“Getting rid of the gillnets is my solution to the Bristol Bay problem,” said Buckley, a Kodiak resident who holds a Bristol Bay commercial fishing permit. “Allow the fishermen who want to to move to different kinds of gear.”

Buckley, who has done extensive research on keeping fish alive longer in net pens to bring a higher quality end product to market, said state fisheries laws should be rewritten to allow commercial harvesters the option of switching gear types.

“I can't imagine why a gillnetter would be threatened by a guy who chose to use trolling poles,” Buckley said, following his presentation on net pen salmon March 15 at ComFish, the annual commercial fisheries forum at Kodiak High School.

Such a move would require a groundswell of support from fishermen, he said. “The fishing industry itself has to want to change that law. Part of my mission is to explain to people that they can get more money by producing a higher-quality fish.”

Changing restrictions in gear types would be more easily said than done, said John Hilsinger, director of commercial fisheries for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

“The big issue for changing gear types would be the cost of trying to make the transition,” said Hilsinger, a veteran of the department who returned seven years after retirement at the invitation of Commissioner Denby Lloyd. “The fisheries are far less lucrative now.

“To introduce a new gear type like seining, you would have to go to the Board of Fisheries and put in a proposal, and also go to the Limited Entry Commission,” he said. “They would have to create seine permits, and the board would have to legalize it as a gear type. And then you would have to figure out how to transfer permits” rather than create additional permits for seiners.

When he's not fishing, Buckley's work through Digital Observer, his Kodiak research firm, tracks how net pens and live deliveries can enhance the quality and capture high-end markets for fish.

“If we treat our salmon like they were all Mercedes Benzs, we could sell them like Mercedes,” he said.

The livelier the fish at time of harvest, the better the likelihood that the quality will be preserved, he said. Chill the fish early, keep them chilled and reduce handling, he said.

And, Buckley said, merely certifying that the fish are of high quality isn't good enough. They have a long way to go to market and many things can go wrong en route.

“The very act of killing the fish on the grounds often leads to an inferior product,” Buckley said in his presentation at ComFish. “The problem is the volume and structural inefficiencies (of the Bristol Bay fishery) often result in a lower quality of salmon.”

It's important to define quality as the customer sees it, he said. Forty-five percent of that quality is in appearance, and shelf life, taste and dining experience also figure into the equation, he said. While Alaskans tend to put taste first, most customers outside of Alaska put appearance first, he said.

Buckley said air freight routes, often varied in their of arrival at destinations, plus insufficient temperature controls, are other contributing factors to the quality of seafood delivered to far-off destinations.

Buckley cited one shipment of Copper River reds he tracked in 2002, in which fish shipped by air freight reached a temperature of 62 degrees Fahrenheit by the time the order was received by a buyer in Chicago. The fish, all dead for 24 hours before shipment, were tagged by Buckley at 45 degrees, chilled to 32 degrees and went to a plant where the water temperature was above 45 degrees.

The fish were placed in 50-pound wetlock containers and sent in coolers to Anchorage, and from there on to Chicago. When the fish arrived in Chicago, the order sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half, and the core temperature of the boxes was by then 62 degrees, he said.

“This was a shock,” Buckley said. “People paid top dollar to move Copper River reds from Cordova to Chicago.”

Buckley also cited a 2003 study where fish hung in gillnets for up to 18 hours.

Trollers in Southeast Alaska, by contrast, have added significant value to their harvests by carefully washing, icing and processing the fish at sea, he said. Southeast Alaska troll-caught salmon get some of the highest prices in the industry, in part because of the quality of the product going to market, and in part because of their limited year-round availability.