Alaskans are yet again fighting over who gets to catch the state’s limited supply of salmon, and the rest of the world is marching into the future not caring at all.
The Chinese have accomplished proof of concept on salmon farming offshore in the Yellow Sea and are now planning large-scale cultivation of pen-raised fish.
Give them a few years to fully figure out this business, and maybe Alaskans will be able to buy cheap, Chinese fish at prices that will end the fighting between Cook Inlet commercial fishermen and the state’s personal-use dipnetters.
Made-in-China cheap salmon might make it sensible for the residents of the Anchorage Metropolitan Area to just go to Costco and buy fish, as was suggested at the latest meeting of the Alaska Board of Fisheries, instead of going to Costco to spend $115 on made-in-Alaska dipnets before spending another $100 or more – sometimes way more – on dipnet paraphernalia ranging from waders to dry suits, coolers, filet knives, four-wheelers, boats and God-only-knows-what else, like maybe a circus tent to erect on the Kenai River beach to shelter yourself and friends when not fishing.
And then there’s the money spent on gas to drive to Kenai and more money spent to park in Kenai and more money spent to buy things in Kenai because you can’t hardly drive hundreds of miles without stopping to eat or enjoy a cup of coffee.
And lastly even more money spent to buy ice to put the fish on if you’re lucky enough to catch a salmon.
Against this backdrop, a quick drive to Costco to buy some farmed salmon – which, by the way, has been winning blind taste tests – doesn’t look so bad.
Unfortunately, Costco, for all the good it does Alaskans, doesn’t do much good for the Alaska economy. Cheap, tasty Chinese farmed salmon or Norwegian or Chilean or Scottish or Canadian or Floridian salmon might be individually great for you and me, even if I would prefer to catch my own wild fish.
But if cheap farmed salmon undercuts the market for Alaska “wild caught” salmon, Alaska overall loses. And the market has already been undercut. Alaska salmon prices peaked at more than $3 per pound for Bristol Bay sockeye in 1988.
Two decades later, the same fish were going for $1.30 to $1.70 per pound even though the 2018 dollar was worth less than half of what it was worth in 1988. Put another way, the $3 per pound paid for Bay sockeye in 1988 equaled $6.43 per pound today.
Only that isn’t the going price. Instead, Bristol Bay sockeye are worth about 25 percent of what they were worth back then.
Realities
This is about as likely to change going forward as the longhorn steer making a comeback as the U.S. beef of choice. Commercial fishermen do not like to hear this.
Commercial fishermen in the 49th state – most especially those in the Inlet at the doorstep of the state’s largest city – are loath to recognize the many ways Alaska has changed in the new millennium, let alone the many ways the world has changed.
They live in some Neverland where if only they could only catch evermore salmon the world of yesteryear would live on forever and ever. It won’t and it can’t.
The 80 meter (240-foot)-tall “Shenlan 2” cage is more than twice as tall as the “Shenlan 1” cage which demonstrated the feasibility of Yellow Sea salmon farming in the world’s first fully submersible cages.
The project backed by the Ocean University of China and two Chinese firms involved a reported investment of $643 million. China is the global capital of “state capitalism” making it impossible and also somewhat irrelevant to untangle where the university investment ends here and the business investment begins.
At the end of the day, all of it is basically Chinese government investment, and the Chinese government is buying big into aquaculture as Norwegian and Chilean business have already done.
Alaskans might like to believe their free-ranged-chickens of the sea are the best tasting salmon in the world, and they might be. But it doesn’t matter. Farmed fish are the 750-pound gorilla in the room, and the gorilla just keeps growing.
Future fish
“There are ever-growing opportunities for collaboration as many of these projects are conducted with the aid of European aquaculture experts and technology providers.”
The Fish Site covers commercial fisheries in general, but has its focus on aquaculture which now provides 53 percent of the world’s seafood and is steadily increasing market share.
Seventy-five percent of the salmon consumed around the world today is farmed fish. And that percentage continues to creep upward with fast-growing, genetically modified salmon – the Frankenfish of the nightmares of Sen. Lisa Murkwoski, R-Alaska – wiggling every closer to the market every day.
Frankenfish are already in supermarkets in Canada, and the company which produces them – AquaBounty – has now gained permission to import GMO salmon eggs into its Indiana hatchery.
Murkowski remains unhappy about the U.S. Department of Agriculture requirement the fish be labeled “genetically engineered” when sold. She managed to block GMO salmon in the U.S. while a battle was fought over labeling, but it was only a delaying tactic.
In a statement in January, she said labeling at least serves to inform consumers and then continued to attack GMO salmon.
Whether consumers care remains to be seen. GMO foods are now everywhere. As far back as 2011, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications was reporting that in the U.S. 95 percent sugar beets, 94 percent of soybeans, 90 percent of cotton and 88 percent the feed corn was GMO product, according to USA Today.
There have been pushbacks against GMO foods, and then pushbacks against the pushbacks.
“Not a single case of human illness resulting from food produced from GE crops has been reported. It is time for the world community to overcome the fear of genetically engineered food and unleash this incredible technology to solve the environmental issues of agriculture and produce enough healthy food for a growing population. It’s time to leave the island.”
Crosby is a clear, scientific advocate for genetically manipulating food to increase production; others are not. It probably doesn’t matter. The history of the human world is that if a food product can be produced cheaply at a quality even close to the prevailing standard, it will become dominant.
McDonald’s might not have the best tasting burgers in the world (Southide Bistro in Anchorage makes a better one), but McDonald’s sells more burgers than any other business.
Why? Price point.
People are frugal, and that’s the problem.
People will buy the salmon they can afford to buy if the price is affordable and the product is reasonably good. Alaska can’t compete there in the run unless it improves harvesting efficiency, which will take government action, and processing efficiency, which will take private capital.
And even then, the commercial fisheries will be able to support smaller numbers of fishermen as an economic reality. It has long been obvious that the road accessible parts of the state should be finding some way to transition from a commercial fish harvesting industry to a tourism-based model.
But people generally hate change, and many Alaskans appear no different.
They’d rather fight and die holding onto old ideas than try to move toward a new future. To a large degree, it is the simple reality of evolution. Alaska would seem to have much to gain by developing a wise salmon policy for the future, but then that’s way easier to say than to do.