The Pike Place Fish Market salmon that were selling for $69.99 this time last year.
Copper River salmon prices nosedive
After Alaska’s 2023 commercial salmon season from hell, the 2024 season is underway with more whimper than bang.
Gone is the traditional early season show that for years saw Alaska Airlines making a big deal of flying first-of-the-season Copper River salmon fresh to Seattle, and so too the otherworldly prices being paid for the famously marketed fish. Instead, the season opened on May 16 this year with the prices paid fishermen for both king and sockeye salmon down by dollars per pound from last year.
Unfortunately, there are indications these high prices might not last long in a market where demand appears to be fast deteriorating.
The rejection could have something to do with the flood of Alaska sockeye that has been on the market all winter. Many Costsco stores around the country have had display cases packed with sockeye filets at $10 to $12 per pound for months, and some Kroger affiliated groceries are still advertising “Wild Caught Sockeye Salmon Fillet (Previously Frozen) at $9.99 per pound.
The surplus of these fresh-looking sockeye filets – the previously frozen fish are often thawed before they go in display cases – might have taken some of the shine off the truly fresh salmon, and with the latter selling for about four times the price at retail, some consumer rejection of high price is to be expected.
Add in the increasing availability of salmon in general – some of those sockeye display cases at Costco, the nation’s third-largest grocery retailer behind Walmart and Kroger, sit close to display cases stuffed with farmed Atlantic salmon available fresh year-round – and a bit of the novelty of fresh salmon disappears as well.
“Over the years, excitement has diminished gradually,” Black Wheeler, the director of procurement for wholesale distributor Santa Monica Seafoods told Intrafish on Monday. “There was more excitement in the past than there is now.”
Goldbelly, a website for foodies, was today pushing fresh Copper River sockeye at the famed Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, as a big-time, reduced-price item at $39.95 per pound, down from an expected pre-opener price of $60 per pound.
Copper River king prices, unlike sockeye prices, have gone even higher this year which well illustrates the connection between market availability and price. Abundance has pushed sockeye prices down while scarcity has done the opposite for kings, and kings are getting ever rarer.
The law of supply and demand would dictate rising prices for a possible endangered species, and Pike Place has these fish priced at $99.99 per pound if they can be found. The website says they’re unavailable until at least next Wednesday. The season-long availability of the fish is unknown.
The Cordova catch of Chinook to date numbers a mere 3,953 fish, according to Fish and Game. The agency forecast for Chinook returns could allow for a commercial harvest of possibly as many as 25,000, but there are likely to be significantly less than that landed. The season-long catch last year numbered 11,296.
Copper River sockeye catches could, however, push close to 1 million this year if the salmon return as forecast.
The problem for Copper River fishermen is that prices for those fish – even when branded as Copper River sockeye, which still carries some cachet – start falling fast as soon as sockeye become available from other Alaska fisheries.
The 2023, seasonal, average price for sockeye from the Prince William Sound management area, which includes the Copper River, reflects this problem. Despite even higher opening prices for sockeye in Cordova last May than this May, Fish and Game reported an average, season-long price for the fish in the Sound at $1.82 per pound.
There are hopes the early season prices will not erode as badly this time around.
Processors in Bristol Bay, the by-far largest Alaska sockeye fishery, have announced expected prices for the salmon there at 80 cents per pound. That is low, but a significant improvement from the average reported price of 52 cents per pound paid in the Bay last year.
Given the volume of sockeye caught in the Bay, pricing there becomes a market-controlling influence putting downward pressure on prices for Alaska sockeye from everywhere. This is an especially big problem with significant volumes of once-frozen, 2023 salmon left in the market.
Fresh fish?
Many of these are now being sold as “fresh, previously frozen” or “refresh” salmon as Kroger labels some or, in the case of Walmart, simply as “fresh.”
Walmart today had “Fresh, Wild Caught Alaska Sockeye Salmon” portions selling for $12.98 per pound at its Bellevue (Washington) Neighborhood Market. There is at this time no source other than the Copper River for fresh Alaska sockeye, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
And Walmart fish mongers would be idiots to sell “Copper River” sockeye salmon without the moniker that inflates the market value of the fish.
