To help pull the struggling Alaska’s commercial seafood industry out of its tailspin, state lawmakers passed some bills aimed at lightening the financial load on harvesters and advanced others for next year that are intended to help businesses and fishery-dependent municipalities.

The bills stemmed from recommendations made by the Joint Legislative Task Force Evaluating Alaska’s Seafood Industry, which was created by lawmakers last year and which completed its work with a report at the start of this year’s session in January.

Lawmakers this past session, which ended May 20, passed two task force-related bills, giving unanimous or near-unanimous support. One of them, House Bill 116, allows Alaska fishing organizations to establish their own insurance cooperatives. The other bill, Senate Bill 156, shores up the Alaska Commercial Fishing and Agriculture Bank with a long-term loan from the state to keep the cooperative organization in business.

The bills pose little to no costs to the state, according to legislative analysis. They are only incremental steps toward addressing the big problems facing a major Alaska industry.

Multiple and often interrelated forces have dragged down nearly all sectors of the seafood industry: low fish prices resulting from glutted world markets, high operating costs, financial turmoil among processing companies, labor shortages and numerous stock collapses or poor returns tied to a variety of environmental conditions, including climate change.

While Alaska produces about 60% of the nation’s seafood, that volume is overwhelmed by international supplies and global economic forces, limiting lawmakers’ options to respond effectively, said Juneau Sen. Jesse Kiehl.

“Our role is not as big as we imagine. That means the Legislature has only so many tools,” said Kiehl, who served on the task force. “But you see us, I think, turning the knobs.”

Beyond the bills passed this year, other bills resulting from the task force recommendations have advanced far enough to be approaching full floor votes; the Legislature works in two-year cycles, and bills introduced this year carry over to next year.

Those remaining seafood task force bills carry price tags for the state, however. They will get some extra scrutiny next year, given the state’s dire fiscal condition created by lower oil revenues, task force members said.

“We are in new and unusual times where, you know, we have to look at every issue and try to decide if it’s worth the additional cost,” said Senate President Gary Stevens, of Kodiak, who served as the task force’s chair.

One bill, Senate Bill 135, would increase local governments’ share of seafood taxes that are currently split with the state government. Currently, fishery business and seafood tax revenues are split evenly between the state and local governments; the bill would allow the local governments up to 75% of those revenues.

Some fishing communities endured steep losses from the industry’s woes. The island community of St. Paul, for example, saw a drop of nearly 90% of its tax revenue in 2024 after key crab harvests were canceled, according to legislative information.

Another important bill that resulted from the task force’s report would broaden the state tax credit granted to companies that invest in equipment to create new seafood products, adding value to the fish they process. The two versions of the measure, Senate Bill 130 and House Bill 129, both had been sent to their respective bodies’ finance committees prior to last month’s legislative adjournment.

The annual cost to the state would range from $930,000 to $4.2 million a year, depending on different scenarios, according to the state Department of Revenue’s analysis of the Senate version.

Kiehl has high hopes for the bill. It will encourage the development of high-end products, key to the industry’s recovery, he said.

“As much as our seafood as we can put into a premium space, that will help,” he said.

Differentiating Alaska salmon, for example, as a premium product is critical when competition comes from huge amounts of cheap Russian salmon harvested by fish traps rather than by small family businesses, he said.

At the same time, there are opportunities for Alaska fish oil and fish meal to be molded into new products like nutritional supplements, Kiehl said. Those opportunities could be explored by companies investing in equipment to add value to the raw fish they process, he said.

The budget that lawmakers passed also reflects task force recommendations for boosted state marketing efforts. The budget includes a $10 million allocation for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, the state agency that promotes Alaska fish products domestically and internationally.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed a similar amount from last year’s budget but has expressed support for the funding this year.

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