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[Music] ten nine eight seven six five four three two [Music] show [Music] hello and welcome to heartbeat alaska native news native information i'm your host jeanne greene the world is in turmoil we're at war but war is nothing new here in alaska if you're considering things like the salmon industry it seems like we've had a struggle for quite a while recently down in southeast alaska a conference was held a big meeting hosted by the central council of clinket and haida in juneau alaska there are over 24 000 clinkette and haida people in southeast alaska many small towns and villages have been directly affected by the hardest hit salmon prices in years we travel now to southeast alaska and visit with some people that are trying to find solutions to this problem oh oh oh for thousands of years the clinket haida and simsian lived among these towering islands and deep waters their lives became intertwined with the rhythms of seasons and the abundance of the sea this is a halibut hook right here because the halibut would come in there and bite see the reason why i say he's more deadly than that and a circle hook is once he gets in there that's it can't get away when western civilization swept over the area that would come to be known as southeast alaska the sea began to be used in new ways the very survival of the natives dependent on their ability to adapt quickly to new ways of thinking new ways of doing business subsistence fishermen quickly became commercial fishermen the days of 50-foot cedar canoes and carved halibut hooks gave way to nets and wooden sailing boats today we have the age of diesel and gps refrigerated sea water and fish tracking radar through all this there is one thing that hasn't changed the lives of the people that live in these ancient coastal villages are still intertwined with the sea everybody in the coastal villages has generations of families that have made a living from this and it is part of our life it's part of our culture as part of who we are and that's why these communities were built where they are we just can't abandon that we've all had friends and relatives that have lost their lives to see uh making a living from this and what i was reminding them yesterday was that these people are still a part of our lives they're not forgotten in our villages but once again forces from the outside are changing everything one thing that professor at the university of washington told me stuck with me maybe this isn't the place to bring this up but he said that humans had domesticated every food source but fish and that we would someday domesticate fish too that day is upon us fish farming is now commonplace around the world and while fish farms are illegal in alaska they are having a huge impact on alaska's fishermen catching fish in the wild is more expensive and unpredictable than raising them in pens a flood of these farm-raised salmon on the world market is driving prices lower and lower to make matters worse for fishermen in alaska some large fish farming companies are willing to sell below cost in order to take more market share to the people here taking market share means putting them out of business people who had been in the business 50 60 years and were successful fishermen lost their markets they lost their their gear their boats their limited entry licenses robert loscher is an assemblyman for clinkette and heidi central council he's been around fishing all his life but he's never seen what he's seeing now we have a terrible crisis a disaster occurring across alaska and particularly in southeastern alaska it's sad to hear that in our boat harbors harbor masters are telling me that people are literally walking away from their vessels leaving them to the public not paying their stall rents and just walking away from the industry and in our communities there's lots of housing vacancies people are walking away from houses and trailers and and moving their families from our coastal communities and that's really sad to hear it really affects our communities greatly and these people are vital to the future of our industry we need to figure out a way to help the families of alaska who are so reliant upon the salmon industry to come back that's why they are here the clinton and haida central council recently hosted a three-day meeting salmon for success people in all aspects of the salmon industry traveled to juneau looking for solutions just before the meeting began there was more bad news ward's cove a fish processing company with plants all over southeast alaska announced it will close its doors the seattle-based company also plans to sell its plans leaving little hope they will ever return well ward's cove decided they weren't going to operate this year because they didn't get the capital to operate and they pulled out of some of the big markets excursion inlet cannery or coal storage and craig they had several in ketchikan and they had over 100 boats fishing for it so over a hundred percenters without a market is a huge problem for many communities all over southeast alaska i feel like we're out on a road to become a very successful operation dwayne wilson is a fisherman from haines alaska haynes is on the northern end of lynn canal for a fishing vessel the equivalent of a dead-end street the ward's co-plant in haines was the only processor he could sell to the ward's cove closure has definitely caused that mass confusion and mass feeling in the state of emergency for trying