Saving Seafood

Funding for Alaska’s commercial fisheries division in good shape, with $300K going to chinook project

April 30, 2018 — A shuffle in some funding leaves Alaska’s commercial fisheries division in good shape to manage the resources and target important projects across the state.

At first glance, the $69 million operating budget for FY19 appears to be down slightly from last year’s $72.3 million, but that’s not the case.

“Most of that difference is a sort of ‘cleanup’ in authority we no longer had funding for, such as the Alaska Sustainable Salmon Fund, test fishing and some interagency items. The rest is due to (a) $1.1 million shortfall in Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission revenue, which was made up from other department funds,” said Scott Kelley, commercial fisheries division director.

Added to the budget was a nearly $1 million unrestricted increment offered by Rep. Dan Ortiz of Ketchikan, which got the nod from Alaska lawmakers.

The extra money will be distributed among 11 projects in four regions: Southeast, Central, Westward and the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim, or AYK.

 The biggest project focuses on research to help determine the causes of declining chinook salmon.

“It’s a $300,000 project for a juvenile chinook marine survey in the Bering Sea,” Kelley said. “Almost the first thing I get asked at meetings around the state is what’s going on with king salmon. That project looks at the early marine survival, which is where we think these mortality events are most affecting the species. It’s the only project in the state that really gives us a first look at what’s going on there.”

Other projects back on the funding track include Southeast and Togiak herring research, westward salmon weirs, Southeast sablefish research and Prince William Sound Tanner crab.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Snow crab prices not melting any time soon

February 6, 2018 — The snow will eventually melt in the US state of Alaska and the Maritime provinces of Canada, but you better get used to the high prices of snow crab because they are sticking around for a while.

A global shortage of the species is expected to continue for a third straight year in 2018, thanks to a combination of reduced catches across North America and continuous demand in Asia, a panel of speakers suggested at a conference in Miami, Florida, last month.

There will be about 104,000 metric tons of snow crab available, down 10% from the more than 114,000t landed worldwide in 2017 and 76% below the 150,000t landed in 2015, based on data shared during a shellfish panel at the National Fisheries Institute’s Global Seafood Market Conference (GSMC).

The result: Five-to-eight ounce packages of legs and shoulders are selling for $8 per pound wholesale in the US.

It’s leading seafood dealers in the US to more often offer their clients less expensive substitutes.

Brian Cooper, a partner at Sea Trek Enterprises, an East Greenwich, Rhode Island-based importer of crab and scallops, told Undercurrent News that his company normally sells anywhere from 200 to 300 loads (1,000 cases each) of snow crab each year. But he’s skeptical about matching that number in 2018 and is increasingly promoting rock crab, a species most often found in Washington State’s Puget Sound. It’s popular in Asian markets.

“You can’t charge $20 for a buffet at a Chinese restaurant and put an $8 snow crab in there,” he said. “That’s not going to work.”

Lobster, shrimp, or even chicken and beef could also be used as replacements on menus, said one large seafood restaurant executive at the GSMC event.

“It’s easier to take things off a menu than to put them back on,” he added.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Seafood industry seeks new value in fish parts

January 15, 2018 — State seafood marketers are rebranding fish parts as “specialty” products and mapping a path for millions more dollars in sales.

Alaska’s fisheries produce more than 5 billion pounds of seafood each year. When all the fish is headed and gutted or filleted and all the crab legs are clustered, it leaves about 3 billion pounds of trimmings. Some is turned into meal and oil, but for the most part, the “gurry” is ground up and discharged into local waterways.

“Whether that’s heads or guts, milt, or meal or oil or something else, it should be held in high regard,” said Andy Wink, a seafood economist formerly with the McDowell Group. “These are products that are out of our normal range but they are specialty items serving niche markets.”

A new Analyses of Specialty Alaska Seafood Products report compiled for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute takes a look at uses for fish heads, oil, meal, internal organs, crab products, roe, herring fillets, arrowtooth flounder, spiny dogfish and skates.

It makes the point that Alaska’s combined seafood catches, valued at roughly $2 billion at the docks and twice that when processors sell to their buyers, could be worth an additional $700 million or more if so called “specialty” products were added to the mix.

Take fish heads, for example. Alaska produces about 1 billion pounds of fish heads per year, which likely account for most of the processing waste, the report said. Just 1 percent is sold as frozen heads, although a single large salmon head can fetch up to $5 a pound at Beijing supermarkets, according to previous reports. Increasing the frozen market alone could add $100 million to processors’ sales, the report said.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News