A season of low prices, high costs and a poor pink salmon run has come on the heels of last year’s market collapse.
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.
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.reduced pink salmon runs Megan Corazza is a Homer-based seiner who’s spent years fishing in Prince William Sound. She said that after , fishermen were hoping for a better season to recover financially and sought loans for their equipment through processors instead of the state.
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.
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 $53.8 million in relief funds for that year’s poor pink salmon harvest numbers.
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