to market the fish ward's cove is a perfect example of how the salmon industry works in southeast and a perfect example of what went wrong you see months before any fishing boats went out ward's cove went to a bank to get what's called a pack loan they'd used that money to buy fish from fishermen most of the fish was put in cans and the cases full of cans are called the pack when the pack is sold ward's cove would make enough money to repay that year's loan and have a nice profit over the last hundred years the cannery became a fixture in many villages canning fish was the best way to preserve it for a long trip to market but now the trip to market is getting shorter the market is demanding newer and greater products more of the fresh or the frozen fillets and other kinds of products that are more usable to the housewife across america and the world so those cans aren't selling so well anymore canned salmon market has a surplus inventory of two and a half years backlogging inventory and the question is what do we do in the face of a large run of pink salmon and where are the markets this coupled with cheaper farm-raised salmon means the old way of doing business doesn't work anymore this year when ward's cold went to the bank for a path loan the bank said no but the salmon will still return this year and if the predictions are right in record numbers right now we're facing a 92 million pink salmon coming to southeast alaska which is like 25 to 30 percent greater projected harvestable surplus than we've ever expected in the past years and what has occurred here with ward's cove packing company quitting the business basically is that we have not enough processing capacity to handle all this fish nor do we have markets pink salmon make up about half of the harvest in southeast alaska pinks are less valuable so why not just let them go the biologists have told us that when there's a huge escape in the pink salmon just uh totally drowns out the remaining run and as a result what happens is that you run into a situation where you have poor wild runs in the future so you know got to get rid of them somehow in other words too many pinks would reduce the number of the other more lucrative salmon that could breed the persians when they go out if you don't have a market for pink salmons some of them have no really reason why they should be out there fishing once the pink run starts coming in then i have a market they can't fish and if they don't fish many small villages in southeast alaska will be left with almost no income if the fisherman doesn't make money neither does the storekeeper and if the storekeeper can't pay us property taxes the village government can't provide basic services but in a changing market who wants all those pink salmon if you can imagine it was totally amazing to me that in russia when a housewife goes to the store she has pork or chicken or pink salmon and that is a part of their society and their culture the resources of pink salmon and russia have demand depleted and over harvested and now they're looking for another supply and this could benefit alaskans greatly to deal with the surplus pink salmon that it has this forthcoming year and the russians are willing to come here to get them right now there's an application before governor murkowski which merely requires an executive decision on his part to authorize a foreign fish processor to come into alaska to take that pink salmon and that's global seafoods north america has that application and they will take that pink salmon and sell it into the russian market pink salmon in the round or gutted fish and become a part of the staple of marketing to housewives in russia but it may not be that easy governor murkowski is bound by a federal law called the magnuson-stevens act it prevents foreign processors from operating unless domestic ones don't have the capacity or intent to process those fish currently the governor's office is surveying the remaining fish processors to answer that question and there are other concerns domestic processors don't think it's fair that the foreign vessels are not subject to america's tougher labor laws and higher minimum wage and their concerns don't end there well there are a bunch of perceived problems by the onshore processors are concerned that this product will compete and come back into america from russia that's further from the case the global seafoods will take that fish and will go fresh and frozen right into the russian market not come back to american cans global seafoods doesn't do canning business so we shouldn't expect that the other problem is a business of payment to fishermen there have been foreign processors who have come to offshore waters of alaska and not paid the fishermen but global seafoods intends to have a line of credit with wells fargo bank and pay fishermen based upon fish tickets and they can go to their bank and cashier fish tickets for for payment even though the russians may pay less than ward's code did many people here think less money is better than none well it's a short-term solution until until processors can sit back and do some strategic planning and figure out what kind of market they want to get involved in how many fishermen they want to employ and and get rid of their inventory they have a huge inventory of can pink salmon and by bringing in foreign processors i think that they might be able to get rid of that and by then they would have their strategic planning done and they can move forward i think it's