The season opened in late March with U.S. freezers holding lots of expensive halibut from last year. That pushed dock prices down by roughly a dollar per pound all season.
Final prices at Kodiak were reported at $3.40 to $4.30 a pound for fish weighing from 10 pounds to "40 ups." Kodiak prices dipped as low as $2.50 at the docks last summer.
In Homer, final halibut prices to fishermen ranged from $4 to $4.35 a pound. Homer easily retained the title of America's No. 1 halibut port, with more than 12 million pounds, 23 percent of all landings, crossing those docks. Kodiak was a distant second at 7.6 million pounds, followed by Seward, Dutch Harbor, Juneau and Petersburg.
Most of Alaska's fresh halibut catch goes to U.S. retail counters and restaurants. The demand this year came from retail buyers as more customers avoided expensive restaurants and bought halibut to eat at home, said market analyst Ken Talley. The frozen market also has taken off and inventory holdings "are said to be very low," he added.
Customers appreciated this year's lower prices, said Dannon Southall, wholesale/retail manager at 10th and M Seafoods in Anchorage.
"It's definitely down. Last year we were running halibut fillets at $13 to $14.95 at retail and this year we had it as low as $10," Southall said, adding that sales were steady all season.
"There is still lots of excitement around Alaska halibut," he said. "We are definitely getting more questions about omega 3s and the different health benefits from halibut and all the fish we carry."
In all, Alaska longliners landed 42 million pounds of halibut during the eight-month fishery, or 97 percent of the catch limit.
Lots of small fish were being landed again this year, said Duff Hoyt, manger at Icicle Seafoods in Homer.
"The halibut growth rates are much slower," Hoyt said, "probably due to competition for food with all the arrowtooth flounders that are blanketing the bottom of the Gulf."
Salmon Wrap
Alaska fishermen delivered 162 million wild salmon in 2009, the 11th biggest catch since statehood.
The salmon haul is worth $370 million so far to fishermen, compared to $452 million last year for a smaller catch. Blame the drop in value on disappointing pink salmon returns to prime producing regions in Alaska, plus a flood of pinks from Russia.
The global recession tamped down all wild salmon prices at the docks this year. Pinks averaged 22 cents a pound, down from 35 cents last year. King salmon averaged $2.62 a pound, down almost $2; sockeyes at 80 cents was a drop of 4 cents; cohos fetched 86 cents, down from $1.28; and chum salmon averaged 44 cents a pound, compared to 59 cents last year.
The salmon prices are preliminary and don't include post-season adjustments based on year-end sales. They represent the value of the fish at the docks, which is 40 percent of the total value of the salmon industry, said market specialist Chris McDowell at the Juneau-based McDowell Group.
Pups up!
The latest surveys show a bump up in the number of Steller sea lion pups throughout the Gulf of Alaska, Aleutian Islands and Bering Sea.
"Between the last survey in 2005 and what these results show from this summer is a 10 percent increase overall in pup production for the western segment of the population throughout the range. The only region still showing a slight downward trend is far west of Adak. That's really good news," said Dave Benton, director of the Juneau-based Marine Conservation Alliance, which represents about 75 percent of the participants in Alaska's shellfish and groundfish fisheries.
Even though the numbers are growing, it is a very slow increase and "not a statistically significant increase overall," said Doug DeMaster, director of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Juneau.
"But at least it's positive," he said.
The westward stock of sea lions was listed as an endangered species in the 1990s because its numbers had declined dramatically since the 1980s. No one is sure why -- it could stem from climate changes or predation by killer whales, and although scientists have concluded that commercial fishing is likely not the culprit, sea lion protective measures have closed or shuffled traditional fishing grounds and seasons since 1999.
Laine Welch is a Kodiak-based fisheries journalist. Her Fish Radio programs can be heard on stations around the state. Her information column appears every other Sunday. This material is protected by copyright. For information on reprinting it or placing it on your Web site or newsletter, contact msfish@alaska.com.
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