Rural Alaska

Fish buyer to open a market for Kuskokwim silvers with floating processor in Bethel

BETHEL – Some commercial fishing may happen on the Kuskokwim River and in Kuskokwim Bay this year after all, a welcome development for fishermen after the closure of a fish plant in Platinum.

A Washington state fish buyer, Pacific Harvest Seafood, intends to bring a processing vessel to Bethel and park it at the seawall during the late summer silver salmon run, company president Jim Gonzalez said Friday.

The Renton-based company also will run a tender to go back and forth between the fishing village of Quinhagak on Kuskokwim Bay to the self-sustained floating processor, Gonzalez said.

Most of the processed fish will be flown out fresh to markets around the country, he said. The 170-foot-long vessel should be parked along Bethel's seawall from around July 27 to Aug. 25, he said.

Aaron Poetter, the Kuskokwim-area management biologist for the state Department of Fish and Game, said any decisions on commercial openings will depend on the run size.

If commercial fishing is allowed, Pacific Harvest will buy silver salmon, which arrive later than red and king salmon, Gonzalez said. There hasn't been a commercial king salmon fishery on the Kuskokwim for many years.

Timothy "Johnny-boy" Matthew, a Quinhagak fisherman, said a commercial possibility for Kuskokwim salmon is great news.

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"It will put some money in commercial fishermen's pockets," he said. "It will help a lot of people."

Pacific Harvest had looked at stepping into the region in 2016 after Coastal Villages Region Fund shuttered its plant in Platinum but it wasn't able to work out logistics.

Gonzalez said has worked as a fish buyer in the region before with other processors, spending eight summers in Bethel. Now Pacific Harvest will be operating a vessel itself, he said.

Lisa Demer

Lisa Demer was a longtime reporter for the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Dispatch News. Among her many assignments, she spent three years based in Bethel as the newspaper's western Alaska correspondent. She left the ADN in 2018.

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