The highest salmon prices in a decade or more are boosting the Lynn Canal gillnet fishery.
Prices for chum are up to 70 cents per pound, up from 50 cents at the end of last season. Per pound pink salmon prices are up from 28 cents to 50 cents. Sockeye prices are up to $1.70 per pound from $1.30 last year and went as high as $2 at the start of the season.
Lowly pink, or “humpy” salmon, are generally considered bycatch – sometimes even a nuisance – by gillnetters, who target larger chums and sockeye. No more. “They’re worth a dollar apiece. At that price I’m not throwing them overboard. I’d bend over to pick up a dollar,” said skipper Norman Hughes.
Processors and industry officials this week said different factors explain the rise in value of different species, but that improved marketing helped all Alaska salmon.
“There’s a synergy of a whole lot of things. Plus, we did a lot of work in the past decade to differentiate our product in the marketplace and it’s paying off,” said Mark Vinsel, executive director of United Fishermen of Alaska.
Promotion of Alaska wild salmon over foreign, farmed stocks and country-of-origin labeling are strategies that have boosted overall demand in recent years, he said.
Mike Erickson, CEO of Juneau’s Alaska Glacier Seafoods, said increased interest from the Lower 48 and China have pushed up the value of chum flesh at a time when roe prices are falling.
That’s a dramatic turn from a decade or more ago, when fish prices tanked and gillnetters turned to chum roe for their livelihood, and some processors stopped buying chum carcasses for lack of a market.
Also, production of Chilean farmed fish is off substantially, apparently due to an infection that’s swept through farms and transportation problems resulting from an earthquake.
“Their production is down and that’s creating an opportunity for Alaska,” said UFA’s Vinsel.
Erickson said the chum price reflects major retailers like Costco putting more effort into selling wild fish.
Pink salmon have been increasing in value in recent years due to varied product types, said Mike Forbush of Ocean Beauty Seafoods. Instead of just canned or frozen, his company is producing fillets used in value-added fish dinners, he said.
“Russia produced 1.2 billion pounds of pink salmon last year. There’s no lack of supply. It’s that as an industry, we’re becoming more innovative,” Forbush said.
UFA’s Vinsel said while other nations can produce fish on farms, demand for wild product can’t be so easily matched. “Alaska salmon is in demand across the board, and, by nature, the supply is limited.”
Ocean Beauty’s Forbush said pink salmon prices went higher than this week’s price in the late 1970s. “Pink prices went up to almost $1, but the price could have been $100. There weren’t any to be had.”
Alaska Glacier’s Erickson started the season offering $2 per pound for sockeye. He has dropped that about 40 cents, following the arrival of sockeye salmon in Bristol Bay.
A weak side of the area gillnet fishery is diminished wild sockeye runs that lead to restrictive closures, limiting fishing time for the fleet, Erickson said.