting this for decades.
Exactly 5:25. Just like most salmon fisheries when the fleets doubled with that Limited Entry Act. It never supported the amount of vessels fishing. Look at Bristol Bay, when an all-time maximum of 900 sailboats, were turned into 1875 permits. The optimum number study of 2004 of 800 to 1200 boats, dropped to 1180 in 2025. We only have to get rid of 200 more to make it profitable. Every gill net, set net, and a single seine fishery doubled their fleets with Limited Entry. The fish farms required the slop to be eliminated, a novelty in 1980. Today Alaska's salmon industry is the novelty. All those school teachers need go back to school, after they cried super-exclusive.
I see opportunities for those that want to work. That hasn’t changed in the 50 years I have been fishing.
What's dumb is thinking you can work 6 weeks or so and make enough money to not work the rest of the year and still buy a new sled every year.
Fishing is a social welfare program for Alaskans and we're letting anti-fishing NGOs and southcentral sporties drive a wedge amogst us, which is bringing the whole program down. If you think KRSA, salmonstate, ocean conservancy are gonna stop at trawl, guess again.
I like the old sled, it hauls more gold. That new shiny shits stupid, unless of course you own shares in it, and it pays a dividend check every year. "Gold is money. Everything else is credit."J.P. Morgan, bought the Kennicott Bonanza Mine, and built a famous Million Dollar Bridge, when he formed the Alaska Syndicate, and put Cordova on the map. Sockeye Salmon accounted for about 58% of the total salmon value in Alaska, with 24% of the total salmon harvest statewide. You need learn how to invest someday. Just like when Daubenspect bought a fish trap in 1946 and Kenai Packers was born. He went up to Canada and ordered 200 Shore's. You must not understand the value of sockeye.
Alaska's a social welfare experiment for the United States. Bona fide residents of Puerto Rico generally do not report income received from income sources within Puerto Rico on their U.S. income tax return. There's a reason Cap Lathrop Alaska first homegrown millionaire politicked against statehood, and he was 100% correct on its future, one big non-profit, proven when they blow it all in everything they ever invest in. How's all those Kings doing, with the Queen in the Parlor, eating curds and honey. Once that U.S. Fish and Wildlife service takes this social welfare program over, you'll be just like that Cook Inlet Set Net Fleet, eliminated.
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