In 2015, the city of Cordova’s share of fisheries business taxes and fishery resource landing taxes collected by the state added up to $1,029,301.
That included $1,023,286 in fisheries business tax, based on what processors paid harvesters for unprocessed fish, plus $6,015 in fishery resource landing tax, the tax paid by floating processors who catch fish in federal waters and bring them inside state waters for offloading.
While 2015 was the first year that Cordova received a share of the fishery resource landing taxes, the city has, from 2011 through 2015, received a total of $6,853,652 in fisheries business taxes, or an average of $1,370,730 each year.
According to the state Department of Revenue’s fiscal year 2015 shared taxes and fees annual report, the state collected $21,479,073 in fisheries business taxes in fiscal 2015, and a total of $116,350,039 over the five year period, for an average of $23,270,000, plus $3,125,677 in fishery resource landing tax in fiscal 2015, a total of $23,292,732 for the five-year period, or an average of $4,658,546.
Given the unanticipated low harvest of pink salmon, plus reduced quotas for Bristol Bay red king crab and snow crab, and closure of three other crab fisheries, a downward impact is anticipated on revenues shared by the state with communities and through the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. The actual impact is yet to be determined.
Pink salmon harvests, the state’s highest volume salmon fishery, are a catch many harvesters and processors depend, but this year the catch was the lowest since the late 1970s.
The good news, said Tyson Fick, communications director for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, is that there is strong demand and reduced supply, and that people around the world recognize that Alaska is the place to go to get the highest quality salmon, including pink salmon.
The industry and ASMI have done some well publicized promotions to market wild Alaska salmon, and the result has been a strong demand for that salmon, Fick said.
While ASMI does not promote wild Alaska salmon by region or by brand, ASMI’s website, www.wildalaskaseafood.com, offers a wide variety of recipes to prepare with all of Alaska’s wild salmon.
Fick is equally optimistic about Alaska crab. “People love it,” he said, “and people remember a quality experience more than they remember a high price.”
Demand for salmon is really good, agreed Tom Sunderland, director of marketing for Ocean Beauty Seafoods. Demand is exceeding supply for salmon however, with the shortage especially in humpies from this year’s harvest.
“Inventories are low, which will be good when we get on to next season, but right now we are hurting without enough fish to sell,” Sunderland said.
While the price for pink salmon adjusted up, it wasn’t enough to cover the loss of volume, but next year is an odd numbered year, when pink salmon harvests are routinely very abundant.
“In sockeyes we were big this year, because the sockeyes came in huge,” he said.
“Pinks are what caused the hurt.”