On its website, Walmart does not disclose exactly how “fresh” its Alaska salmon, or whether they were frozen before being re-freshed. But it does add a warning that the salmon in question “may contain traces of shrimp.” This would be consistent with salmon having been processed in Asia where a lot of the Bristol Bay catch ends up.
“Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia have significant seafood processing sectors for domestically produced seafood, and that processing capacity has been used to reprocess Alaska-origin seafood,” the report says.
“Thailand is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of seafood. Major export products are canned tuna, processed shrimp, squid, and canned sardines. Thailand is the largest exporter of tuna to the U.S., valued at $679 million in 2020. Thailand is the fifth largest exporter of shrimp to the U.S., valued at $464 million in 2020.
“Thailand has a robust seafood processing sector built up around cleaning fish, peeling shrimp,
and canning tuna….Alaska exports pink and sockeye salmon, pollock surimi and fillet, snow crab, and sablefish to Thailand. Interviews indicate that over 90 percent of Alaska’s exports to Thailand are re-processed and
re-exported.”
Were all of these low prices for Alaska salmon in 2024 not enough of an economic downer, the state is also forecasting a salmon harvest of only about 60 percent the size of the 2023 catch of 232.4 million fish. Part of this is normal given this is an even-numbered year in which pink salmon, the smallest and shortest-lived of the Alaska salmon, return at half or less the strength as in odd-numbered years.
And part is due to the Bay returning to some nearer normal after years of banner sockeye runs. The expected return of 39 million sockeye there with about 25 million surplus to spawning needs and thus available for harvest is about 6 percent above the long-term average, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
But it will be well less than some Bay fishermen have come to expect given the short memory spans of the human species. The 10-year average harvest stands at more than 60 million, largely thanks to warming in Southwest Alaska.
Profits sharing with fishermen, is probably better described as a market sales price adjustment. A minimum payment to fishermen is paid, but the final sales price of the fish is not fully known until months after the fish are harvested. If final sales prices for the fish are much higher than processors anticipated, a market price adjustment is often paid. When I began fishing 52 years ago this market price adjustment was a formula negotiated by fishermen’s unions.
Now there have been quite a number of fish processing companies which were founded with fishermen as legal shareholders also. If the processing companies were profitable after paying their fishermen, then the company could pay a dividend on stock to all shareholders, which in some cases may include fishermen.
A stock dividend to all shareholders fishermen and investors alike is a very different animal, then a market price adjustment to fishermen for pounds of fish landed.
Don’t get the two confused.
Now to taxes. Market price adjustments paid to fishermen are reported quarterly often over a year after the season is concluded. The Alaska Department of Revenue tracks these market price adjustments carefully and collects every penny due to the State.
Now dividends paid to shareholders of corporations is a little more complicated, and a CPA could give you a far better answer than I.
Yeah, don’t get the two confused, which seems to be your way of saying what I always thought: Shareholder fishermen is a nice tax dodge.
Shareholder fishermen do pay taxes on dividends, unfortunately there have been zero dividends for years now, which is precisely why the seafood processors are such dire straits. Unprofitable companies, do not pay any dividends.
Your implication that fishermen are not paying taxes or dodging taxes is flat out wrong. You have zero evidence. The State of Alaska’s Department of Revenue pursues tax cheats ruthlessly.
There are thousands of commercial fishermen and processors in Alaska. When was the last bust and conviction. A little factual evidence to back up your libelous claims my friend.
Ah, Roland Maw.
Any professional fisherman, like a professional pays close attention to prices paid to other fishermen, or they go broke. Fishermen trade information on prices regularly.
Bristol Bay sockeye prices are regularly tracked and reported regularly, and in great detail at this site: https://www.bristolbayfishermen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BBFA-Price-Chart-Nov-10-2022.pdf
If only you had asked a professional fisherman, you would be informed.
It should be nearly criminal to take flash frozen sockeye salmon and thaw it out to fool customers into thinking it is fresh. If you have gone to the trouble to freeze the fish, for God’s sake – keep it frozen. The only reason to thaw that fish out prior to selling it is because a business is fundamentally dishonest.
What about the Russian dumping of seafood on the world market, affecting prices worldwide? Do you think Biden’s recent actions will help, without Europe’s joining in?
