HOMER — On a brilliant spring morning, Buck Laukitis, a longtime fisherman from this Kenai Peninsula town, stood at the city dock watching his catch come ashore.

Crew members aboard Laukitis’ boat, the Oracle, filled bags with dozens of halibut — some of the fatter ones worth $200 or more — which a crane would lift to the dock. There, processing workers on a small slime line weighed the fish, tossed crushed ice into the gills and slid them into boxes for shipment to Canada.

Harvest, unload, sell, repeat — exactly how the iconic Alaska commercial fishing industry is supposed to work. Until you ask Laukitis about the Oracle’s sister vessel, the Halcyon.

Instead of fishing for another species, black cod, like it’s built for, the Halcyon is tied up at the dock.

For Laukitis to make money, processing companies would need to pay $2.50 for each pound of black cod delivered to a plant. But right now, buyers aren’t paying much more than $1.50, he said.

With Laukitis on the dock last month were his young grandkids and adult daughters — fishermen who run a popular brand called the Salmon Sisters.

Those generations, he said, were on his mind as a sharp downturn in Alaska’s fishing industry continues looming over his livelihood. Some say that the crisis, driven by an array of market forces and economic factors outside fishermen’s control, is the biggest for the industry since statehood.

“We’re trying to do multi-generation fishing,” Laukitis said. “But believe me: It keeps me up at night, wondering about the future.”

Roughly a year into the downturn, with the major summer harvest of salmon just starting, there are some signs of recovery. Some fishermen say they managed to turn profits even after last year’s plunge in prices. And startup businesses are launching new models for processing that they say could help boost the quality and value of Alaska’s catch.

But major threats persist, many of which fishermen feel powerless to affect — posing existential risks to a $6 billion industry that employs more than 15,000 Alaskans.

Industry and state elected leaders say they expect Russia to continue selling huge quantities of fish into global markets, undercutting the prices of Alaska’s harvests — which also have to compete with farmed fish.

Inflation and high borrowing costs are hammering processing companies, which typically take out huge loans to buy supplies and stage workers and equipment at the start of each summer salmon season. Plants and whole processing businesses have shuttered around the state, while others are putting assets up for sale.

Then there’s the long-term uncertainty that comes with global warming, which appears to be boosting some fish populations but disrupting others.

Fishermen who have made big investments in recent years now own permits that could be worth a fraction of the purchase price.

Permits to participate in the typically lucrative Bristol Bay salmon fishery were going for $260,000 two years ago; now they’re selling for $140,000.

Many skippers face steep startup costs for the summer season without much confidence that their harvest will pay off. Some who are nearing retirement are having to postpone those plans until they can sell their boats and permits at higher prices.

“There are people who literally cannot afford to go fishing. They’re going to be paying money out of their own pocket to deliver their fish pretty soon,” said Maddie Lightsey, who brokers sales of permits and boats at her family business in Homer. “But they also can’t afford to sell, because the market has crashed and come down so far that they’re dramatically upside down on their loans.”

Most Alaska fishermen are in the business for the long haul, not for short-term investment returns. But some, like 41-year-old Erik Velsko, are starting to hedge their bets.

Velsko, another longtime Homer fisherman, is training to be a ship’s pilot, in case his chosen career doesn’t work out. Others said they’re looking at jobs in health care and aboard state ferries.

“That’s how much faith I have in, at least, the fisheries we’re doing,” Velsko said. “It was pretty good, for quite a while.”

‘Nothing to fall back on’

The industry turmoil first started generating big headlines after last summer’s Bristol Bay salmon harvest, when processing companies announced they would pay fishermen per-pound prices that were roughly half of the previous year’s.

The prices, which prompted vehement protests from fishermen, were the lowest in two decades, and they could end up being the lowest on record, according to a preliminary analysis by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.

But the focus on salmon has, to a degree, overshadowed that the crisis is broader, covering an array of other species.

Among the biggest problems is pollock — a whitefish harvested in huge quantities in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea. It’s sold into markets in Asia, Europe and the U.S. to make products like fish sticks, fried fish sandwiches and imitation crab.

