News - Local News

POSTED: Sunday, Oct. 04, 2009

Big pink salmon run helped some but not all Whatcom County fishers

Pink salmon on their way back to British Columbia's Fraser River passed through local waters by the millions this year, providing relief for some commercial fishers whose hopes for a lucrativer sockeye run were dashed earlier in the summer.

But the benefits of the pink run were confined almost exclusively to the larger purse seine vessels.

"This pink salmon run was a silver lining to what was otherwise a very dark cloud," said Robert Kehoe, executive director of the Purse Seine Vessel Owners Association. "Some boats did reasonably well when it looked like it was going to be another disaster."

Purse seiner Sven Stroosma said he and most of the 75 other non-Indian seine vessel owners make most of their money in Alaska. But this year, with southeast Alaska pink runs falling short of expectations, Stroosma came back to Washington state earlier than usual, and he and his four-person crew enjoyed five productive days scooping up Fraser River pinks.

"Coming down to Puget Sound improved our season significantly," Stroosma said. "I probably would've done a little better if I'd come down a little sooner."

It's a decision that fishing vessel owners can't make lightly. Getting a purse seiner from southeast Alaska to Puget Sound takes three days of non-stop travel.

Riley Starks, who catches salmon by reefnet off Lummi Island, also made some money on pinks this year, improving the quality by individually bleeding each fish to improve its flavor. He provides fish to the Whole Foods and Haggen grocery chains, among others, and serves them to discriminating customers at the elegant restaurant that graces The Willows Inn, which Starks co-owns. The special handling also enables Starks to get a higher price than the 25 cents per pound that processors were paying for seine-caught fish.

The bumper crop of pinks had some unfortunate side effects as fish processors struggled to handle the volume.

"The seine boats came in with some huge catches, and they overwhelmed the processing capabilities," Starks said. "We weren't able to sell as many as we could have sold."

But the pink salmon bounty was not available to gillnetters like Richard Solomon of Lummi Nation. Pinks, the smallest salmon, are difficult to catch in gillnets.

"They're real slow and they've got good eyes, I guess," Solomon said.

Solomon said he and other tribal gillnetters didn't even bother with them. Gillnetters have traditionally relied on the Fraser River sockeye run for most or all of their income, and yet another collapse of that fishery has more than 400 tribal fishers scrambling to make ends meet with crab, shrimp and halibut. There was no commercial fishery for sockeye this year or last year, because the international commission that regulates the fishery ruled that the number of returning fish was not big enough to support one.

"It's a disaster for us," Solomon said. "We didn't even get any (sockeye) to eat. ... It's been a lot of years since we made any money sockeye fishing. It's been a real struggle."

Solomon plans to keep struggling.

"We keep doing it because it's our livelihood," Solomon said. "It's what I've done all my life. ... I really enjoy what I'm doing. This is how I grew up. The hearts of the fishermen and the fish are joined together. The fish give up their lives for us so we can survive."

Lummi Indian Business Council Chairman Henry Cagey said the tribe plans to apply for federal disaster relief for its fishermen for the third year in a row. Among other things, the disaster relief can take the form of grants and loans for boat repairs or job retraining.

Cagey said the sad state of the sockeye fishery is bad economic news for the entire county. Tribal fishing income flows through the whole economy, generating retail sales and tax revenues.

"The whole community suffers when there's no sockeye runs, on and off the reservation," Cagey said. "It has a ripple effect across the board."