I’ve called catcher-sellers in Upper Cook Inlet who utilize set nets. I’ve gotten a few replies thus far. One said he isn’t even going to fish this year. No money in i5 anymore, and too much BS from ADFG. Two others quoted me prices of $25 per gutted sockeye, and the other was $9 lb fileted, at the small boat launch in Anchorage or at their facility in the Valley. This seems to mirror the exhorbitant prices from Kodiak catcher-sellers fio halibut, rockfish, and ling cod that they process, freeze, and ship themselves. They seem to want to effectively get the wildly high retail prices possible from online sales while cutting out the big processors, wholesale distributors, and retail markets. It appears that the pain has only arrived most deeply domestically (ie within coastal Alaska) within the industry. It’s killing the big processors and exporters first.
Interesting. I’ve known people who’ve been able to buy CI sockeye from setters for a lot less. And you know, they can go commercial dipnetting this summer, meaning they could have limited numbers of fish to sell on a regular basis. At a couple bucks per pound to locals, they might be doing better with this then selling to a processor.
The president of the UCI Settnetters Assn., when I asked about how much fish tend to cost when bought straight from the fishermen, told me “about $10-$12 per fish”, but that the individual fishermen dictated their price. At that price, I’d buy them for sure, especially in Anchorage. Forget the dipnetting circus, or even the on-again, off-again set netting at Kasilof. But $25 per fish or $9 per lb is simply too much. I’ll pay up to $14 per fish this year (up to 45 fish), straight out of the net.
I think I’ll let their market beat them up some more, and call again next year. Or, if I find the time to escape my family/jailers here, maybe I’ll call around again when the season opens in a month. I’m patient…………
That is pure BS Craig. The fishermen are not “cheating” the State. You have zero evidence of that, and it reveals you bias against the commercial fishing industry.
The system of payments to fishermen has been in place for over 50 years. The state is fully aware of this and is fully reported to the state on their COAR Reports.
As knowledgeable as you purport to be in your writing, you should have known this. Everybody in the industry is aware of this, including the state, and as a reporter, you should be to.
You are using incomplete data, and a five minute call to the state, would have revealed this to you.
Here is a quote from the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game from last Sept.
“ Prices are based on the major buyers’ base price and do not include future price adjustments for icing, bleeding, floating, or production bonuses.”
Your bias against the commercial fishing industry is showing. You could at least get your facts correct. Your bias is causing you to look for purported facts that only validate you opinion. This is called confirmation bias.
People that practice confirmation bias do not solve problems, because they are unscientific in their pursuit of the truth.
The truth is that 1,000 years from now the oil will be gone, and the fishing industry will still be there chugging along. The industry will have its up, and downs like now, but this is how it has been for 100 years if people cared to look.
I watch industry observers critique fishing and farming without bothering to get educated, and I think to myself, when you criticize those who feed the world, well that is the world’s most important IQ test.
Doug: I hate to ask this but I will. Are you stoned? I never said fishermen were cheating the state; I said they could be. There’s a big difference.
I’m familiar with COAR reports, but I have no way of knowing if they report full bonuses or not. Plus which they aren’t available yet for 2023. So there is nothing to reference, but there was a 16 percent difference in sockeye in 2022. I don’t know if the percentage was bigger this year or not.
But let’s speculate on the 2022 percentage. A 16 percent increase would make a 64 cent per pound sockeye worth 74 cents per pound. Would that make you happy?
Would that make the story significantly different? Is 74 cents per pound your idea of a “good” payout? That would make the average-weight, Alaska sockeye worth just a little over $4.
NASDAG today is reporting the each pound of a H&G farmed salmon is worth significanlty more than that. https://salmonprice.nasdaqomxtrader.com/public/report;jsessionid=C943D8BFE54365959BE5451CA05FD46F?0 Those fish come in at about $5.80 per pound.
Do you think that Alaska processors have some giant scam going wherein they run 74 cent per pound sockeye through a Baader 444 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V66m9V15dFg) and suddenly have a fish worth $5.80 per pound or $5 per pound or even $3 per pound? I don’t think so. But clearly you have different ideas, so lets hear them.
