Salmon Harvest in Alaska Grows, but There’s a Catch : Fishing: Record hauls belie concerns over smaller fish. The worry is that North Pacific may be topped out.

JUNEAU, Alaska —  The good news is that for the last three years Alaska has been producing record numbers of salmon--teeming millions and millions of them--and never mind the vast pollution of the Exxon Valdez oil spill or the miles-long curtains of death of the Asian drift-netters.

The bad news is that the salmon are getting smaller in size.

Scientists are now wondering if Alaska’s all-out efforts to expand its salmon fishery have reached the biological carrying capacity of the North Pacific Ocean.

Could this be it? This many pounds of the mouth-watering fish and no more?

In many ways, the Alaska salmon industry is the envy of all the other fisheries here in the North Pacific, America’s biggest and richest seafood producer. Years of steady and dramatic growth in numbers of Alaska salmon make this fishery the envy of rivals across all the United States.

But in other ways, the North Pacific salmon fishery is just like the rest of America’s seafood industry--wasteful, shortsighted, overly competitive, the province of fishermen and processors at the expense of fish consumers, and, ultimately, in trouble.

In California and elsewhere along the Pacific Coast of the Lower 48 states, fishermen pace the docks and stare into the abyss of their own extinction this summer. They are victims of horrifying declines in the numbers of free-swimming salmon, the result of logging, dams, urban development and unfavorable cyclic ocean water conditions. In places, the 1992 season was ordered canceled or reduced to submarginal levels.

These fishermen can only look up with wonder at the red-fleshed riches that have multiplied off the coast of Alaska.

Here in the cold, green-black North Pacific, 189 million salmon were landed in 1991--an 18% increase from the record 155 million harvested the year before. And before that was yet another record year. Just 20 years ago, the total catch here was 23 million fish.

This increase is not only nature’s good work. As a matter of government priority, the vast, unpolluted and natural watersheds here have been intensely managed by the State of Alaska for the benefit of salmon. And the best of modern hatchery science has been brought to bear to supplement natural reproduction.

The results are amazing.

Even in Prince William Sound, amid the pollution and disruption of the 1989 oil spill, hatcheries produced so many young pink salmon that returning fish in 1991 simply swamped processing capacity and consumer demand. The state ended up paying to have some 2.5 million dead and unwanted fish pumped out of shallow bays where they were a pollution threat and into deeper water to die and waste. But still, Prince William Sound processed more fish in 1991 than the entire state produced in the early 1970s.

Open-ocean drift nets, now on the decline as the result of international agreement, captured unknown but potentially vast quantities of salmon, but also ensnared marine mammals. But still that did not blunt the ever-growing Alaska harvest of salmon.

In recent years, the state has produced more than 90% of America’s salmon and from one-third to 40% of the world supply.

But abundance has not meant good times or a secure future for the Alaska salmon industry or for the consumer.

These days, a typical salmon fisherman goes to sea wearing a face as mopey as a flounder’s.

For one thing, the salmon of 1991 began to shrink in size as they ballooned in number.

“Across the board, the salmon were smaller in weight and physical size in 1991. For instance, pink salmon used to weigh an average of 3.2 pounds. Last year they averaged 2.8,” says Herman Savikko, fisheries spokesman for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

“We have increased natural production. We have increased hatchery production. The Japanese are increasing production dramatically on their side of the ocean. All these fish are foraging in the same ocean, and people are beginning to ask: Have we reached the carrying capacity of the North Pacific?”

No one, of course, has the answer.

Nor do they have the answer to what other effects an artificially large salmon population may have on other fish and sea creatures. To what extent, for instance, are salmon devouring the herring and other oily fishes that used to feed the now-threatened Steller’s sea lion?

Some people are hard-pressed to justify why there is such a thing as a salmon fisherman in the first place.

Anadromous fish like salmon return to the freshwater streams and lakes, or hatchery ponds, to spawn where they were born. For countless generations, Native Americans netted them from shore as the fish made the transition from salt water to fresh. A system of putting nets across river mouths today could neatly capture all the salmon permitted by quota without need of fishermen, boats, etc.--although probably at some loss of flesh quality, since salmon are not as robust when they begin to enter fresh water.

But no one seriously suggests killing off the deeply embedded fishing culture of Alaska for the sake of efficiency.

Quite the contrary. Fishing is the No. 1 private sector job producer in Alaska, and politicians and bureaucrats are downright obsequious in currying favor with the fishermen, even to the point of sometimes mistaking the industry’s stubborn shortsightedness for quaint independence.

Looking back, it’s easy to see the dimensions of the blunder.

