By Margaret Bauman
From the shores of Oregon and Washington State to the small
fishing communities dotting Alaska’s vast coastline, ports and harbors
are a vital link in getting millions of pounds of fresh seafood to
markets around the world.
Every year crews aboard thousands of commercial fishing vessels
of all sizes visit these ports, large and small, to offload or transfer
their perishable cargo, arrange for maintenance and repair of their
vessels and pick up supplies.
Awaiting them on shore are shipping industry veterans ranging
from the likes of Steve Barkemeyer, the boat yard manager at the Port of
Astoria, Oregon, to Marty Owen, port director/harbormaster at the Port
of Kodiak, and Sitka harbormaster Stan Eliason.
On a cold spring day in early April, Eliason, a self-proclaimed
big supporter of commercial fisheries, was busy dealing with the
lucrative sac roe herring fishery, and several dozen vessels waiting for
the next opening in the biggest sac roe fishery to date, with a
guideline harvest level of 29,000 tons of the little silvery fish.
“They’re rafted out three to five deep,” said Eliason, whose
enthusiasm was understandable. “We get a large portion of their fish tax
and that is a big part of our budget,” he said.
For the port of Sitka, like most other ports, fish taxes and port
user fees provide the millions of dollars in income necessary to keep
ports up to date.
The biggest challenge for the port of Sitka at the moment, said
Eliason, is major maintenance on infrastructure that’s just getting old.
Sitka, on the west coast of Baranof Island, lies some 255
nautical miles southwest of Juneau, the state capital, and 544 nautical
miles southeast of Kodiak, another major Alaska fishing port. Fishing,
fish processing, lumber, tourism and regional health care are the big
contributors to the economy of Sitka, whose history is rooted in Tlingit
Indian culture and that of the invading Russians back in the 1700s.
“I need to replace the Alaska Native Brotherhood Harbor, an $8.2
million job right there,” said Eliason. “The state of Alaska has a 50-50
matching grant. We will likely borrow $4.1 million and the state will
send the other $4.1 million. We hope to have a new harbor by 2014,” he
said, complete with new water lines, docks and electrical supply
infrastructure.
Sitka is also looking at upgrading and expanding a breakwater
built two decades ago by the US Army Corps of Engineers. “Things are in
motion,” he said.
Meanwhile, Eliason is busy running the largest small boat harbor
in Alaska, based on number of slips and linear feet, able to accommodate
some 1,322 vessels in slips from 16 feet to 150 feet.
Kodiak’s Owen oversees harbor facilities that can accommodate
about 700 commercial fishing vessels, everything from 32-foot drift
gillnetters used in the Bristol Bay sockeye salmon fishery to 175 foot
vessels employed by draggers, crab harvesters and some catcher
processors.
Kodiak has no plans for harbor expansion at this time, but Owen,
like Eliason, has a busy schedule dealing with port activities ranging
from dock space to the boat yard to emergency preparedness, an exercise
of increased importance in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima earthquake and
tsunami. Walk the docks at Sitka and one will see several of the huge
black buoy balls from Japan that have drifted from Japan to Southeast
Alaska since the tsunami.
At Cordova, Alaska, where some 85 percent of the harbor commerce
is commercial fisheries related, the large gillnet vessel fleet fills
some 500 boat slips. A port spokeswoman said they’re hoping to add a new
breakwater this summer to fend off damage from winter winds. At
Cordova, one of many Alaska communities where memories are still clear
on the damage from the 1964 Good Friday earthquake, emergency sirens
still are tested every Wednesday at noon.
The Port of Astoria, Oregon is also in the process of updating
its emergency plan for earthquakes and tsunamis, said Rita Fahrney,
terminal services manager, and at the Port of Ilwaco, Wash., there is a
tsunami warning system with sirens tested every two weeks and heard all
over the peninsula, staff said.
Jim Pivarnik, deputy director at the Port of Port Townsend,
Wash., noted that preparation in the event of tsunami and environmental
issues is ongoing. This year’s fleet of commercial fishing vessels using
port slips is about 13 boats, the largest it has been in six years, he
said. New Day Fisheries, which sells live fish and also sells ice to the
fleet, operates a lift leased from the port for its own deliveries and
other commercial users.
At Dutch Harbor, the nation’s largest fisheries port by volume of
seafood deliveries, the newest facility is the Carl E. Moses Small Boat
Harbor, opened just months ago, said Jamie Sunderland, acting port
director and also the police chief for the city of Unalaska.
Dutch Harbor is most busy during icy cold winter months, with
king crab, Pollock A season, and snow crab fishery. Pollock caught at
sea is processed and frozen into Pollock blocks and you see endless
streams of boxes (of Pollock) for 24 hours straight coming across the
city dock at the Unalaska Marine Center, he said. There are about five
city dock facilities, all of which serve some portion of the fishing
industry, including the crab vessels, he said.
The economy overall at Dutch Harbor is robust, he said. “A lot of
it has to do with fish taxes and fuel taxes. The port is maintained and
operated by the city’s ports and harbors department and as with any
operation like that there are expenses and revenues. We try to balance
that out so it is a self-sustaining operation. The revenues come
primarily through moorage, wharfage and other dock associated fees.”
This summer a new project will replace a lot of fendering at the
city dock and at the Carl Moses harbor there will be a US Army Corps of
Engineers project to put in a floating breakwater to protect the new
harbor, he said.
“We’re excited about the new harbor because of the expanded
capability for the fleet,” Sunderland said. “The majority of the slips
are 60 feet to 180 feet. There are a number of crab boats, longline
boats and jig boats tied up there. We are still working at filling all
of the slips.”
Sitka, Kodiak, Dutch Harbor and many other ports in Alaska,
Washington State and Oregon either have or are in the process of
upgrading their emergency alert systems in the event of future
earthquakes and tsunamis, while trying to plan for how to deal with a
massive amount of debris from the Japanese tsunami now drifting eastward
across the ocean.
At Dutch Harbor emergency sirens are tested on the 15th of every
month, and there is a much briefer test of the sirens every Saturday
afternoon. “The community is certainly concerned about these issues,”
Sunderland said. “We believe that the Carl Moses harbor has been
engineered to take anything you would throw at it. A lot of careful
planning went into it.”
Sitka recently completed formulating a severe weather emergency
plan, a cooperative effort of the city and harbor staff working
together, Eliason said.
At Kodiak, every Wednesday at 2 p.m. the emergency siren is
tested. Everyone in town knows about it, said Owen. It runs for about a
minute, very loud. “If the siren goes off any other time, you’ better
head for high ground,” said Owen.
The noise “will wake the dead, might even wake up a drunken
sailor, but it doesn’t bother the sea lions at all,” he said. The only
time the sea lions duck and cover, often under the docks or launch
ramps, is when killer whales come into the harbor. Otherwise there are
nearly three dozen sea lions that have taken up permanent residence on a
piece of old floating breakwater.
Far to the south, on the coastline of Washington State and
Oregon, emergency preparedness is also a top priority for ports like
Astoria and Newport, Oregon, and Port Townsend, Wash.
Fishermen’s Terminal in Seattle also has emergency management
plans in place, and goes through a complete emergency exercise annually,
but lies in a much better protected location, inside Elliot Bay, noted
Kenny Lyles, general manager of the Fishermen’s Terminal.
“What’s key to this geographic location is the locks,” Lyles
said. “We are half a mile away from the locks. If the locks were damaged
or gave way, it would be like emptying out the bathtub. We are about 12
feet higher than Puget Sound. That is of concern.”
At the sprawling Port of Seattle, there are a number of
facilities that provide moorage, from the Fishermen’s Terminal to the
Marine Industrial Center and Terminal 91, the homeport of a number of
large catcher longliner and processor vessels.
“We are a full service facility,” Lyles said. That includes barge
service, cranes and hoists, groceries and other stores, restaurants,
hydraulics, electric, refrigeration, radar and navigation services.
To compete with other ports in this multi-million dollar
industry, the Port of Seattle in recent years completed millions of
dollars in infrastructure improvements, including redeveloping docks to
floating concrete, plus renovated seawalls and major electrical, sewer
and water line upgrades. “Basically we rebuilt the harbor,” he said.
Next up will be an approximate $6 million project to renovate
nine net locker buildings to fire department code by removing platforms
that elevated their height with elaborate shelving systems. Because the
port is owned by the city of Seattle, it has taxing authority and can
issue municipal bonds to fund the majority of its capital improvements.
At Newport, Oregon, only about 23 percent of the activity is
related to commercial fisheries, although the commercial fleet does use a
lot of port infrastructure for loading and unloading its catch, a port
spokeswoman said. Newport is home to a number of businesses that provide
support services to the fishing fleet, and the Newport international
terminal has one of only three deep draft ports on the Oregon coast.
The port is busy year round.
Renovation of Newport’s international terminal, a 17-acre
facility with 1,000 feet of deepwater waterfront, docks and storage
facilities, plus additional adjacent acres of industrial land, is to be
completed by year’s end. Also ongoing is rehabilitation of the port’s
moorage dock, over a period of several years.
The International Port of Coos Bay, on Oregon’s southern coast
recently completed renovation of the Charleston ice dock, which supplies
high quality ice to the fleet of some 165 commercial fishing vessels
based there, said Elise Hamner, communications and community affairs
manager. Federal economic stimulus funds provided half the money for
that $700,000 project, Hamner said. The port also owns and maintains the
Charleston marina and shipyard, with myriad vessel support service
businesses, fish plants and fish buying stations.
All the ports also provide boat yards with lift facilities where
vessel owners or their appointed contractors can do maintenance and
repair on port facilities. Often they are able to contract with skilled
professionals in the marine trades operating near the ports.
At smaller ports and harbors, much of the infrastructure is
privately owned by processors maintaining all of their own facilities.
With the exception of one port facility, where officials said the
addition of more heavy equipment mechanics are needed, all spoke of an
adequate labor supply to handle traffic and facilities upkeep.
What lies ahead for all of them is the challenge of replacing and
upgrading older docks and other infrastructure, including electrical,
water, sewer and other services with facilities that can endure for many
years to come in changing climate conditions, while competing against
other ports and harbors offering competing services. They are also
bracing for how to deal with massive amounts of debris from the
Fukushima tsunami, expected to arrive next year.
Margaret Bauman can be reached at margieb42@mtaonline.net.