Juneau lands record halibut catch

Longliners saw some of the highest halibut prices ever during the 1999 halibut season, which closed at noon Monday.

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The season also marked the first time more halibut was landed in Juneau than in any other town in Southeast.

The region experienced a wide swing in prices during the season, said Sandro Lane, president of Taku Fisheries, which is becoming one of the state's largest processors.

The first fish of the season, in March, went for $2.50 a pound in some niche markets, and then the price quickly dropped to $1.30, Lane said. But the price kept rising, finally reaching $3 a pound, he said.

``Nothing's ever stable,'' Lane said. ``The market last year was terrible. . . . Fishermen take heed. They should enjoy it while they can, because it is not going to last forever.''

``It was a great season,'' agreed Linda Behnken, director of the Alaska Longline Fisherman's Association in Sitka. ``It's the highest (price) I can remember. . . . People are paying more and more attention to quality when they're fishing for halibut.''

The price now is so high that consumer resistance can't be far off, which could trigger a switch to other products and a pendulum swing back down, Lane said. Frozen halibut is currently in big demand for Y2K parties, but processors have to be careful not to carry any excess inventory over the winter, he said. ``As soon as that party fever is over, I think you're going to see a lot of people wake up with hangovers.''

As of Monday morning, about 9,805,600 pounds of halibut had been landed in Southeast, compared to the region's quota of 10,490,000 pounds, said Jessica Gharrett, of the National Marine Fisheries Service office in Juneau. Additional poundage is expected to be reported for up to two weeks, she said.

The long-term trend is an increase in demand for fresh fish, which has made Juneau more of a hub than it has been, Lane said. For the first time, Juneau surpassed Petersburg in pounds of halibut landed, he said.

Through Nov. 10, Juneau ranked fourth in the state with halibut landings, with 2.9 million pounds or 5.26 percent of the landings, according to Fisheries Service statistics. Juneau's numbers were far behind Homer, Kodiak and Seward, but ahead of Petersburg's 2.26 million pounds. By way of comparison, Juneau ranked only eighth statewide at the midpoint of the 1996 season.

Individual fishing quotas, or IFQs, implemented in 1995, have been a boon for processing in Juneau because fishermen have months to get their catch, rather than the former derby-style openings of one or two days in which reaching the nearest port was key. And now with fresh fish in greater demand every year, the freight capacity out of Juneau's airport increasingly becomes a factor, Gharrett said.

Taku Fisheries buys from 300 to 400 halibut fishermen, Lane said. Last year, there were 1,734 people in Southeast with halibut quota shares, and 836 vessels operating, Gharrett said.

Taku Fisheries, which has processed about 2 million pounds of halibut this year, remains the 800-pound gorilla in Juneau, but there are rumors of other processors looking to get a piece of the growing pie, Lane said.

He compared himself to an explorer in a jungle who cuts through vines with a machete, while others follow on the path he has made.

``I have created something,'' Lane said. ``I did this because I like living in Juneau.''

Fish processing is a ``clean, renewable'' industry that avoids the controversy facing some other sectors of the economy, he said.

But there's plenty of controversy about who catches halibut.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which recommends management policy for NMFS regulations, is considering a proposal to cap the charter fleet's catch, which has ``exploded'' in recent years, Gharrett said. The state of Alaska is supporting a fixed number for the charter catch instead of a percentage, something that has longliners worried, she said.

``There's concern about some of the allocation issues hanging out there,'' Behnken said.

Advisory committees to the council begin meetings at the Anchorage Hilton Hotel Dec. 8, with a full council meeting on the charter issue Dec. 10.