Yes, production soared. But dockside prices dropped, demand grew uncertain, competitors emerged, and consumers became fearful about safety and quality.

The salmon industry of Alaska is not organized to meet such challenges. Out here it’s boat versus boat to see which can catch the most, and fisherman versus processor to reach a price. Pretty basic 19th-Century fishing. About the only thing Alaska salmon fishermen sat down and agreed upon was this: If there were more fish everything would be all right.

The state, which regulates salmon fishing in North Pacific waters, listened to its fishermen and complied. The knowledge of 125 years of fisheries and hatchery science was put to the task of making more fish. And nature was in a cooperative cycle.

Sure enough, production increased eightfold in less than 20 years.

Meanwhile, the state avoided a major problem that has beset federal fishery managers in the offshore North Pacific. The federal government allowed anyone with a boat to fish offshore. But the state has restricted the salmon fleet from growing too absurdly large. Permits were issued limiting who could fish. Today, the only way a person can break into the business is to buy a permit on the open market from a retiring fisherman or inherit one.

But other, complex aspects of a modern food industry were ignored or dismissed by the salmon industry as it grew.

Fishermen took their profits from the good years and bought bigger boats, more fish-finding electronics. They did not give much thought or assume responsibility for who would buy and eat all these extra fish. Or how Alaska would meet the competition from pen-reared salmon “farms” sprouting up around the world. Or from cheaper canned tuna. And what would happen if someone else’s contaminated fish gave the whole business a black eye?

So, today Alaska fishermen find that canned salmon, which is half of what they produce, has fallen out of fashion, replaced 13-to-1 by tuna. In the fresh and fresh-frozen market, consumers now favor pen-reared salmon, which are available fresh year-round and are often perceived to be of equal quality to wild fish. This is despite what knowledgeable eaters say, that the wild is much to be preferred for taste, purity and firmness.

Alaska fishermen also have suffered from reports of tainted seafood in U.S. supermarkets-- seafood they believe came from elsewhere, not the unpolluted North Pacific. But still, how is a consumer to tell?

In a recent study called Salmon 2000, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute concluded the obvious: “Alaska salmon is losing ground at an alarming rate.”

Or, as George Jacko, a Bristol Bay salmon fisherman and member of the Alaska House of Representatives, puts it: “The trouble is simple. We’ve got lots of fish but not enough markets.”

What to do about this has Alaskans in a muddle.

Fishermen strongly resist proposals to tax the salmon catch for funds to expand marketing. A task force formed by Gov. Walter J. Hickel this year called more for study than for action. The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute has plenty of ideas--for instance, playing to the dietary consciousness of an American public that still eats seven times more red meat than fish. But the institute is strapped for funds. And private entrepreneurs are busy trying to produce a salmon product that is less, well, fishy--perhaps salmon nuggets or a processed imitation ham loaf made of salmon.

Meanwhile, as the fishing fleet puts to sea this summer, every captain sails under a newly tattered and diminished flag.

For the first time in history, the storied salmon catch, valued at $309 million to the fishermen at dockside in 1991, is not the most valuable in Alaska. The crab boats came in this winter and surprised everybody with a record harvest of lowly tanner, or snow crabs. And family-style restaurants grabbed up $560 million worth as Americans went out to dinner and splurged on a small luxury for themselves to brighten the gloomy days of recession.

Times researcher Doug Conner assisted with this story.

WHALE HUNTING TO RESUME: Norway and Iceland say they will defy international ban on commercial catches. D3

The Red-Fleshed Riches

The salmon of 1991 began to shrink in size as they ballooned in number. Here is a look at the various species:

Pink: Shown above, it is the most abundant of the wild Pacific species. Most of the pink harvest is destined for canneries. Primary harvesting method: gill netting or seining. Also called humpback or haddo.

Chinook: Largest of the Pacific species, they are found from central California to upper Alaska. Oily and flavorful, they have softer flesh than other species. Primary harvesting method: trolling. Also called king salmon.

Chum: Heaviest runs in Alaska, but also found in British Columbia and Puget Sound. Chum tend to be paler than sockeyes, coho or chinooks. Primary harvesting method: gill netting or seining. Also called keta.

Coho: Found from Southern California to northern Alaska. They account for only about 5% of Pacific salmon catch. Primary harvesting method: trollers. A popular sport fish as well. Also called jack salmon and silvers.

Sockeye: Its high quality and quantities make it Alaska’s big-money salmon. Found from Alaska to Washington. A Japanese favorite, most of it is canned or sold frozen there. Primary harvesting methods: gill netting and seining. Also called red salmon.

Source: The Seafood Handbook