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Gov. Frank Murkowski's administration allocated substantial federal funds toward programs to promote the state's commercial fishing industry, and promoted increased trade connections in Asia.
The Murkowski administration said providing funding to processors, the majority of them based in Seattle, to promote Alaska seafood domestically and abroad was a factor in rising salmon prices. Still, it takes time and effort to achieve broad-based benefits for fishing communities, said Alan Austerman, the governor's fishery policy advisor.
At the same time, Alaskans got a warning from international trade expert Jackson Tse, chairman, president and chief executive officer of the China Pacific Group of Seattle, on the challenges facing American companies in Asia.
Tse told a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee meeting chaired by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, in Anchorage Dec. 6, that Western companies face some challenges in Asia, in part because they don't understand the markets, and/or send the wrong people to Asia.
"In Asia, business is politics and politics is business," he said. "This is the fact of life in Asia. American companies must learn to navigate skillfully, patiently, persistently and diligently through the political mine fields in order to survive and prosper in Asia."
Tse gave much the same message in September at an Alaska-China business conference in Anchorage, which attracted a number of potential buyers for Alaska seafood.
Several successful Alaska-owned and -operated seafood firms, including Copper River Seafoods, are already promoting their premium products in Asian markets. Copper River Seafoods spokesman Joe Egemo told Murkowski's committee that Asian markets are interested in Alaska wild salmon products because they were economical, high in protein and an appetizing food source.
Egemo also said that building trusting relationships with Korean counterparts is paramount to success in the international seafood business. "It is important to understand the risks of business with a group whose rules are different than your own," he told Murkowski. "It is important to network with people within your community who can introduce you to business representatives in Asia." As an example, Egemo pointed to Sun Kim, project manager for the state Office of Economic Development, whom he said introduced his company to several potential business relationships within the Korean food industry.
As international trade expanded, various sectors of the state fisheries industry also moved to promote their regional specialties. As 2005 came to an end, a third regional state seafood development association was in the works, with the goal of helping fishermen market fish harvested in Southeast Alaska.
The new association, Southeast Alaska Rainforest WILD, joined Prince William Sound and Bristol Bay in an effort to promote the attributes of regional seafood in Alaska.
It was also a good year for promoting wild Alaska salmon, as commercial fisheries harvested 206.1 million salmon of all species, with an estimated total value of $295.3 million, making that catch the third largest on record.
Preliminary estimates of the 2005 harvest also showed it was well above the most recent 10-year average of 167 million fish. It was the third year since 1960 that the number of salmon caught exceeded 200 million fish. The total amount paid to fishermen for the 2005 salmon harvest was $23 million more than in 2004, and similar to the most recent 10-year average of $294.4 million, state officials said.
Still the industry was in a state of unrest, with the introduction of a new federal program privatizing the crab fisheries and efforts to do the same with the Gulf of Alaska groundfish fisheries.
The so-called crab rationalization plan approved by the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council allocated the lucrative crab quotas to vessel owners and processors based on their history in various crab fisheries. Individual fishing quotas were previously awarded in the block cod and halibut fisheries, but the crab plan was the first to grant quotas to processors, which meant that crab harvesters had to deliver 90 percent of their catch to specific processing facilities.
Vessel owners also had the option to lease their crab quotas to other vessels, resulting in only about 80 vessels in a fleet of 240 fishing boats harvesting fish. Many fishermen with a history in the red king crab fishery found their jobs were lost and some decided to leave the state in search of crew jobs in the Pacific Northwest.
"You risk your lives, and that's what you are getting paid (big bucks) for," said Troy Huls, who left Alaska after 37 years as a commercial fisherman. "Now they want us to risk our lives for a quarter of the money." Under the new crab rationalization plan, vessel owners who lease their quota get 70 percent of the proceeds, with only the remaining 30 percent left to divy out shares for the crew. When the crew is fishing for the vessel's own quota, the crew gets the same percentage of 100 percent of the harvest.
For vessel owners like Kevin Suydam, who has homes in Kodiak and in Washington state, crab rationalization resulted in decisions to lease substantial portions of quota. Suydam said he saved in excess of $100,000 by using only one of his boats and employing seven people, rather than the usual 28.
Burned by loss of jobs in crab rationalization, many Gulf of Alaska fishermen were rallying to prevent rationalization of the groundfish fisheries also critical to their economy.
The policy changes would affect harvesters, processors and residents of fishing communities in a fishery that paid out $125.7 million to fishermen in 2002 and $127 million in 2003. In the larger Bering Sea and Aleutian Island groundfish fisheries, harvesters garnered $481 million in 2003, down slightly from $492.7 million in 2002. The 2003 are the most current figures available.
According to Mark Fina, senior economist with the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, the biggest issue related to gulf rationalization is how to coordinate state and federal management, and to what level.
The issues include how to split the allowable harvest among different gear types, and provisions to be made for community quota shares. Another volatile topic is the prospect of processor quota shares, an option many fishermen strongly oppose.
While the federal council wrestles with the overall rationalization program for groundfish in the Gulf of Alaska, it said a short-term solution was needed to stabilize the community of Kodiak. To that end, Congress approved implementation of a pilot two-year rockfish program now in progress to provide some economic relief to Kodiak, already hard hit by multiple processing plant closures and a decline in community fish tax revenues as fish prices and port landings decrease, officials said.
Margaret Bauman can be reached at margie.bauman@alaska
journal.com.
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