Many of Alaska’s big processing companies depend on revenue from consistent, multi-season harvests of pollock to smooth out the short, frenetic summer salmon season.

But processors say that huge increases in aggressively low-priced sales of pollock products from Russia — particularly of surimi, the fish paste used to make fake crab — are crowding them out of the market, especially in Asia and Europe.

Processors say they’re also facing increased competition from Russia-caught salmon, and from farm-raised fish. Other species, like black cod, are also fetching rock-bottom prices — meaning that even fishermen who have diversified into multiple species aren’t insulated from the chaos.

“There’s nothing to fall back on. Everything, across the board, is in trouble,” Lightsey said. “This is different from other downturns in that way.”

Other dynamics that processors say are limiting the prices they can pay for fish include a historically low value of the Japanese yen against the U.S. dollar. That’s limited the demand for Alaska products in a country that’s often been a huge market.

Inflation and sharply rising borrowing costs in the past two years are also big problems.

Processing companies often take out loans of tens of millions of dollars at the start of each salmon season — money for buying empty cans and plastic, flying workers to remote plants and funding preseason boat upgrades, insurance policies and other necessities for the skippers who sell them fish.

“You had interest rates go up by three times,” said Rob Gillam, whose McKinley financial and research businesses have studied and invested in the Alaska seafood industry in recent years. “At the same time, what we can sell the fish for is going down, not up.”

Wages for processing workers, like for those in other industries, have also spiked. At a news conference last month, Joe Bundrant, the chief executive of the huge processing company Trident Seafoods, said labor costs have risen by 240% in the past five years, with diesel fuel prices also rising sharply in the same period.

“All the while that the Russians were weaponizing their seafood industry against us, we’ve seen unprecedented cost increases,” said Bundrant. His company is based in Seattle but has operated 11 plants in Alaska — four of which Trident put up for sale last year.

Deferred loans and deepening debts

Processing companies’ woes trickle down to skippers and crew, since fishermen depend on the prices those businesses can pay for their catch. Some of the same trends hitting the processing companies, like inflation, are also affecting fishermen directly.

In interviews, numerous Homer fishermen said they’re facing steep increases in the cost of insuring their boats for the summer salmon season. Jennifer Hakala, whose husband runs a boat in Bristol Bay, said the price of insurance for this year’s six-week fishery spiked to $8,000 from $5,000 in 2023.

To survive, some fishermen are deferring loan payments or taking on more debt. Others, like Hakala, are getting creative.

Typically, her husband hires two deckhands to help on the boat, but this year, they’re depending on their 16-year-old son, and Hakala, who manages a Homer marine supply store, will help out, too.

“I’m going to fly in on the peak and help them finish off the year — and hopefully we make our boat payment,” she said, referring to the yearly amount that’s due on the loan the family took out to buy their vessel.

Most fishermen in Kodiak have been able to get through the past year without contemplating difficult decisions like bankruptcy, according to Danielle Ringer, a fisherman and fisheries scholar from Homer who’s now based on Kodiak Island.

She’s heard of some skippers who have been working as crew members in fisheries they don’t normally participate in. Others are thinking about working construction instead of taking the risk of gearing up their boat for this coming summer.

“It could be OK,” Ringer said. “But not if it’s a couple more seasons like last year.”

Ringer said she’s seen support coming from the state and federal governments for large and small seafood processing companies.

Those programs are legitimate, Ringer said, but she’d also like to see more support for individual fishermen, too — ideas like direct aid, or loan forbearance. She endorsed concepts being discussed by policymakers to create new programs modeled on federal supports for agriculture.

“For healthy fisheries and healthy communities, you need all of these different aspects,” she said. “Even if government folks and others are interested in supporting fishermen, I think there are still questions about how to do that the right way.”

Not all bad news

While many Alaska fishermen are struggling, others say they have managed to stay profitable — and that they see bright spots ahead.

Last year, Homer resident Scotty Switzer and his three crew members all made money fishing off Kodiak Island, where big runs of salmon made up for the low price they were paid.

