If they "fly em" first class, from Alaska to the lower 48; with Bidenomics, Inflation Act Jet-A, that might add a little to the price.
Posted on 08/29/2023 6:17:09 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Kodiak fisherman Mike Friccero has fished for salmon for over four decades. He said he was expecting a low price for Bristol Bay salmon this summer, but didn’t think rumors were true about how low it would drop.
“Our processor gave us a letter, a narrative before the season started, saying that pricing conditions weren’t great but that they were going to go after it with all the resources that they utilized last year as far as tendering and logistics and resources in general,” he said. “And they asked if we would do the same.”
It’s been a tough year for commercial salmon fishermen. Three years of huge returns in Bristol Bay created a surplus of sockeye in the market. Towards the end of the season, processors announced a base price of just 50 cents per pound – the lowest price in decades, when adjusted for inflation.
Fishermen can get bonuses for better quality, but Friccero said even with the boost, he was better off gearing up to fish for other species like halibut.
“If you’re catching 5,000 pounds and you’re thinking 80 cents, then your crew’s share might be $400,” he said. “Well that’s worth doing for folks, but once it drops into the lower figures, if you have crew that have talent, they’ve got other things they want to get over to.”
Friccero said he usually leaves shortly after the peak anyway, but he wasn’t the only one packing up before August.
The Bristol Bay base price for sockeye was one of the lowest prices for Alaskan salmon in recent history. Since then, Trident has dropped their price for chum down to just 20 cents per pound in response to massive harvests in Russia and announced they will stop buying salmon from most communities in Alaska, starting Sept. 1.
Fishermen across the state are wondering how long the low salmon prices will last. Some are even considering selling their boats.
Gunnar Knapp is an economist who specializes in the state’s fisheries. He said for the sake of both fishermen and processors, he hopes that this is just a one-year blip instead of the beginning of a long term pattern.
“To get the lowest price you’ve ever gotten while you’re working just as hard as you ever did, and other expenses like fuel have gone up – it puts fishermen in a really tough position,” Knapp said. “I think processors would also say that they’re in a really tough position and their companies are on the line.”
Knapp was visiting family in Maryland when he saw in retail stores that wild caught seafood is now selling for the same price as farmed fish. He said he’s not surprised but still disappointed knowing the amount of work processors and fishermen do to produce high quality products.
“I was in a local Costco yesterday, and I saw in that Costco, farmed Atlantic filets from Chile and farmed Atalntic filets from Norway and wild Alaska sockeye all selling for $10.99 a pound,” he said.
The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute is funded by the State Legislature to stir demand for Alaskan products. Greg Smith, the institute’s communications director, said there just isn’t enough demand to keep up with the glut of fish.
“There’s difficult issues in the global marketplace – inflation, increased cost of living, shipping costs, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so there are just significant challenges,” he said.
Fishermen started the season with some processors still holding frozen product from last year’s harvest.
The seafood marketing institute received an extra $5 million in funding this year to better compete in global markets. But even with extra funding, staff are unsure if their short-term efforts like retail displays and working with food writers will help much. Smith said one of the institute’s bigger projects is investing in new markets across the globe.
“We’re focusing on emerging markets, Latin America, parts of Africa, we’re doing some things in Israel but it is just really trying to build off the strength of the brand,” Smith said.
Smith said they’ve had some success with retail and restaurants, and even worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to include salmon in purchases for school lunches and food banks. Alaska’s senators also brought the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture committee to Kodiak to make the case that fishermen should be included in the upcoming farm bill.
Friccero said with lower salmon prices, he’s able to keep a decent paycheck but will have to be wary of his budget for next year. He said he hopes market conditions improve over the winter.
The low prices this year has pushed several fishermen to call for better transparency from processors. Friccero said a guaranteed minimum price would be the best possible starting point to build more trust.
“Looking for transparency, anything would improve it right – because there’s almost none,” he said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re being mistreated in any way, it’s just very hard to have a conversation with no information.”
Regardless, Friccero said he’ll be back to fish more next year.
If they "fly em" first class, from Alaska to the lower 48; with Bidenomics, Inflation Act Jet-A, that might add a little to the price.
I like to go to Alaska for the halibut.
I agree with your remedy. If you don’t like the price, don’t buy. That’s how the free market works.
Personally, I think the current inflation is due mainly to Covid-fractured supply chains, not Biden’s money printing, or any “price gouging”.
