A major drop in prices paid to fishermen soured the opening week of the Lynn Canal commercial gillnet season. Blame it on a storm in the global salmon market.

Processors’ prices were down as much as nearly 50 percent for sockeye, 30 percent for chum and 64 percent for pink salmon.

“(The price) is the worst it’s been in about 10 years,” said Charlie DeWitt, a 45-year veteran of commercial fishing.

“A beautiful, five-pound pink at 10 cents a pound? Come on. I gave mine (away) for bait,” DeWitt said.

Andy Wink, senior seafood analyst for Juneau’s McDowell Group, said several factors are behind the downturn.

Large anticipated returns of Bristol Bay sockeye and pinks statewide have pushed down values for those species, Wink said. For chum, whose value is driven significantly by the Japanese roe market, a weakened Japanese yen and recovery of Japanese chum runs are hurting the market for U.S. fish.

Further, the forecast for a pink glut will hurt overseas markets for chum flesh, and huge drops in the Russian and Ukrainian currencies against the dollar will hurt markets there for pink salmon roe, Wink said. Ukraine’s currency lost about 70 percent of its value in 12 months and Russia’s currency is down 40 percent.

In addition, the value of the euro “has fallen off the table,” Wink said. “It’s a really big shift. The currency situation is about as bad as you can imagine.”

A Russian embargo of seafood from Western countries also will hurt, Wink said.

Some fishermen likened the price drop to a catastrophic one 15 years ago that led some fishermen to park their boats and take up other work. DeWitt went to work as an equipment operator, returning to fishing in 2006 when the price for chum salmon recovered.

Fisherman Lee Clayton received early word about prices and decided to work at a friend’s Fairbanks gold mine rather than fish. “It didn’t make any sense to try to fish this opener.”

Before leaving, Clayton put signs up on his boat’s windshield making fun of the prices, including that he was “returning his net” because there was “no net return.”

Fisherman Brian O’Riley said gillnetters are at the receiving end when the demand for salmon drops. O’Riley and other fishermen launched an unsuccessful fish-processing operation during the salmon crisis at the turn of the century.

“You have to have multi-millions of dollars to be in processing,” O’Riley said. “We’re like sharecroppers. We own the resource but we don’t know how to organize it.”

Other members of the fleet, however, were holding out hope that prices might improve. Sonny Williams said if statewide returns of sockeye and pinks come up short, local salmon will become more valuable.

Fisherman Norman Hughes said salmon prices often improve during a season. “It always starts slow and goes up from there — we hope. This is early. The proof is at the end of the season.”

But Hughes also acknowledged that, overall, prices have been gradually dropping the past three years. Big cuts in salmon value are felt in Haines through reduced raw fish tax revenues to the municipality, in fewer retail sales and reduced charitable contributions, Hughes said. “It’s a squeeze for everybody.”

Ironically, the fleet’s harvest wasn’t particularly bad this week. About 140 boats fished in Lynn Canal, averaging 500 chum, 180 pinks, and 20 sockeye. Most of the effort was directed at hatchery chums in the southern end of the canal.

Sockeye are slow returning to Chilkoot Lake, with 1,331 past the weir through Tuesday, about 39 percent as many as have passed by the same date compared to a 10-year average. Fish wheel data on the Chilkat River show sockeye there at about 93 percent of historic numbers for this week.

Average, per-pound prices this week included 45 cents for chum, 10 cents for pinks and 95 cents for sockeye. Average prices at the end of last season included 64 cents for chum, 28 cents for pinks and $1.75 for sockeye.