
By Margaret Bauman
The rising costs of harvesting seafood are weighing heavily on Alaska’s seafood industry, with employment down 8% in 2023, while the fisheries themselves overall have strong numbers and a healthy outlook, according to a new economic report.
The economic summary, which appears in the November edition of Alaska Economic Trends, notes that prices didn’t dramatically increase in 2024, so overall employment isn’t likely to bounce back. But if prices do recover for most species, there will be fish to catch, the report states.
Over the last decade, fish harvesting employment has fallen more than 30%. The only industry that fared worse in that time period was oil and gas, Joshua Warren, Juneau-based economist with the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, wrote.
The seafood industry in Alaska has struggled over the past year, with some fisheries closed, including the Bering Sea snow crab fishery. Salmon runs were plentiful, with exceptions such as the Yukon Delta, but prices were flat or falling.
The number of crew licenses had rebounded by about 400 since 2020, but in 2023, 12% fewer people bought a crew license, erasing that gain, Warren noted.
Some harvesters opted not to fish because of lower dock prices and some processors were no longer accepting the catch. Such appeared to be the case in late October, when the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the first herring fishery since 1998 for Cordova, but area canneries were closed and it was uncertain whether any of them would open to buy the catch.
The miscellaneous shellfish harvests, mostly shrimp and sea cucumber, excluding crab, was a bright spot with 21.5% more jobs than in 2022, but that is a small category. The real driver was fourfold employment in May with the shrimp fishery moved to a new month to allow shrimp to lay eggs before being harvested.
Jobs harvesting sablefish, or black cod, were down 7.7% over the year after a limited pandemic recovery the year before, erasing progress in that fishery. This was due to most sablefish being sold in Japan and changes in the yen exchange rate making sablefish more expensive. That put a dent in demand and resulted in lower catch prices.
Jobs harvesting groundfish species, mainly pollock and cod, fell 6.1% from 2022, at which time the fisheries had recovered some of past losses. That decline put groundfish harvests well below their historical employment average. Even small growth in January and April failed to offset the often double-digit percent drops in summer.
Salmon remains the state’s largest fishery, with high value harvests that are labor intensive, although tanking value was a culprit, making the statewide salmon harvest the seventh highest on record for poundage since 1985.
Employment in salmon fisheries was down 11% in 2023, a loss of 376 jobs. That, combined with the preceding three years’ losses, meant that salmon fishing was down to two-thirds of its peak employment year, 2015.
Warren noted that the summer peak fell even more—26%. Employment in July 2023 was 6,000 jobs below that of July 2015. Salmon prices fell enough to trigger protests by some harvesters against processors.
Multiple crab fishery closures over the last decade have resulted in a loss of crab harvesting jobs, some likely permanent, but in 2023, closure related losses appeared to stabilize and employment held steady at 346 jobs overall.
A strong harvest in February helped to push the winter peak up by over a third. The Bering Sea snow crab fishery remained closed in 2023 and the commercial king crab fisheries in Southeast Alaska have been closed for six years.
Then, in October, ADF&G announced that the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery and Bering Sea snow crab fishery would open for the 2024-25 season, as stocks had reached acceptable minimum harvest levels.
In the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands, crab harvesting employment fell by 6.5% over the year, from 181 to 169 jobs, mostly in the Aleutians. Historically, that area has about 250 crabbing jobs. Overall Aleutians groundfish harvesting jobs fell over 5%, a loss of 27 jobs.
Sablefish harvesting jobs increased in 2023 and are progressing toward full recovery from the pandemic, data show. Salmon fishing jobs, meanwhile, decreased slightly and stabilized at a new, historically low average, having not recovered from the pandemic.
The Aleutians halibut fishery, which had a brief increase in jobs in 2022, lost 10% employment in 2023. That shrinkage and crab closures pushed employment in the Aleutians and Pribilofs into an overall loss of 4% in fisheries jobs.
While Bristol Bay continued to have the state’s largest salmon fishery, the area’s herring fishery disappeared in 2023. With no interest in buying from processors, the herring fishery was cancelled.
Bristol Bay overall saw a loss of about 100 (7.2%) of its harvesting jobs. Warren noted that decline had nothing to do with biology and if prices rise, harvesters will return.
Meanwhile in the Yukon Delta, which a decade ago had summer jobs for over 1,700 workers, employment had all but vanished.
Compared to past years, when hundreds of jobs were found in the Yukon Delta fisheries, there were just 12 in 2023. Salmon runs were so low that even subsistence fisheries were reduced or closed.
Kodiak’s crab fisheries, after being closed in 2021, bounced back in 2022. In 2023, crab harvesting jobs crew to nearly 400 in February, up nearly 50% for the year’s average, but jobs were lost in the groundfish, halibut and salmon fisheries.
Overall groundfish harvesting jobs were down 7.9%, and while halibut prices were good at the start of the year, they eventually fell by nearly 50% due to Russia flooding the market with cheap fish, prompting some fishermen to stop harvesting early.
The salmon fishery in Kodiak had added some jobs since the 2020 season but lost those and more in 2023, with employment falling by 10%.
Combined employment in Kodiak’s herring and shellfish fisheries grew in 2023, but combined peak employment was fewer than 50 jobs. Even with crab and micro-fisheries adding jobs, overall harvesting employment in Kodiak fell from the yearly average of 595 in 2022 to 531 in 2023.
Warren noted that a good crab harvest in 2024 would improve regional employment, but in order to boost job levels some of the larger fisheries also would need to rebound.
In Southcentral Alaska, the tanner crab fishery closed when ADF&G surveys determined that crab numbers failed to exceed abundance thresholds for an opener. The tanner crab fishery had been closed for decades before reopening in 2018.
Closure of set net fisheries in Cook Inlet during June and July resulted in at least 1,000 job losses.
ADF&G officials, concerned because sockeye harvesters sometimes catch king salmon in their nets, shut down that fishery because of low king salmon runs, leading to a decline of 245 annual jobs in Southcentral salmon harvesting.
Southcentral Alaska groundfish fisheries saw employment gains, boosting the overall job count by more than 230. Still, given harvest declines, the region saw a 18.4% drop in overall employment, about 250 fewer jobs on an annual basis and nearly 700 fewer jobs than in 2016.
Southeast Alaska proved to be the only region to add harvesting jobs overall in 2023, although the combined gains and losses added up to just one additional job, for a total of 1,740 positions overall.
Still the stability in employment in Southeast Alaska in 2023 looked impressive compared to double-digit percentage declines in other regions.
The three largest fisheries in Southeast Alaska, sablefish, halibut and salmon, all saw marginal gains in 2023 at the summer peaks, followed by drops in jobs as seasons ended earlier than usual.
There was employment growth in crab, groundfish and shellfish harvesting in the Southeast though, in some cases dramatic.
The summer crab harvest extended into August, with overall employment up 1.7%, while the groundfish harvesting period went a month longer than the previous year, showing an average increase of 10.4% in employment. In the shellfish fishery, the May peak came to 321 jobs, over double the job count of any other May on record.
Margaret Bauman can be reached at margie@maritimepublishing.com