COVID-19 Created Huge Challenges, Losses for Alaska, West Coast Fisheries
A global pandemic raising havoc in health care and the nation’s economy, prompting cost-of-living increases and supply-chain disruptions, has cost the seafood industry in Alaska and Western states millions of dollars since the spring of 2020.
If there’s a silver lining in those challenges, along with climate-change issues facing fisheries, it is that consumer demand for seafood is up, and so is the market price.
When the novel coronavirus, aka COVID-19, began spreading rapidly two years ago, thousands of restaurants shut down, and customers of the food-service industry, ranging from universities to the tourism industry, also substantially decreased or halted their orders.
With millions of people sick and many dying of COVID-19, seafood processors operating in Alaska and the U.S. West...