Fish Factor

Last Wednesday marked the start of Lent, a time of fasting, soul searching and repentance for hundreds of millions of Christians around the world. And what the burst in the holiday sales season from Thanksgiving to Christmas means to retailers, Lent means the same to the seafood industry.

The 40-day Lenten season, which this year runs from March 5th to Easter Sunday on April 20th, dates back to the 4th century, and it has been customary to forego meat ever since. While nearly all seafood enjoys a surge of interest during Lent, the most traditional items served are the so called “whitefish” species, such as cod, pollock, flounders, and halibut.

Food Services of America reports that Ash Wednesday is the busiest day of the year for frozen seafood sales, and the six weeks following is the top selling season for the entire year. (Ash Wednesday is so called from the ritual of placing ashes from burned palm branches on the forehead to symbolize “that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”)

Overall, Americans ate more seafood during Lent in 2013 than in previous years, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. GrubHub, the nation’s top online and mobile food-ordering company which works with nearly 30,000 restaurants in 600 cities, said the number of people eating fish on Fridays increased by 20 percent during Lent last year since 2011. 

The Filet-O-Fish sandwich, which was launched by McDonald’s on Good Friday, is made with Alaska pollock and sales top 300 million a year. Nearly 25 percent of the fish sandwiches are sold during Lent.

No matter what the seafood favorite, the long Lenten season is good news for Alaska, which provides nearly 60% of the wild caught seafood to U.S. restaurants and grocery stores.

Halibut’s here- Alaska longliners are ready to haul in the year’s first fresh halibut with the March 8 start of the fishery. Alaska’s halibut catch of roughly 19 million pounds is down about 11 percent. Sablefish, or black cod, also opens on March 8. That quota was reduced by 10 percent this year to just under 34 million pounds.

Less overall fish might bump up dock prices, but it will take a week or so for markets to settle out. Buyer resistance to the high priced fish came into play last year and sales started off slowly. The first fresh landings last year fetched $5.25 - $5.75 at major ports, then dropped about a dollar in the first week. Likewise, starting sablefish prices were down by 40 percent, ranging from $3-$5 across five sizes.

As a price watch: Last year’s average Alaska fish prices were $5.06 per /lb for halibut and $2.84 per /lb for sablefish. That compares to $5.87 and $4.11 in 2012. Alaska fishermen provide more than 95 percent of our nation’s halibut and over 70 percent of the sablefish.

Switching to herring – the upcoming roe herring harvest at Sitka Sound has been clipped to 16,333 tons, about 12-hundred tons less than announced in December. State managers are already set to start aerial surveys for signs of the roe herring run. Herring managers also think the warm spring means the fish might show early at Togiak in Bristol Bay. That is Alaska’s largest herring fishery with a catch this year at nearly 28,000 tons.

A push is gaining steam to use all of the herring, not just the female roe, instead of grinding it into fishmeal. In Norway, herring is sold smoked, canned, pickled and more. Fishermen there get 47 cents a pound for their catch; that compares to $100 per ton at Togiak. A McDowell Group report showed that if male herring from Togiak and Kodiak fisheries were made into frozen fillets, the wholesale value would approach $15 million.

Bring ‘em back - Researchers at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center are tops at the work they do – the Center is the research arm of NOAA Fisheries. Their science forms the basis for setting Alaska fish quotas, running observer programs, tightening bycatch limits, to name just a few. But … the Alaska Fisheries Science Center is located in Seattle.

Juneau Mayor Merrill Sanford wants to bring those science jobs closer to the sources they study.

“There are other places in Southeast where some of these jobs could go, and there’s also Kodiak which has a big fishing industry where some of the jobs could go. We want to look at all of that,” he said at a recent meeting.

Mayor Sanford has created a task force to learn how those science jobs might be brought back to Alaska. Attracting more federal jobs to Juneau is an Assembly priority, he said, as well as lab techs and - research vessels

“If we could move even a few to our own research centers in our own fisheries areas, I think it would be a big advantage to us,” he said.

NOAA Fisheries has fewer than 200 researchers in Alaska, mostly in Juneau. The Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle lists over 400 on the job. That’s a long commute to and from the fishing grounds.

So how did the Center end up there in the first place?

“That is where the geographical distribution of the labor force developed around the time of statehood,” NOAA spokesperson Julie Speegle told KTOO in Juneau, “and it’s mostly just been maintained there.”

The Assembly task force will reveal its findings in six months.

Fish flash! – Eileen Sobeck, the new director of NOAA Fisheries, will attend the ComFish trade show next month in Kodiak. US Senator Mark Begich is bringing Sobeck to the event; it will be her first trip to Alaska. Senator Begich

frequently attends ComFish and holds informal, open meetings with all comers. http://www.comfishalaska.com