FEATURE - Fish farms ruining Alaska's salmon industry
Date: 26-Sep-01
Country: USA
Author: Alan Elsner, National Correspondent
In the past 10 years, the annual output of farmed Atlantic salmon has increased by more than 500 percent, outstripping the number of wild fish on the market and driving the price down to, and in some cases, below break-even point for fishermen.
"I'm going fishing for 30 cents a pound for coho salmon. Last year, it was 60 cents and in previous years it was over a dollar," said Steve Riedel, a fisherman in the port of Cordova in Prince William Sound on the south coast of the state.
"My livelihood depends on these wild fish and I'm asking myself, how can I survive in a market dominated by farmed fish?" he said. "How on Earth can I survive?"
On Aug. 24, Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles declared an economic disaster in western Alaska salmon fisheries. Up to one fifth of the fleet in the Bristol Bay fishery did not bother to put to sea because they could see no profit in it.
This year, world production of farmed salmon is estimated to reach 1.2 million metric tons, up from about 250,000 tons in 1990. Production of wild salmon will be around 750,000 metric tons. Alaska itself bans fish farming.
The irony is, in a state where economic interests have often clashed with environmental concerns, the fishing industry thought it had got things just about right.
Salmon fishing is tightly regulated by the state, strictly limiting the number of fishermen, the areas in which they may fish, the ways they may fish and the days on which they can fish. The strategy has succeeded in maintained a healthy stock, actually higher than it was half a century ago.
Anyone wanting to fish commercially must buy an existing license from another fisherman because no new licenses are issued. In the late 1980s, these licenses went for as much as $180,000. Now they are sold for a third of that. Many fishermen, who took loans to buy licenses when their price was at its peak, find themselves unable to make their payments.
BIOLOGISTS COUNT FISH FROM AIR
Biologists fly over the delta at low altitude four or five days a week and count the salmon running towards their spawning grounds. Only when they are satisfied that there are sufficient numbers to spawn and maintain the stock do the authorities open the fishery for 12 or 24 hour windows.
This year, the king salmon fishery in the Copper River delta was open to commercial fishing for only four days. The king salmon is the most highly prized of the five species fished in Alaska and fetch by far the highest price, this year $4.50 a pound.
"We have a wonderful natural resource that has been beautifully managed but we're choking on the dust of these farmed salmon. The prices the Chileans are offering this year are lower than ever before and they're ramping up production more and more every year," said Laura Fleming of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.
Sports fishermen, jetting into Alaska by the thousands from all over the country, indeed the world, are further eating into the commercial trade.
Cordova, a picturesque town of 3,000 surrounded by snow-capped peaks, depends almost entirely on fishing as do many other small coastal communities. But on Sept. 7, when the coho fishery was opened for 12 hours of fishing, only around 100 boats from a fleet of 520 put to sea.
"It used to be that all you needed to do to make a good living was to put your net in the water and haul in the fish. Sadly, those days are over forever," said Sue Aspelund, director of Cordova District Fishermen United, an organization of local fishermen with more than 100 members.
"Some fishermen refuse to recognize reality, which is that fishermen need to be smart. They need to diversify and they need to organize," she said.
Elmer Chesire, known to everyone as E.J., decided to go out that day, even though he said it was economically marginal. Cheshire, whose father was a fisherman and who started in the business himself as a teenager, thought he might be able to make a few hundred dollars despite the low price.
