Tag Archives: Coastal Villages Seafoods
No buyer for Kuskokwim salmon, so no commercial salmon fishing
For the first time since 1960, for as long as the state has managed fisheries, a season’s worth of salmon will travel up rivers in the Kuskokwim Delta this year with no opportunity for local residents to catch them commercially. With no fish buyer signed up for the Kuskokwim region, the usual infusion of millions of dollars into this part of job-poor Southwestern Alaska isn’t happening. Nearly 450,000 salmon of various types have been caught on average commercially in recent years. Not this year. The state says those unharvested fish could overload spawning grounds and hurt future runs. The sole local buyer in recent years, a branch of Coastal Villages Region Fund, isn’t operating its $40 million fish processing plant in Platinum, on the Bering Sea coast in Southwest Alaska. Coastal Villages Seafoods isn’t buying any salmon from village residents at all. Read the rest here 09:05
Coastal Villages Region Fund, the region’s largest Community Development Quota group, to raise salmon prices and processing wages
Spokesperson, Dawson Hoover, says they will be paying 15 cents more for their salmon this year, from 85 cents to a $1 per pound for all salmon species. He says they are paying more because the quality of the fish has improved. “We’ve been getting a much better product over the years, ever since we’ve implemented mandatory icing and bleeding,” Hoover says. “Our fishermen are getting better at delivering a better catch, so we’re rewarding them with higher prices this year.” continued
