Alaska Fish Factor: Fish Factor's annual Fishing Picks and Pans for 2018

This column that each week focuses on Alaska’s seafood industry will enter into its 28th year in 2019. It began in the Anchorage Daily News in 1991 at the request of longtime former business editor Bill White and has appeared in the ADN ever since. Fish Factor also is featured in more than a dozen weekly papers across Alaska and nationally. The goal is to make all readers more aware of the economic, social and cultural importance of one of Alaska’s oldest and largest industries. 

Here are Fish Factor’s annual Fishing Picks and Pans for 2018 – a no holds barred look back at some of the year’s best and worst fishing highlights, in no particular order, and my choice for the biggest fish story of the year.

Biggest new industry potential:  Mariculture. Growing shellfish and seaweeds could be a $100 million Alaska industry in 20 years, says a comprehensive state report. Kelp farms are cropping up around Kodiak and, along with food makers, the Dept. of Energy already has its sights on Alaska for biofuels from macroalgae.

Best fish sigh of relief: Many Gulf fishermen began using pots instead of hooks to keep whales from robbing their pricey sablefish catches, called “getting whaled.”

Best fish visionaries: Tidal Vision of Juneau, for their eco-friendly method of extracting chitin from crab shells, a first in the US. Uses for chitin range from fabrics to filters to pharmaceuticals.

Best Fish Legislators:  Rep. Louise Stutes (R) Kodiak, Rep. Bryce Edgmon (D) Dillingham, Rep. Dan Ortiz (N), Ketchikan

Best fish knowledge sharers: Alaska Sea Grant

Best Fish Giver – Sea Share, over 225 million fish servings to food banks since 1994. The program began as a way to use bycatch caught in Bering Sea fisheries.

Trickiest fishing conundrum:  Sea otters vs. crab and dive fisheries in Southeast Alaska

Most earth friendly fishing town – Kodiak, for generating nearly 100 percent of its electricity from wind and hydropower, and for turning its fish wastes into high quality oils and meals

Biggest fish WTF? Rick (Rydell) Green being chosen as a special assistant to the AK Dept. of Fish and Game to “restore trust” in the department. Green has no education or experience in fisheries or wildlife and was a talk show host on KENI/Anchorage since 2001.

Scariest fish stories: ocean acidification and warming oceans 

Best daily fish news site: SeafoodNews.com

Best fish watchers: Cook Inlet Keeper, Salmon Beyond Borders

Best new fish economist: Garrett Evridge, McDowell Group

Best go to bat for their fish: Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (GAPP); the fishermen funded/operated Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association

Best fish motivators: The Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association’s Alaska Ocean Cluster Initiative that promotes Blue Economy business ideas and entrepreneurs.

Best fish mainstream push: The Get Ugly crab campaign by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. Older crabs with shells that are discolored, scarred or covered with barnacles can comprise 30 percent of the catch in Bering Sea fisheries. The “ugly” crab can be a turn off to buyers.  “It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” the campaign says, adding that the older crab often have better meat fills.

Biggest fish bust: 25 percent tariffs on nearly all U.S. seafood products going to and from China. China is Alaska’s biggest seafood buyer, purchasing 54 percent of our seafood exports last year valued at $1.3 billion. 

Best Industry Entrepreneurs – Salmon Sisters of Homer

Best eco-friendly fish feat: The removal of hundreds of thousands of pounds of old fishing nets, lines and gear from Dutch Harbor and Kodiak by Nicole Baker’s “net your problem” program. The nets are shipped to Europe where they are recycled into plastic products.

Biggest fish fake: Genetically modified salmon – Frankenfish

Biggest fish raised eyebrows: Offshore fish farms being proposed by the Trump Administration. Backers that include Cargill, Pacific Seafood, Red Lobster, High Liner Foods, Sysco and Seattle Fish Company are pushing a bill in the U.S. Senate called Advancing the Quality and Understanding of American Aquaculture (AQUAA) Act that will streamline the permitting process for offshore aquaculture projects. 

Best new fish writers: Elizabeth Earl, Alaska Journal of Commerce; Alistair Gardiner, Kodiak Daily Mirror

Worst fish travesty –Commercial and sport fishermen get cuts every year while nearly six million of pounds of halibut are allowed to be taken as bycatch in other fisheries.  It’s getting better, but still a long way to go.

Best fish assists: Every person at ADF&G and NOAA Fisheries/Alaska.

Best go to bat for its future fishermen – Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, Sitka

Best fish show offs:  Alaska Symphony of Seafood, hosted for 26 years by the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation.

Biggest fish uncertainty – Dunleavy administration

Best fish switch - Herring taken for its roe pays $100-$350 per ton in a fading Japanese market; herring used for food and bait can fetch up to $2,000 per ton. (While many fishermen pay over $1/lb for bait herring from the east coast.) Time for a management shift?

Biggest fish opportunity – Turning Alaska’s three billion pounds of fish heads, skins, internal organs and other “wastes” into pet foods, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, etc. An Analyses of Alaska Seafood Specialty Products report by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute says using byproducts could be worth an additional $700 million or more to the industry.

Biggest fish disappointments– Salmon catches throughout the Gulf of Alaska were the lowest in 50 years in some regions. Likewise, catches of cod, halibut and Bering Sea crab also tumbled.

Best fish boosters – Alaska’s salmon hatcheries

Biggest fish story – Alaska Fish are changing their behavior in search of colder waters. 

No sea ice in the winter of 2018 in the Bering Sea led to the

disappearance of the “cold pool,” a big tongue of bottom water that corresponds to the usual

southward extent of the ice cover. That’s led to more

than half of the cod biomass being found in regions north of the normal surveys, as well as a big plug of pollock. There also was a 20 percent shift in the

density of Pacific halibut from a year ago in the northern Bering Sea.