I say that because inflation has been a worldwide phenomenon, and some products have been entirely unaffected. I love chocolate, and the chocolate I love is selling now for the 2019 price. It hasn’t gone up by a penny. Maybe that’s because chocolate doesn’t come from China, but many other things do!
This summer, cherries have been less expensive than anytime since I was a boy. I’ve been buying large bags from the local market for 99 cents a pound, over and over. I remember as a boy paying 59 cents a pound for cherries in the 1950s, and paying with silver coins.
The combination of Big Pharma’s corporate greed and government police powers has proved quite deadly for the American people. But I don’t think the government has been responsible for helping corporations to maintain higher prices for general merchandise. If you have any specific examples where they have, please give them.
Hmmm... That sounds like Russia is getting desperate and over-harvesting. The only thing I've heard for years was too much pressure on stocks. True, one could reintroduce salmon fingerlings in large numbers into rivers they had been depleted or made extinct in, but I'd guess it would take a few years to show results, and a couple generations to get really "big" numbers back up?
Joining the U.S. shrimp fisherman who can’t sell their shrimp because of imports (most of frozen found in groceries) from CHINA, Indonesia, etc. China’s shrimp is farm shrimp and they raise chickens over the ponds to feed the shrimp chicken droppings. YUM!
BUY U.S. seafood!!!
Oh, wow, I posted too soon, above, as I was trying to figure out what could be going on with the Russians causing a market glut — it indeed seemed like it’d backfire, as a modest increase in supply could really crash the price, unless demand could be pushed to increase. Basic economics.
Is it possible they’ve over-harvested and clobbered their own future catches?
Interestingly, here in the mid-South USA we have companies that process “Asian Carp” and some other species, caught by local commercial fishermen mostly on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and a few of the large lakes, and sell back to China. The company nearest me announces a new expansion every few years. Anyway, they call their catch “wild caught”, and almost for certain no one is deliberately stocking Asian Carp - they are too dang good at it themselves, esp. in the rivers and lakes the rivers sometimes flood.
BTW, that’s GREAT work you do. :-)
It sounds like what you are saying is that without a very effective effort by responsible parties to increase stocking down the line, and somehow get the Chinese to assist, perhaps financially... we could swing from a glut to a shortage?
I had no idea that the Chinese were fishing those waters. I knew the Japanese were at one time. But now that you mention it, I bet you what China is doing is fishing for our salmon to extinction, taking it to China, or just processing it on their ships and then sending it to Walmart as wild caught salmon. And a huge profit for both Walmart and China, while excluding our homegrown fishermen. What do you think?
Another small businessman here...
Unfortunately, I think you have it at least partially right. I was at Wally World today, and their “Great Value” chili-garlic tortilla chips have gone up another 30 cents — that’s well over double the price since things more-or-less settled down after the worst COVID related shortages.
Options? Those are the cheapest that are any good, and even those vary a lot, bag to bag.
(Only 5% of recommended salt intake for a healthy person, so if I limit “portions” and frequency, not really bad for me, and do offer SOME nutrition. Or so I rationalize - hahahaha.)
Eggs are a special case — I follow them as my tagline might suggest. (We have a small flock & occasionally sell a few eggs to friends.) Avian flu and some fires caused a shortage, spiking prices, which did mostly recover. They are still a bit high compared to pre-COVID, but not too bad. A lot of people got into the small home flocks during COVID, which may be a factor, keeping prices down now.
Not too many people can or would effectively / efficiently create small home sourcing of salmon. Or tortilla chips. A small flock of good laying chicken hens gives you a lot of high density nutrition for the time & cost put in, if one is creative (I bought a bunch of chain link fencing cheap at a yard sale), can build their own shelters and runs, and does have a bit of time. And SPACE and no close neighbors!! Salmon? No way. Although one can fish local waterbodies fairly inexpensively if they have time and already have equipment or buy it used, harvest their own bait, etc., not that many people do, and if most people did it often, most waters could get overfished quickly. Most people just do not have the time.
It’s kinda hard to go without food, and if one drops to the very cheapest generic brands (below “Great Value”), the quality is awful.
Haha - that reminds of a line in “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress”. It goes something like:
Prof (a declared vegetarian): “Mmmm, that pink salmon is good! Can you pass me more?”
Manny: “Pink salmon?”
Prof: “Yes!” (pointing at the ham)
“They are still a bit high compared to pre-COVID, but not too bad.”
I just bought a dozen eggs for 96 cents, which is much cheaper than pre-covid.