worth a worth of try i think policy will need to be written up from the state of alaska or the u.s congress to state that this is just a temporary thing it's not permanent this is until we get back on our feet in the world market my brother ted he was in the fish business for 20 years and he'll tell you right to your face that's a marketing problem without a marketing problem and that's where the money should be going we need to get back our markets don bremmer comes from a long line of fishermen he knows the only way alaska can compete with cheaper farmed salmon is get the message out wild alaska's salmon is better the fact of the matter is most consumers rank quality as the number one factor when choosing salmon we've we've targeted the high value good flesh quality seafood and you know we've taken some steps to alleviate the problems that we've had with the poor flesh quality in composting some of that stuff value-adding the seafood that does come into the plant either through smoking or through adding some value through fletches or fillets so we've tried to increase our value every step of the process sam jackson is president and ceo of cake tribal corporation like many villages in southeast cakes struggled with low salmon prices then by looking back at their traditions cake saw the way to the future we've come from the sea we feel that we can make money from the sea and we feel that the the sea is our future and that's that's what has transpired at cake foods incorporated is that we're trying to maximize the value of the seafood industry that that's sitting right outside our door right outside cake store are some of the best fishing grounds in the world the direct benefit of uh of the the location of cake foods and corporate is it's right in central southeast alaska it's uh two hours from chatham strait it's right outside frederick sound it's right in kiki street where all the fisheries occur and you know if somebody doesn't sell to cake foods they'll be running five hours to petersburg or 10 hours to juneau to deliver their product and we feel that if we capture that species of salmon or species of crab or species of halibut or black cod that we can make maximize the quality of that product by minimizing the the run time between the next process or down the road so we feel we have a competitive advantage by our location in 1998 cake tribal corporation opened the doors of a new processing facility they named cake foods they looked hard at the changing salmon markets and began making products to fit ken newman is the general manager at cake foods 2001 we did 8 000 pounds of dungeness crab in 2002 we did 400 000 pounds and what we were trying to do was think out of the box there representatives from cake foods made quite a splash at the salmon for success meeting in an industry that's losing money all over cake's operation is growing by leaps and bounds when cake foods was formed they hired experts in the industry duff mitchell is a chief operations officer we don't believe that failure is an option um a lot of our people are employed in our facility and they've been processing or fishing for generations and we feel it's we we have we have to do what we have to do many at the meeting saw cake's food strategy of high quality products that fit into niche markets as the future of the industry it's a model worth looking at because the community has a commitment that includes the corporation and the fishermen and they do on an annual basis strategic planning and get all the stakeholders involved in the whole thing the fishermen the community processing unit and figure out what we did wrong last year and what we did right and make a commitment to what we did rights and try other things and that's the procedure that everybody has to go through in this fisheries economy you know the valley added products out of cake is is a pretty adventurous path that they have been taking for a lot of years i remember when they first bought the pelican seafoods governor knowles a big press release a big to-do about congratulating cake tribal corporation for having the courage to do that and they are on the right path of course then again it's just like any other product they need visibility they need market acceptance and i think if they survive they will do really well with their product and we all need to be heading that way in some of the rural villages i've watched develop over the years and it's getting better and better we're getting better equipment and making more money proud to say that i work here and put out good products and getting recognition all over the place for it on the next heartbeat alaska we'll visit cake and take a tour of the plant we'll also find out how this strange looking machine is helping to solve one of the toughest issues in the new salmon the economy at cake foods are gearing up for summer they are an enterprising very very enterprising group of people and they are going to prosper i promise you thank you so much cake foods and cake alaska for helping the story and thank you central council of clinket and haida thank you so much gordon jackson god bless every single one of you thank you all for watching join me again next week for more heartbeat alaska to purchase a copy of this program ask for h artbeat number 4403 that's 4403 and send your check or money order for 20 to genie green productions 6216 old seward highway anchorage alaska 99518 or give us a call 907-563-7440 [Music] do [Music] thousands of [Music] native years woman and a man you