“I’m just grateful to have made something,” said Switzer, 36. “Getting into this industry, I knew there were going to be ups and downs.”

Switzer took on hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to acquire his permit, boat and other assets, and he’s still deeply in debt. But, like other fishermen working on their boats in the Homer harbor, he said he’s not feeling too anxious about his future.

“Probably should, could,” he said. “But, I’m in it now.”

For the upcoming season, one processing company, seeking to reassure fishermen, has already announced its minimum price for Bristol Bay sockeye salmon. Silver Bay Seafoods, one of the biggest Alaska processing companies, says it will pay a minimum of 80 cents a pound, a significant bump from the 50-cent minimum it paid last year.

Meanwhile, two startup companies, Northline Seafoods and Circle Seafoods, are hoping to revolutionize the industry’s traditional freezing and salmon processing methods — thereby fetching higher prices from consumers.

Typically, processors send big boats known as tenders to collect salmon from fishermen, then motor the catch back to plants on shore, where workers are flown each summer to handle the fish and operate equipment. Delays in pickup and delivery — and sometimes less-than-meticulous handling and chilling by fishermen — can translate into lower-quality fillets.

The two companies will park new, floating factory barges directly on or near the fishing grounds, reducing the amount of transit time once salmon are caught.

Once full of whole, frozen fish, the barges will be taken back to Washington state, where the salmon will be processed throughout the offseason without requiring workers to take expensive flights to rural Alaska plants.

“We’re trying to turn it into a manufactured good, as opposed to this seasonal rush of production that’s cut by temporary seasonal workers who have never seen a fish before,” said Charlie Campbell, Circle Seafoods’ co-founder. His company has raised $36 million from investors, loans and federal tax credits, he said.

A ‘bigger, more systematic downturn’

Alaska’s congressional delegation, led by Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, has also been chipping away at the problems of Russian pollock and salmon exports.

While the U.S. banned imports of Russian seafood in 2022, a loophole allowed those harvests to continue entering America if they’d been processed in China or other countries.

Sullivan and other Alaska elected officials successfully pressured the Biden administration to fix that problem in December; he’s also appealed directly to European Union and Asian allies to consider tighter Russian import restrictions of their own.

“When the U.S. government moves in a coordinated fashion, it can get things done,” Sullivan said. “If we got international cooperation from the EU and Japan, there’s no doubt it would stabilize prices.”

Beyond pollock and salmon, there are reasons to be hopeful about the medium- and long-term prospects for two other key Alaska species, halibut and black cod, said Norm Pillen, president of the fishermen-owned Seafood Producers Cooperative, a small processor based in Sitka.

But the near-term is less promising, with continuing low prices and high borrowing and shipping costs, he added. Sitka fishermen are also nervous about a conservation group’s request to have the federal government list Gulf of Alaska king salmon under the Endangered Species Act.

“We’re going to have another tough year to get through,” Pillen said.

Back on the Homer dock, Laukitis, the boat owner, said that last year, he thought the turmoil in the Alaska fishing industry would be short-lived, like other dips that participants have had to periodically endure over the years.

Now, he sees it differently — as a “bigger, more systematic downturn” that’s landing directly on fishermen. Processing companies may not be able to control the prices they pay for fuel or packaging, but they can reduce the price they pay for fish.

“There’s a disequilibrium,” Laukitis said. “And we’re the ones getting squeezed the hardest.”

Nathaniel Herz is an Anchorage-based reporter. Subscribe to his newsletter, Northern Journal, at northernjournal.com. Reach him at natherz@gmail.com.

Renton, Washington (CNN) — For months, missing paperwork has hindered the investigation into how a door plug blew off a 737 Max on an Alaska Airlines flight in January, making it difficult to find out who made the near tragic mistake. This week, Boeing disclosed that the paperwork may have caused the problem in the first place.

