Christian Buschmann of Petersburg just turned 22 and already he's been fishing commercially for many years. He bought his first state fishing permit at 16, and now owns two boats to chase salmon, herring, halibut and sablefish.

He aims to make a career of fishing – just like his dad.

"If you make the right moves, there's a lot of opportunity," he said. "This is my passion. Fishing is really the only thing I know to do with myself."

Buschmann is just what Alaska's increasingly graybeard fishing industry needs – aggressive young risk-takers who see a future on the water.

Yet he enters the business at a time of great transition for the industry.

It might be imperceptible to many, but the state's fishing ranks are shrinking.

Average monthly employment for people catching fish in Alaska was 7,260 in 2007, down nearly 17 percent from the 8,706 recorded in 2000, a state Department of Labor study showed.

As the number of fishermen drops, it seems the costs and complexities of the game are rising. Over many years, the open range of Alaska's seas have been fenced, and gaining entry into a given fishery often means buying an expensive permit or rights to catch a share of the harvest.

Where government once encouraged more boats and greater participation, policy has now shifted in the other direction.

Nowhere in the country have these trends been more pronounced than in Alaska.

All Buschmann knows is, he still sees a chance to follow the lead of many successful fishermen in his hometown of Petersburg, a Southeast city with a deep Norwegian heritage.

"There's a lot of people to look up to, walking the docks," he said.

So what's happened in recent years to pare down the state's fishing fraternity?

To some degree, the number of active fishermen varies with the abundance of fish, and certainly with the rise and fall of dockside prices.

But other forces have contributed to the decline in fishing jobs. Here are a few examples:

• Since 1973, when the Alaska Legislature enacted a law to restrict the number of participants in the state's commercial fisheries, regulators have limited entry into 68 Alaska fisheries.

Over the years, the number of permits has declined, in part because regulators have taken steps to trim permits in certain fisheries. The state issued 24,182 permits in 2001, but only 19,983 in 2008. Alaska residents held 74 percent of the permits.

Likewise, the number of state vessel licenses has been dropping, from 39,359 in 2001 to 29,628 in 2008.

• Revolutionary changes in how Alaska's commercial fisheries are managed have resulted in major consolidation in the number of fishermen and boats.

Two prime examples are halibut and Bering Sea crab, two of the most valuable fisheries.

In 1994, federal regulators converted the halibut fishery from a wild and woolly derby to individual quotas for fishermen – catch rights that can be bought and sold. The government issued quota shares to 4,831 persons initially, but this year only 2,850 persons hold quota shares.

Government regulators likewise converted the notoriously dangerous Bering Sea king and Tanner crab fisheries to a system of individual quotas and fishing cooperatives in 2005. The conversion spawned a drastic fleet consolidation overnight, with the number of boats taking part in the red king crab fishery falling from 250 to fewer than 100. Bitterness still lingers in Kodiak and other ports over the loss of hundreds of crew jobs.

• Several fisheries in Alaska, like elsewhere in the country, have conducted significant vessel buyouts.

Some examples: in 2008, Southeast salmon purse seiners used $2.9 million in federal grant funding to retire 35 permit holders. In 2007, cod fishermen took on a $35 million federal loan to retire three large freezer longline vessels. In 2004, Bering Sea crab fishermen voted to shoulder a $97 million loan to buy out 25 boats. And in 1998, the federal government financed a $90 million buyout of nine factory trawlers in the Bering Sea pollock fishery – ships capable of employing crews of 100 people.

Certainly, cutting jobs in any industry is tough, as the Lower 48 economy has seen during the recession.

But the downsizing of Alaska's fishing workforce carries some benefits.

Fishery managers, scientists and activists believe the health of fish stocks can improve when excess catching capacity is taken off the water.

And reducing the number of fishermen can boost profits for those who remain.

In fact, while the fishing ranks have declined, the overall value of Alaska's commercial fisheries is trending up.

According to a recent federal economic analysis, the dockside or ex-vessel value of all Alaska fisheries including bottomfish, shellfish, salmon, halibut and herring was $1.7 billion in 2008, the highest inflation-adjusted value in 13 years.

Perhaps surprisingly, fewer fishermen hasn't meant bad news for employment in the other vital but less glamorous component of Alaska's seafood industry – the processing sector.

The state's tremendous hauls of crab still need cleaning, filleting, freezing, canning and packing, an extremely labor-intensive job.

The Alaska Department of Labor projects average monthly processor employment of 9,200 for this year, 700 more than a decade ago.

One concern about the processing sector is that most of the workforce is brought in seasonally from Outside.

Six emerging, Alaska-based companies created under the federal community development quota program are trying to do something about it. The CDQ program reserves up to 10 percent of the Bering Sea's lucrative fish and crab harvests for the benefit of Western Alaska villages. The six companies, which manage seafood harvests on behalf of these communities, strive to put villagers to work in the fisheries.

One CDQ company, Coastal Villages Region Fund, which represents villages in the Kuskokwim River region, reported that nearly all the 360 people who worked in its local salmon and halibut plants in 2008 were Alaskans.

For Christian Buschmann, navigating the shifting tides of Alaska's seafood industry is just part of the job of being a commercial fisherman.

He's invested not only in boats, but in quotas for halibut and sablefish. Part of his career plan for now includes saving on expenses by living at home with his dad. They often partner on fishing trips.

Commercial fishing in Alaska consistently ranks as one of the most treacherous professions, and Buschmann and his main boat, the Lone Star, have had at least one close call.

To be successful, he plans to stay afloat and avoid a lot of debt, which he calls "a bad way for a young guy to start."