Fish Factor

Home grown salmon are Alaska’s largest crop – but don’t ever refer to it as farming. Whereas farmed fish are crammed into closed pens or cages until they’re ready for market, Alaska salmon begin their lives in one of 35 hatcheries and are released as fingerlings to the sea. When the fish return home, they make up a huge part of Alaska’s total salmon catch.

The state’s annual report on its fisheries enhancement programs show that last year, hatchery returns and harvests were down by more than half from 2010, when a record 77 million hatchery salmon were caught when returning to their home hatcheries. That added up to a whopping 49% of Alaska’s total salmon catch valued at $168 million, or 34% of the fishery’s dockside value.

By comparison, last year 33 million hatchery salmon, or 20% of the state harvest, were caught by commercial fishermen. The 2011 catch rang in at $109 million – 18% of the total dockside value.

Statewide the hatchery program is credited for contributing 53% of the chums, 26% of coho, 21% of pinks, 16% of Chinook and 6% of sockeye salmon to the 2011commercial harvest.

Prince William Sound is Alaska’s largest region for hatchery production, accounting for 73% of the Sound’s salmon catch last summer. The breakdown of hatchery contributions was 84% chums, 75% pinks, and 50% of both sockeye and coho salmon. Combined, the salmon were valued at $59 million, 57% of the value of the PWS fishery.

Southeast ranks second for hatchery production, which accounted for 10% of the Panhandle’s salmon catch: 75% chums, 29% coho, 22% Chinook, 13% sockeye and 1% of the pinks. The Southeast hatchery catch was valued at $43 million, 21% of the commercial fishery’s value.

Kodiak’s hatcheries accounted for 7% of the region’s total salmon catch: 37% of the chums, 34% of cohos, 21% of the sockeye and 4% of the pinks. Hatchery fish contributed $6 million to the Kodiak fishery, 14% of the total value.

At Cook Inlet, 2% of the total sockeye catch came from hatcheries, valued at just under $1 million, or 2% of the dockside value.

In 2011 hatchery operators collected nearly 2 billion eggs and released over 1.5 billion juvenile fish. This year more than 54 million hatchery produced salmon are projected to return to Alaska.

Ironically, Alaska spends $20 million each year on fish feed for its 35 salmon hatcheries - feed made primarily from anchovies from South America. At the same time, the tons of fish feed produced by Alaska seafood companies is sold to aquaculture operations in Asia.

Find the state’s annual report on hatcheries at the ADF&G home page, or at

http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/FedAidpdfs/FMR12-04

Find a study on missed opportunities called “Alaska Seafood Byproducts: Potential Products, Markets and Competing Products” at http://www.afdf.org /

Wanted: Fishing boats for research – The call is out for commercial longline vessels to help with annual halibut stock assessments. The surveys, which occur from June through August, have been conducted by fishery scientists since 1998 and cover waters from southern Oregon to the Bering Sea.

“We have a total of 1,274 stations coast wide, and the coast is divided into 27 regions that the vessels are able to bid on,” explained Claude Dykstra, survey program manager with the International Pacific Halibut Commission. “We generally have from 11 to 14 boats working for us in a summer,” he added.

The IPHC hires the vessel and crew to fish for halibut, along with two halibut samplers to collect various data on the stocks. Dykstra said with running time and weather, each trip takes 22 to 34 days overall.

The standard charter rate for most areas in the Gulf of Alaska down to Oregon is $60,000 to $75,000 per region. The regions in the western Aleutians and Bering Sea incur more costs, so rates there are in the $120,000 range. Each vessel can bid to do from one to three regions over the summer.

Boats also receive 10% of the value of the legal sized halibut that is sold at auction.

“They have to clean the fish like they normally do on a commercial trip. So they get that compensation for the extra work involved,” Dykstra said. “The other 90% is used to offset the costs of the program to the Halibut Commission. The ultimate goal is to have the survey program be cost neutral.”

Another pilot project in Southeast Alaska seeks one longline vessel to participate in a “whisker hook” study aimed at reducing the take of rockfish on halibut hooks. Dykstra said the project is driven by observations of hook modifications in sport fishing for bass or walleye that used a sort of lock spring across the mouth or gap of the hook.

“It’s like a piece of wire that’s springy and as the animal goes to bite it, it needs a certain amount of pressure to overcome that springiness and actually get hooked by the hook. The theory is a rockfish won’t get captured, but a halibut that is biting harder will, thereby reducing rockfish bycatch,” Dykstra explained.

Fishing no longer the deadliest job - Deaths on the job in Alaska have always been higher than the rest of the nation. It is not surprising considering the extreme weather and work conditions, and the challenges of getting around a state where 82% of the communities are not accessible by road.

Workplace fatalities are measured by the number of deaths per 100,000 workers. In its March edition of Economic Trends, the state Labor Department shows that Alaska’s workplace deaths have continued to decline, even as overall employment increased 31% from 1992 to 2010.

Historically, Alaska’s highest fatality rates have been in flying and fishing jobs. During that time period, air taxi and helicopter services accounted for 13% of work deaths, compared to 1% nationally.

For seafood harvesting, there have been 275 deaths in the past 18 years, or 30% of the total. However, Alaska’s fishing industry has dramatically improved its safety record, with on the job fatalities falling from 12 in 1992 to five in 2010. The Labor Dept. credits laws requiring safety training and equipment for the drop in fishing deaths, along with a move towards management programs that slow the pace of fisheries.

In fact, just 10% of job fatalities were from fishing in 2010, compared to 18% for aircraft pilots. Alaska’s deadliest jobs were in construction, mining and oil and gas, accounting for 26 percent of workplace deaths in 2010.