Low clouds hang over Kodiak’s St. Paul Harbor on Oct. 3, 2022. Economic woes in Alaska’s seafood industry have affected numerous fishing-dependent communities like Kodiak. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
State officials and industry leaders trying to rescue the ailing Alaska seafood industry are facing daunting challenges, recently released numbers show.
The industry lost $1.8 billion last year, the result of low prices, closed harvests and other problems, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Direct employment of harvesters last year fell by 8% to the lowest level since 2001 , when counts of harvesting jobs began, the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development said. The monthly average for seafood-harvesting jobs fell below 5,900 in 2023, down from a peak of about 8,500 in 2015, according to a newly published analysis in Alaska Economic Trends, the department’s monthly research magazine.
Local ownership of fishing permits has eroded over several years. In the Bristol Bay salmon fishery, for example, from 1975 to 2023, locally owned setnet permits declined in number by 54% and locally owned driftnet permits declined by 59%, according to experts at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and elsewhere.