Reporting on the collapse of prices in the Alaska commercial salmon fishing business doesn’t reflect some “bias against the commercial fishing industry.” It reflects a bias in favor of reality. Your business is in trouble. It’s in big trouble. It looks a lot like the newspaper business. I’m sure somehwere in the world someone will still be printing words on paper 1,000 years from now, but I don’t expect that business will be a highly profitable one.
Jacks MFG is still selling buggy whips: https://jacksmfg.com/carriage-whip/ But buggy whips are not a big sales commodity in the U.S. anymore.
Have you looked lately at how little volume Alaska salmon provide to “feed the world.” Damn little. Alaska feed the world a whole lot more pollock – 1.5 million metric tons this year versus of 2023 salmon harvest of less than 420,000 metric tons. Granted, the trawlers had a good year. They’re average annual harvest is closer to 1.25 million metric tonnes.
But hey, Alaska salmon fishermen had a big 2023, too. It produced the fourth largest salmon harvest in state and territorial history. The average annual harvets is closer to 320,000 metric tonnes. So, on average, the pollock trawlers do about four times as much “to feed the world” than you do, and if we add in all the other marine species caught by trawls, longlines, skate and jigs, the offshore contribution is at least five or six times bigger and likely more than that.
If you truly want to “feed the world,” you’re in the wrong business. You need to go invest in a trawler.
Or a fish farm. The salmon farmers alone are now producing about 3 million tonnes of salmon per year, and salmon aren’t even among the world’s most farmed fish. Carp lead that list and then tillipi and catfish. The smallish country of Vietnam alone is doing more to “feed the world” than Alaska slamon fishermen. It pumped out about 1.6 million tonnes of catfish last year or about four times as much food to “feed the world” as the Alaska salmon fishery. https://vietnamnet.vn/en/vietnam-s-catfish-share-shrinks-amid-stiff-competition-in-global-market-2230493.html#:~:text=MARD%20reported%20that%20the%20total,up%2019%20percent%20over%202022.
Maybe you could open a catfish farm. Alaska banned salmon farming, but it didn’t ban catfish farming. And we do have plenty of hot water springs that could be used to grow these fish. Maybe you could even get some salmon processors to sell you a slice of that large value of salmon meal they are now selling to feed other fish or shrimp – America’s favorite seafood.
Or maybe you could work on trying to transition the Alaska salmon business into an industry that sells the state’s salmon more like fine wine than a mass-produced, manufactured product. Have you looked at the price of fine wines lately?
It’s nice you think this is about “feeding the world,” though I’m skeptical you really believe that, because the business of business is to make money. Unless, of course, you think Alaskans should be in the nonprofit business like the Cook Inlet Aquaculture Assocation which has been losing an aveage of $1.5 mllion per year for a decade and is borrowing more money this year to stay in business.
It’s hard to find a much worse business model than craigmedred.news, but that one sure qualifies.
Craig,
I appreciate the time and effort you have put into documenting the declines that have been occurring with commercial salmon prices paid to Alaskan fishermen. It is further alarming, that in addition to the lower prices paid to fishermen, a large reduction has also been occurring with the amount of salmon processing that happens within Alaska.
In order for the State of Alaska (and Alaskans) to attain maximum benefit from our precious salmon resources, some changes in the way Alaska conducts ( or allows) the current business model obviously need to occur.
Yup. And even more than that, the state needs to start managing for MEY – maximum economic yield – something the Board of Fish should have made a part of their regulatory process years ago, along with telling ADF&G to add a staff economist. There are places where allocatoin decisions need to change to fit modern realities.
Did the legislature appropriate several million $ to buy out last years inventory of frozen fish from processors?
I think the US Congress purchased some seafood, I don’t remember seeing anything about our state legislature doing so.
The average price paid to fishermen for sockeye salmon last year in Alaska was NOT $.64 a pound. You probably ought to verify you writing with an actual fishermen before publish erroneous information.
Fishermen are paid more than once for a fish. This has been common practice for over 50 years.
Fishermen get a base price advanced during the season. Then get bonuses for refrigeration and dock deliveries immediately after the season. Then if the sales prices are good they get another payment late in the year, or in the spring. On a really good year, they may get a fourth payment.