It was already well known that no documentation was found to show who worked on the door plug. At a briefing for journalists at Boeing’s 737 Max factory in Renton, Washington, Boeing said that lack of paperwork is why the four bolts needed to hold the door plug in place were never installed before the plane left the factory in October. The workers who needed to reinstall the bolts never had the work order telling them the work needed to be done.

Without the bolts, the door plug incident was pretty much inevitable. Luckily, it wasn’t fatal.

It’s a sign of the problems with the quality of work along the Boeing assembly lines. Those problems have become the focus of multiple federal investigations and whistleblower revelations, and the cause of delays in jet deliveries that are causing headaches for airlines and passengers around the globe.

Boeing may have stepped in it … again

But Boeing may have landed itself in even more trouble with regulators for divulging the details at this stage. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reprimanded Boeing Thursday for releasing “non-public investigative information” to the media. It said in a statement that the company had “blatantly violated” the agency’s rules.

“During a media briefing Tuesday about quality improvements … a Boeing executive provided investigative information and gave an analysis of factual information previously released. Both of these actions are prohibited,” the NTSB said.

Boeing would no longer have access to information generated by the NTSB during its investigation, the agency said, adding it was referring Boeing’s conduct to the Department of Justice.

“As a party to many NTSB investigations over the past decades, few entities know the rules better than Boeing,” the NTSB said.

Boeing did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment outside normal business hours.

Bad paperwork trail

During the Tuesday briefing, Boeing said that the particular problem with the Alaska Air door plug occurred because two different groups of employees at the plant were charged with doing the work, with one removing and the other reinstalling the door plug as the plane was passing along the assembly line.

The first group of employees removed the door plug to address problems with some rivets that were made by a supplier, Spirit AeroSystems. But they didn’t generate the paperwork indicating they had removed the door plug, along with the four bolts necessary to hold it in place, in order to do that work.

When a different group of employees put the plug back in place, Boeing says the employees didn’t think the plane would actually fly in that condition.

Instead, they were just blocking the hole with the plug to protect the inside of the fuselage from weather as the plane moved outside. That group of employees often makes those kind of temporary fixes.

“The doors team closes up the aircraft before it is moved outside, but it’s not their responsibility to install the pins,” said Elizabeth Lund, senior vice president of quality for Boeing’s commercial airplane unit.

Those employees likely assumed paperwork existed showing that the plug and bolts had been removed, and that paperwork would prompt someone else along the line to install the bolts.

But without the paperwork, no one elsewhere on the assembly line knew that the door plug had ever been removed, or that its bolts were missing, Lund said. Removing a door plug after a plane arrives from Spirit AeroSystems rarely happens, Lund added, so no one was aware the door plug needed attention.

“(Permanent) reinstallation is done by another team based on the paperwork showing what jobs are unfinished,” Lund said. “But there was no paperwork, so nobody knew to follow up.”

An accident waiting to happen

The plane actually flew for about two months with the door plug in place despite the lack of bolts. But minutes after the Alaska Airlines flight took off from Portland, Oregon, on January 5, the door plug blew out, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the plane. Passengers’ clothing and phones were ripped away from them and sent hurtling into the night sky. But fortunately no passengers were seriously injured, and the crew was able to land the plane safely.

The missing bolts had been identified in preliminary findings of the National Transportation Safety Board, but that report did not assess blame for the accident. And a final report is not expected for about a year or more. A spokesperson for the NTSB said that the safety agency is continuing its investigation and will not comment on Boeing’s explanation for how the mistake was made.

The board released a preliminary report in February that said it had found the bolts were missing when it left the Boeing factory, but it did not assess blame. A final report is not expected for a year or more from now.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy has testified about the missing paperwork at Congressional hearings since then.

Boeing is addressing the problem by cutting the speed that planes move along assembly lines, and making sure that planes don’t advance with problems under the assumption that those problems will be dealt with later in the assembly process, Lund said.

“We have slowed down our factories to make sure this is under control,” she said.

“I am extremely confident that the actions that we took,” will ensure every airplane leaving this factory is safe, she added.

The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

Crews were ordered to join smokejumpers who are hard at work on the Deception Pup Fire (#252) burning near Central and the Flasco Fire (#259) south of Circle.  

