May 24, 2019 — If not for Alaska’s fisheries, the Port of Seattle would not be what it is today.
How important is Alaska to its bottom line?
An economic report released this month by the Port of Seattle reveals that Seattle is home to about 300 fishing vessels and of those, all but 74 make their fishing living in Alaska. The Seattle-based boats harvest Alaska pollock, Bering Sea crab, flounders, salmon and many other high value species, and they vary in size from huge, 150 crew catcher-processors to much smaller seiners and trawlers.
In 2017, fishing vessels that moored at one of Seattle’s three terminals and operated in the Alaskan fisheries generated gross earnings of more $455 million, or nearly half of the gross earnings from Alaska’s fisheries. That represented 44% of all gross earnings from the North Pacific fisheries.
Boats fishing in Puget Sound and other Washington areas earned $26.6 million at the Seattle docks.
An estimated 7,200 jobs were directly associated with commercial fishing at the Port of Seattle in 2017. Of that, 5,100 jobs were on fishing vessels, of which all but just 200 operated in Alaska fisheries.