December 28, 2017 — Next year is looking like another big one for pollock in the Bering Sea and sockeye salmon in Bristol Bay. But times are tough for cod fishermen, especially in the Gulf of Alaska.
At its December meeting in Anchorage, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council increased the already huge Bering Sea pollock quota to 1.345 million metric tons for 2018, up from 1.34 million mt in 2017. That’s good news for the pollock-dependent community of Unalaska for local revenues and jobs.
Pollock is the fish that annually makes the Aleutian Islands community the nation’s No. 1 port in volume. For the 20th year in a row, Unalaska/Dutch Harbor was the nation’s top fish port with 770 million pounds of seafood landings in 2016, primarily pollock, which accounted for nearly 90 percent of that total, according to a Nov. 1 report from the National Marine Fisheries Service.
In the Gulf of Alaska, the cod quota declined by 85 percent, from 64,442 metric tons in 2017 to 13,096 mt for 2018. That greatly impacts Kodiak, and King Cove and Sand Point in the Aleutians East Borough.
The Gulf pollock quota is also down significantly, from 208,595 metric tons, or mt, in 2017, to 166,228 mt in 2018.
Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce