Alaska’s salmon season is largely over. However, commercial fishermen on the southern Kenai Peninsula are reflecting on a year marked by declining catches and higher costs.
That includes first-year tender captain Theodore “Teddy” Handley, who took on the role of running his own vessel, the Julia Starr, this season. As a tender captain, he collects fish from fishing boats and delivers them to processing plants. Handley said the sheer pink salmon volume typically boosts the late-season harvest
“Even though you're paid maybe a sixth of what you get for sockeyes per pound, just the volume more that shows up in a pink run is how a lot of the fishermen make their money, and that's how a lot of the canneries make their money too,” Handley said.
Homer’s fishing community comprises generations of families who harvest salmon, halibut and other species from the waters of Lower Cook Inlet. The city is also made up of people and businesses that rely on the commercial fishing industry for income.
But this season, fishermen in Lower Cook Inlet confronted a triple threat: reduced pink salmon runs, low market prices and rising operational costs all resulting in a strain felt across Alaska’s fisheries.
For instance, Lower Cook Inlet fishermen brought in 151,203 sockeye salmon this year, which is above the 10-year average of 140,570 fish. But the market price for the species was lower than expected, especially after last year, when fishermen saw some of the lowest prices per pound for their catch.
Megan Corazza is a Homer-based seiner who’s spent years fishing in Prince William Sound. She said that after last year’s market collapse, fishermen were hoping for a better season to recover financially and sought loans for their equipment through processors instead of the state.
“People are dipping into their retirement accounts to pay their crew," Corazza said. "Some boats, instead of getting payments from their processors for the season, they got bills."
Meanwhile, pink salmon had better market prices but a lower return.
Pink salmon have a two-year life cycle, so their numbers tend to be higher in odd-numbered years and lower in even-numbered years. Glenn Hollowell, a fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said that pattern is also typical in Lower Cook Inlet.
“That being said, our current year 2024 is an even year, so we were anticipating a lackluster return. What we got was a harvest that appears to have been even smaller than anticipated,” Hollowell said
According to numbers from Fish and Game, commercial fishermen in Lower Cook Inlet harvested 8,525 pink salmon this season, using both set gillnet and purse seine methods. That’s just a sliver compared to the eleven-year average of 600,000 pink salmon that are typically harvested in the region during even-numbered years.
Hollowell attributes part of that decline to climate change. He said salmon are cold-blooded, and as water temperatures warm, their metabolism increases, meaning they burn more energy and require more food.
“This is why, in recent years, some salmon have come back smaller. In addition, warmer ocean water may be changing the mix of plankton types and other forage that are out there that salmon feed on,” Hollowell said.
Statewide, this year’s pink salmon harvest has also raised concerns similar to 2016, when the federal government declared fisheries disasters for the entire Gulf of Alaska, according to a harvest data report released by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute earlier this year. The federal government ultimately distributed $53.8 million in relief funds for that year’s poor pink salmon harvest numbers.
No disaster has been declared for this year, but Corazza said even if there was, the slow process means relief would likely come too late.
“Our disaster relief funds don't come in at least for four years. So by the time four years have gone by, a lot of people have already lost their business in a commercial fishing world,” Corazza said.
For now, she and others are hopeful that next year will offer a chance to recoup some of their losses.