Three highly trained and cohesive hotshot crews arrived in Fairbanks from California Wednesday. The Smith River Hotshots and Lassen Hotshots will make the 150-160 mile drive up the Steese Highway Thursday to help the smokejumpers already on the ground trying to suppress these two fires.  

In addition, a Type 3 Incident Management Team from Idaho is gearing up to take over efforts on a group of fires, including the Deception Pup and Flasco fires, in northeastern Alaska. 

At an estimated 150 acres and burning near a group of Native allotments and homes north of mile 124.5 Steese Highway, the Deception Pup Fire was the highest priority in Alaska Wednesday. The 21 smokejumpers assigned got a hose lay around half of the fire Tuesday in anticipation of using water to cool down the edges. The fire calmed early Wednesday morning, but they were expecting things to pick back up as the day got hotter.  

The smokejumpers reported the aerial water drops and retardant drops were effective in slowing down the fire’s growth Tuesday night. Water scoopers and a helicopter continued that effort Wednesday while the smokejumpers tried continued to get a line around the fire.  

The Flasco Fire, only 30 miles away, is threatening another group of Native allotment and homes burning just south of Circle. This fire is burning in heavy spruce timber which requires substantial saw work to construct a fireline. Smokejumpers estimated it was 5% contained Wednesday morning. The 145 smokejumpers assigned will continue to construct a fireline in hopes to keep the fire within a 7-acre footprint. 

Both fires had scoopers and helicopters dropping water on the fire to help cool them down. 

The concern is upcoming Red Flag Conditions Thursday in an area already plagued by persistent hot and dry conditions. Thursday’s weather not only includes temperatures reaching into the 80s and possibly as high as 90, but the area could experience easterly wind and dry lightning. There’s a potential for thunderstorms in the area Thursday that could bring gusty, erratic winds and a chance of dry lightning. This could result in rapid fire growth on existing fires and dangerous new fires in Interior Alaska. 

Other fires the Idaho Team will manage include: 

The Crazy Fire (#152) is approximately 329 acres and burning in the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge about 46 miles north of the Steese Highway. It is in limited management option area and will be monitored. This lightning-caused fire was detected on June 17.  

The American Fire (#262) started on Tuesday and is burning approximately 15 miles northeast of Mount Prindle and about 20 miles north of mile 77 Steese Highway. This lightning-caused fire is about 7 acres and burning in a limited management option area. It will be monitored by the team. 

The Ikheenjik Fire (#184) is burning on BLM-managed land almost 12 miles southeast of Circle Hot Springs and 20 miles southeast of Central on the east side of the Ikheenjik River. This lightning-caused fire was detected on June 18 and was estimated at 35 acres on Wednesday. It is burning in limited management option are and will be monitored. 

-BLM-

Bureau of Land Management, Alaska Fire Service, P.O. Box 35005 1541 Gaffney Road, Fort Wainwright, Ak 99703

Need public domain imagery to complement news coverage of the BLM Alaska Fire Service in Alaska?

Visit our Flickr channel!
Learn more at www.blm.gov/AlaskaFireService, and on Facebook and Twitter.

The Bureau of Land Management Alaska Fire Service (AFS) located at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, provides wildland fire suppression services for over 240 million acres of Department of the Interior and Native Corporation Lands in Alaska. In addition, AFS has other statewide responsibilities that include: interpretation of fire management policy; oversight of the BLM Alaska Aviation program; fuels management projects; and operating and maintaining advanced communication and computer systems such as the Alaska Lightning Detection System. AFS also maintains a National Incident Support Cache with a $18.1 million inventory. The Alaska Fire Service provides wildland fire suppression services for America’s “Last Frontier” on an interagency basis with the State of Alaska Department of Natural Resources, USDA Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Military in Alaska.

Categories: Active Wildland Fire, BLM Alaska Fire Service

Tags: american fire, Central and Circle Cluster Fires, Crazy Fire, Deception Pup, Flasco Fire, Ikheenjik Fire