By Margaret Bauman
Alaska Journal of Commerce

Part of the attraction of fishing for sockeye salmon in Bristol Bay is the “home run” potential: the chance to catch a lot of fish in a short amount of time, said Chris McDowell, a veteran fisherman who also studies the economy of the fisheries and writes the salmon report for the state's Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute in Juneau.

But there's always the risk of a backfire, should the world's largest sockeye salmon run show up in a run too big for the processor sector to handle.

When that happens, processors set limits for how much fish they will accept every day, and the fishermen have no option but to fish the limit - often way less than they are capable of harvesting. Meantime, they sit on their boats watching the run go by, until the processors say they can take more fish.

That's what happened in the summer of 2008 in Bristol Bay, and fishermen, who had asked the state to allow more processing capacity, were exasperated.

Processors told state fisheries officials who conducted a survey that they could handle 1.7 million salmon a day, which is exactly what happened, but the run in 2008 was unusually compressed, McDowell said.

“I did OK, but we certainly could have done way better had the processors been willing to buy more, but we were sitting there watching fish go by. To be fair to the processors, it's ideal for them to bring just enough capacity to the bay to handle the fish,” McDowell said. “The margins are always very tight in the seafood business, so there is always a fundamental push-pull there.”

What happened economically with the salmon fisheries statewide is still an unknown, however.

“We don't have the preliminary ex-vessel (prices paid to fishermen) values for the rest of the state,” McDowell said. “Normally we would have them by late October,” but the state is way behind on gathering this information.

Dave Harsilla, president of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Association, said the Bristol Bay harvest reached nearly 28 million sockeye, 1.2 million chums, 278,000 pinks, 90,000 coho and 25,000 kings. Harsilla put the value of the harvest at nearly $115 million, based on 68 cents a pound for sockeye paid to fishermen.

“The harvest is the result of due diligence by 17,000 hard-working people - from Alaska Department of Fish and Game managers to fishermen, processors and their crews to freight workers and all the local community members that make this happen,” Harsilla wrote in the latest issue of the AIFMA Leader, the association's publication.

“The Bristol Bay fishery is a treasure indeed,” Harsilla said. “We will continue to work on issues of salmon prices, markets, costs and margins, but all of that is premised on the salmon resource continuing to be available for harvest.”

Fishermen in Bristol Bay got a big boost this summer from an icing program introduced by the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association.

“It's a long-term effort,” said McDowell, who is vice president of the RSDA's board of directors. For a significant portion of the Bristol Bay fleet installing a refrigerated sea water system may not be economically viable, so the icing program benefits those who don't have the RSW capability, he said.

The RSDA allocated thousands of dollars producing the ice and making it available to fishermen at sea, to ice their harvest quickly. The RSDA is funded through a 1 percent assessment deducted off fish tickets of driftnet fishermen and paid into an account at the Alaska Department of Revenue. Each year, the Legislature appropriates the amount collected to the Department of Commerce, which forward it to the RSDA, in much the same manner as the fisheries enhancement tax.

Limits on fishing in the event of compressed run that overwhelm processing capacity are only one major concern of Bristol Bay fishermen.

Another is the proposed Pebble Mine, now estimated to cost upward of $5 billion if and when it is built. A number of commercial, sport and subsistence fishery participants remain skeptical that such a huge copper and gold mine could ever be operated without risk to the Bristol Bay watershed.

“Turning the Bristol Bay watershed into a hard rock mining district would inevitably and rapidly destroy the commercial fishing industry as we know it,” Harsilla wrote in the AIFMA Leader. “The sport fishing industry would never be the same and the subsistence fishery will be impacted and a lifestyle lost.

“No mining permit for a large mine has ever been denied by the state of Alaska, regardless of the environmental issues,” Harsilla said. “We cannot assume that mining companies or the state of Alaska will make decisions in the best interest of any commercial fisherman or Bristol Bay resident.”

Promoters of the Pebble Mine, meanwhile, continue to say Pebble will co-exist with healthy fish, wildlife and other valued natural resources, and help build sustainable communities.

Mike Heatwole, vice president of public affairs for the Pebble Partnership, told the Alaska World Affairs Council on Nov. 5 that that partnership's budgeted investment for the exploration phase of the mine in 2008 was $117 million. From 2002 through 2007, Northern Dynasty, in Vancouver, British Columbia, spent a total of $220 million on engineering, drilling and environmental and socioeconomic work.

Heatwole said the partnership of Northern Dynasty and Anglo American US does not plan to submit its applications for permits to mine to the state until late 2009 or 2010.