By Raina Clark
For the Journal

Alaskan roe harvesters depend on Japanese technicians to perform a time-honored art form. In March, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service closed applications for the worker visas used by Japanese roe technicians to come into the country. This left Alaska roe harvesters concerned about how they would process their harvest for one of their largest markets, Japan. Why do Alaska roe harvesters need these Japanese workers so much? Why can't we solve the problem by training Alaskans to process the roe?

John Burke is General Manager of Southern Southeast Regional Aqua Association (SSRAA), one of the state's major roe harvesters. SSRAA's eggs are processed by a company called Nosui, which sends its own Japanese technicians to Alaska to process the eggs. Burke says there are three reasons that Japanese technicians are indispensable in Alaska's salmon roe industry.

First, Japanese consumers are extremely loyal to domestic products. Burke uses rice as an example. It's much easier and less costly to grow rice in countries with large scale agriculture. Japan grows rice less efficiently on small family farms, producing a more expensive product. Yet Japan imports very little rice from other countries and prefers its own product. This is the case with roe as well. Japanese companies may buy roe from Alaska fishermen, but they process it into a roe product themselves. It's not likely that Japanese consumers would accept an American made roe product in the marketplace.

Second, processing roe to Japanese tastes is a time-honored art form, not a science. There are a few different Japanese companies that process their own, unique roe product. The specific tastes come from the way the roe is cured. The recipes for the brines are closely guarded by each company.

"It's the difference between Pepsi and Coca Cola," Burke explains.

Japanese roe technicians work with a company for many years to learn how to make its specific brand of roe product. The lead technicians have been with their company for 20 years or more. They supervise the lower level technicians who rub the eggs out of the skeins (the sacks which hold the eggs) and clean, brine and air dry them. "(It's) the way a French chef would require people who were going to cook in his restaurant to apprentice for many years in order to the cook the dishes that he makes," Burke said. "There are lots of parts to the process that are done by a sense of how it's going as opposed to somebody setting a timer. It's just not a scientific process."

Third, Japanese technicians must come to Alaska to process the roe rather than waiting for the roe to come to them. The fresher the eggs are when processed, the higher the quality. In the current market, especially, Japanese companies have room to be very discerning and will only accept roe that has been processed on-site. However, when the roe is frozen and shipped to Japan after being processed it retains its quality.

SSRAA was involved in the lobbying effort to change the limit on worker visas impacting Japanese roe technicians. But, recently the issue has fallen off the front pages of fisheries news. Processing of the major Japanese roe product, Ikura, is already in the works. Alaska companies are moving the roe technicians that are already in the country around the industry as best as possible. Sen. Lisa Murkowski's office in Washington, D.C., reports that it continues to try to resolve the shortage through legislative and administrative avenues. But, so far, no additional visas have been approved.

Is the 2004 salmon season measuring up to record projections?

It's still early in the season, but Doug Mecum of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's Commercial Fisheries Division says this year's salmon fishery is bringing in some large catches and healthy prices. In its 2004 projection, Fish and Game predicted a statewide catch of 196 million fish, a harvest that would be the third-largest on record.

The sockeye fishery, in particular, is projected to go through the roof. This year's sockeye harvest in Bristol Bay alone is projected to be larger than the average for the entire state over the past several years. The forecast calls for 35 million fish to be harvested from the bay as compared to the region's recent average of just 17 million. Alaska's statewide, five-year average is 32 million sockeye, but this year a total catch of 50 million fish is projected. So far, Mecum says the indications are on track with those projections.

Bristol Bay's sockeye prices aren't going through the roof, however. The average price at Bristol Bay docks this past week was just 40 cents, only slightly more than last year's less than stellar prices. Southeast seiners and gill-netters, on the other hand, took in 85 cents a pound and Copper River fishermen took in $1.30 a pound.

Mecum says this year's chum fishery is also starting out well. Chum salmon harvests statewide are at average levels, except in Prince William Sound. Also in that region, the Prince William Sound Aquaculture Association is reporting poor chum hatchery returns, causing the closure of the Esther Sub district. Time will tell if Alaska's chum harvest will actually be the second largest on record, at 21 million fish, as predicted.

Record harvests could present a problem for processors, however, whose predictions of inadequate capacity may also come true. Bristol Bay processors agree that they do not have the capacity to move the entire projected harvest of 50 million sockeye. Today, as the salmon season takes off, processors all over the state are beating the bushes for workers. At the end of June, the State Department of Labor Workforce Development reported that 600 workers are needed to fill seafood processing jobs over the next month or two.

Dungeness fishery off to a good start

The Dungeness crab fishery opened on June 15. Jan Rumble, shellfish biologist at the Department of Fish and Game, reports that a healthy 800,000 pounds of crab were taken in the first week.

"As far as we can tell from past seasons, it's going to be a good season," she said. "This is the second-highest harvest for the first week on record, (and) our records go back to 1969."

The highest harvest was two seasons ago, when the total harvest was 7 million pounds of dungeness crab. Duncan Canal near Petersburg and Stikine Flat near Wrangell have had the highest harvests so far. The prices for the first week ranged between $1.25 and $1.75, but the average price was $1.30, very similar to last year's average.

"We have a really diverse fleet with a lot of different methods of selling their catch," Rumble said. "We have anything from a 20-foot skiff to a big-limit seiner. There's guys that fish every day and bring their crab in every night ... They call the guys in the skiffs the garbage can fleet because they hold their crab in garbage cans to keep them alive. Then there are people who go out for a couple weeks who have a big hold to keep their crab in."

Many of the fishermen sell to processors in Petersburg and Wrangell. But some airfreight their catches directly to the Lower 48.

"Then there are people who sell at the dock and do pretty well there," Rumble said. "We're not on the road system in any of the communities except Haines, so it makes it challenging for fishermen. They have to be creative about how they sell their crab."

On the other hand, the lack of access to trucking routes means good reporting for Fish and Game. "There's a lot of trouble in Canada with non-reporting because they have the road system and they can truck stuff away without writing it down on a fish ticket. They can't keep track of it the way we can here in the Southeast," Rumble said.

The dungeness fishery's long season also distinguishes it from the other crab fisheries. Although it brings in the lowest price per pound, the Dungeness season is open for a total of about four months, from June 15 to Aug. 15 and Oct. 1 to Nov. 30, with two districts in Ketchikan open until Feb. 28. The tanner and king fisheries often close after a matter of weeks, or even days.

In 2000, Fish and Game instituted a successful new management plan for the dungeness fishery. "The fishery is managed using the first week's harvest to estimate the total harvest for the season ... a regression was developed using historical data and the season was set using some different thresholds," Rumble said.

If the total harvest is predicted to be 2.25 million pounds or more, the season will remain open as planned. If the total harvest is predicted to be between 1.5 million and 2.25 million, the summer season will be shortened to 28 days and the fall season will close after 30 days. If the total harvest is predicted to be less than 1.5 million pounds, the summer season will be shortened to just 21 days and the fishery will not open in the fall. "If we believe the stocks are in jeopardy and are at a low point then we just adjust the length of the season. That's the idea behind it," Rumble said. However, since this management plan was enacted four years ago, the seasons have not had to be shortened.

-Raina O. Clark is a free-lance writer specializing in the maritime industries. Clark is filling in for the vacationing Laine Welch. She is based out of Kodiak. Contact her at roclark@gci.net.