Warm weather may, or may not have anything to doe with better Bristol Bay returns. Too bad scientists have no factual scientific proof. My cat had ten kittens, because of global warming.
Look Doug, I’m going by the ADF&G data. Click the link.
If the average is higher, and the fishermen are finding a way to beat the state taxing system, good for them. But that’s a whole different story. If you have some evidence that they got paid more than this average last year and cheated the state of Alaska out of landing taxes, I’d love to see it.
Meanwhile, the benefit of warming in the Bay is well documented. Young salmon grow faster in warm water. This is why the two hatcheries still owned by the state tap warm water sources. https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=868 The Bay lakes have been benefitting from nature doing this warming for them.
The ADFG preliminary ex-Vessel prices are off on Bristol Bay prices, which drives their math to 64 cents Exvessel overall. We definitely got more than 52 cents average in the bay for Sockeye last year….. probably why it says preliminary. I ended up at 97 cents myself after rsw, bleeding, etc……anyway, doesn’t matter. Your argument that we are in trouble as a business is very valid.
The inference that commercial fisherman might be cheating the state out of landing taxes I think is wrong. I’ve been landing fish in Alaska for close to 4 decades and I don’t think this is happening, not sure even how it could. All post base price payments for profit, rsw, bleeding are based on poundage landed and landing taxes are always a percentage. So if we get a 5cent bump on our 2023 Bristol Bay Sockeye catch, the percentage of landing taxes is taken out of that before we get anything.
Don’t always agree with what is written, but always appreciate the time and effort to communicate these important issues. Thanks Craig Medred
Thanks Glenn. I’ve always wondered about the tax situation which is hard to figure out. Does that withholding apply to after season bumps as well as the bleeding and rsw ex-vessel, which is recorded at landing?
As how landing Alaska taxes work for fishermen upon delivery and after:
Every check from a processor to a fisherman, takes the appropriate landing taxes out of the initial payment and all subsequent payments, regardless whether they are for “profit sharing” , bleeding, rsw. etc etc. All payments I have ever got are based on the pounds delivered, even if it was 12 months prior. “Landing” taxes are based on where the fish were caught and delivered, and are taken out by the processor before any money is exchanged. The processor is responsible to make sure the tax goes to the right place it was intended for. In Bristol Bay, every river system has a different landing tax rate because they are all in different boroughs.
Example:
200k lbs landed of sockeye in a season, caught in the Naknek river system.
$.50 per lb “base” price,
$.32 per lb for “rsw, bleeding, slide”
$.15 per lb and subsequent “profit share” payments
Gross total earned 200k * $.97 = $194k
Bristol Bay Borough tax is %3 so $5820 is reduced and paid by processor to borough.
Net payment to fisherman: $188,180
Much thanks. I once spent a couple days trying to get a direct answer on this subject from the state and got nowhere. My big question was with the “profit share” payments Silver Bay was instituting. I’m glad to see the state and boroughs are getting their share of that.
Doug Karlberg:
Telling Craig that he should verify his information by talking to an “actual fisherman” is laughable. Does anyone really think that would lead to accurate information. Heck, Doug, you are an “actual fisherman” yet when given the opportunity to provide accurate data with names of buyers and actual prices paid you chose to just attack Medred’s info without providing any facts or support for your claims. Laughable !
See my reply above. Prices for Bristol Bay sockeyes are tracked closely by fishermen and state taxing authorities. See my link above for detailed pricing information. Craig’s implication that fishermen are cheating the state, is just flat wrong. Just because Craig could not find the up to date information is no excuse for suggesting that hard working American fishermen are cheating the state.
If you want to accuse anybody of committing a crime, you had better damn well have hard indisputable evidence, and in this case there is zero evidence.
Douglas: To be clear, I didn’t suggest fishermen “are” cheating the state. I pondered whether they could be. Since you seem to know so much about this subject maybe you can enlighten me as to whether the “profit sharing” in which some salmon fishermen is now involved gets taxed by the state or does the “profit share” calculated after the fish are ticketed and processed come back as a non-taxed dividend on the “profits” of the processing business?
I’ve never been able to get an answer from Revenue as to that question.