Fish are to Alaska what corn is to Iowa, sunshine is to California, and golf is to Florida. The 49th state’s pollock, salmon, halibut, cod, and crab, as well as dozens of other species, are among the largest and best-managed fisheries in the world. Together, they produce 60% of the nation’s seafood, support a $5 billion industry (the state’s largest by private employment), and play a prominent role in Alaska’s politics, culture, and identity.
Yet Alaska’s fisheries currently face an unprecedented economic crisis. Since 2022, the industry has grappled with rising interest rates and higher operating costs. At the same time, prices for every major species group have declined—with some crashing to all-time lows. Even for an industry as cyclical as seafood, the suddenness and severity of the collapse—gross profits fell 50% amid a $1.8 billion decline in revenues in 2023 alone—is without historical parallel.
The impacts have been felt outside the wheelhouse and C-suite. Saint Paul, an island community of 330 in the Bering Sea, faces a $2 million budget deficit after the local crab processing plant, the city’s largest private employer and taxpayer, closed in late 2022. King Cove, a town of 700 on the Alaska Peninsula, faces a $4 million shortfall after the owner of the now-idle fish plant was forced into receivership by creditors. They are not alone. Communities across Alaska are struggling to provide essential services following a $191 million loss in state and local fish taxes.
Further inland, residents on the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers have watched chinook and chum salmon steadily decline since the late 2000s. In 2022, both species’ runs abruptly collapsed, prompting managers to restrict most fishing. The closures have a disproportionate impact on Alaska Native subsistence users—who fish for food, rather than money or sport—particularly in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, where 30% of families live below the federal poverty line. The loss of salmon means empty freezers, higher living costs, and the erosion of indigenous cultural practices.
What’s driving the crisis?
Rising costs, weak demand, a strong US dollar, and geopolitical competition with Russia, China, and others—as well as a rapidly warming Arctic—have converged in recent years to make Alaska seafood products less competitive in global markets. Inflation has increased shipping, energy, material, and cold storage costs, which were already high due to Alaska’s remote geography. A tight labor market has forced companies to raise hourly wages and offer more overtime in a bid to attract and retain qualified workers. For some, labor costs have doubled in less than four years. Meanwhile, higher interest rates have restricted access to capital and increased the cost of debt, further reducing cash flows.
On the demand side, higher food prices have prompted consumers to switch from seafood to cheaper proteins like chicken and pork. To lower their own costs, retailers and restaurants have sought to keep seafood inventories low by reducing bulk purchases, forcing wholesalers, distributors, and processors to absorb higher inventory costs. In international markets like Europe and Japan, a stronger dollar has only compounded these problems.
Ongoing trade disputes with China, as well as the country’s economic slowdown, have led to a 39% drop in Alaska seafood exports to China since 2017. Tariffs on US-origin seafood mean little of what does get sent to China stays there—effectively locking Alaska seafood out of the country’s growing domestic market. Instead, most of it is “reprocessed” for export to global markets, including the US. In recent years, Russia has used the same re-processors to obscure the origin of Russian seafood products exported to the US and Europe.
That is consistent with Russia’s wider effort to out-compete Alaska. Prior to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia aggressively modernized its domestic fishing industry, including pollock, crab, and salmon fleets in the Far East. Armed with state-of-the-art vessels and processing plants, the Russian seafood industry began to compete directly with high-quality US products like pollock surimi. Since Putin’s tanks rolled toward Kyiv, Russian seafood has flooded into global markets, depressing prices in virtually every market
The industry’s already uncertain outlook is further clouded by a rapidly warming Arctic. Retreating sea ice and warming waters are driving “ecological shifts” in the Bering Sea and North Pacific, including changes in fish size, stock abundance, and species distribution. Extreme events are also becoming more frequent, such as the marine heatwave that lingered in the Bering Sea from 2018-19. Scientists at NOAA recently linked it to the collapse of salmon runs in Western Alaska and the abrupt die-off of 10 billion snow crab in 2022.
How can policymakers help?
The convergence of multiple domestic and international events has pushed the business model of fishing in Alaska to a breaking point. Fortunately, policymakers have taken notice. In early 2024, the White House closed a loophole that allowed pollock and other seafood products from Russia to enter the US market. Federal assistance programs also stepped up to stabilize prices and help offload inventories, with the USDA purchasing more than $150 million worth of Alaska pollock and salmon products. The State of Alaska is also exploring ways to support the industry, with the Alaska Legislature likely to take up several ideas presented to a legislative task force in recent months, including permit reforms, R&D tax credits, workforce development programs, and other key issues.
Yet in their push to support the industry, policymakers are at risk of adopting short-term “solutions” rather than fixing the underlying issues that contributed to the steady erosion of the Alaska seafood industry’s competitive position. By investing in public roads, airports, and ferries, funding applied fisheries science, and making smart changes to address the prohibitive cost of building a new fishing vessel in the US, they could lay the groundwork for a renaissance in American fisheries. Put simply, policymakers should focus on making America’s fisheries competitive again.