I just bought cherries for 99 cents a pound, which is the cheapest price in decades.
It seems to me that you are cherry-picking (note the pun) your evidence. It’s fine to give up overpriced corporate junk.
I watch my family’s food budget pretty carefully and overall, food is up a LOT more than the gov’t says. How is it that those supply chains are still disrupted?
P.S. I’m jealous about the cherries. Black Cherries? My wife loves ‘em, but in my neck of the woods, even at Aldi I’ve only seen them under $2.99 / lb. once this summer. Granted I could have missed a sale or two.
Wifey just bought a combo pack of Frito-Lay chips, 27.something oz., for my daughter for some school function. $14.98. Earlier tonight @ Wally World. I just about passed out. I’d passed on a ~3 lb. pack of bone-in pork steaks. On clearance (sell by date code today) for $4.09 / lb.
Hoping cooler weather regularly arrives soon, so I can do more evening catfishing without losing 3 lbs. in sweat.
where do I find these great salmon prices?...the seem pretty steady and high to me...
No, I monitor our overall food budget. Those were just varying examples.
I partially agree on eggs, tho’ again I think the effect of more people with small flocks is helping keep prices low. It’s rather an atypical instance, compared to most food items. (In my family’s case, I rationalize the time spent on the small chicken flock as insurance, in case the New Madrid Fault does a 1811-12 replay and goes nuts for several months. It’s about due, and in a situation with most transport disrupted for months... I’m not an all out prepper, but the birdies could be a big help. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to shoot somebody to preserve them!!)
However, I cannot fathom the cherry prices you mention, unless it’s a local phenomenon.
Our salmon prices in Washington are still high—Sale price, $10.00/LB for Alaska Coho at Fred Meyer.
Somewhere between the fishing boats and my local grocery store, Biden’s Great Economy catches up to the price of fish and there is no evidence that fish prices are down.
“If you’re catching 5,000 pounds and you’re thinking 80 cents, then your crew’s share might be $400,” he said.
—
If you are only catching 5000 lb for the season - find another line of work. But if that’s 5000 lb per opening or 1000 fish @5.2 lb each, you are doing well.
In Bristol Bay, good fishermen take 100,000 to 150,000 lbs of Sockeye during the 3-4 week season; after that, there are openings for Coho which can also be good.
Canneries routinely screw the fishermen, so the trick is to have good markets prior to the season, aka signed contracts, usually with off-shore buyers who send their processor-tenders take your your fish. They anchor outside of the open areas and have nice hot showers available as well as food & supplies. Also they have your backup nets, saving you the long trip to the fishing camps to replace torn up gear.
One time in 1978, the BB guys settled their strike at $0.80 up from $0.50. Our contract was for spray-brined sockeye at $2.50.
“Towards the end of the season, processors announced a base price of just 50 cents per pound”
Yet it is $9.00 lb in the grocery store and more at the local fish markets. Just another way to screw the fisherman. The processors strip the roe and sell it to Japan et al a huge amount compared to the price they give the fisherman.
Never buy fish at a supermarket as a rule - they heavily mark up the price to make up for dead loss due to routinely mishandling fish.
How do you know?
Smell, if you smell anything its rotting. Ice on fish is should be 28 deg and places on TOP of the fish; that not only keeps the fish at the right temp, but also hydrated.
Ice on the bottom does nothing to keep the fish and allows the meat to dehydrate and begin to rot.
After closing the fish is shoved into coolers which may or may not be at the right temps and the fish may or may not be covered by 28 deg ice. Eventually, it rots and can no longer be sold as “fresh”. Grocers then spice it up selling the rotting fish as some sort of specialty delicacy.
Basically grocers treat fish as the do beef, pork, chicken. Which leads to a lot of loss. So they buy it wholesale for $2 lb, and they need a profit so it goes to $4, but because of dead loss on “fresh”, the mark it up further to $8.
Buy your fish directly from the fisherman, shipped airfreight directly to you - online searches will turn up numerous sources. Your fish will actually be fresh, with only a days or two, at most, from landing, not weeks or months.
The grocery store fish business is different, relying on customer ignorance of how commercial caught fish are landed, processed, packaged, handled and sold.
98% of the public does not know that they can buy the fish directly from fishermen and canneries. Greed is not a motive.
Most fishermen know that greed is an excellent way to kill the market for their product. Stores can make it up on other items, but fishermen have only their fish.
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