Restructuring the Oregon Fishing Industry
4/6/05
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F/V Morningstar
II crew member Andrew Beauchamp, left, hands
over part of their crab catch to Dave Bailey,
who puts the feisty crustaceans into
containers destined for the Lighthouse Deli.
Bailey and Al Bostick own the vessel, which
they use to prowl the ocean for crabs, salmon,
and "a little tuna." Fisheries economists have
indicated the fishing industry had a great
year in 2004 after "bottoming out" in 2003.
Bailey and Bostick agreed things are looking
up, crabbing in particular. (Photo by Terry
Dillman) |
Oregon fishing industry a
good year 2004 because and despite changes in
structure
By Joel Gallob Of the News-Times
Editor's note: this article is the first of four
in a series on "Restructuring the Oregon Fishing
Industry." The series is based mainly on a report
"Oregon's Commercial Fishing Industry Year 2004
Preliminary Review and Year 2005 Outlook" written
by Hans Radtke and Shannon Davis, collectively,
The Research Group. Information also came from
interviews, and from articles and data available
on the Internet.
The year 2004 was,
overall, a very good year for the Oregon
commercial fishing industry, according to the
draft of a study by Hans Radtke and Shannon Davis,
the Research Group. The year represented, in
several ways, a turnaround after several down
years. That turnaround occurred in part because of
changes in the industry's structure. In fact, the
Oregon fishing industry has gone through an
overhaul in the past few years, and while it may
not be finished, its outlines are now clear.
The study was prepared for the Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife and the Oregon Coastal Zone
Management Association, and given by Radtke to the
News-Times.
The upturn
Despite variations from sector to sector, the
commercial fishing industry contributed $342
million in personal income to the Oregon economy
in 2004. According to the report, that made 2004
"the best year the industry has had since 1988,"
and was "about 39 percent higher than the average
of the previous ten years."
That broad economic impact flowed, in part, from
the frequently good numbers for the "ex-vessel"
revenues fishermen got for the fish they unloaded
in 2004 - even if some of those revenues came from
low per-pound prices netted by the fishers. The
ex-vessel revenues reached $97.4 million in 2004,
the highest such value since 1988's $97.8 million
and the second highest (after 1988) in the 35-year
data set. In 2003 that ex-vessel revenue figure
was $84.1 million, behind only 2004 and 1988.
If 2003 suggested a turnaround in the industry,
2004 - even deducting for the fact of balmy
weather - appeared to confirm it.
The prior several years had seen a series of
cutbacks and setbacks. These included the listing
of several salmon runs under the Endangered
Species Act, the decline of several groundfish
species, groundfish catch quota cuts, and the
closure of much of the continental shelf to
groundfish trawling. The period also saw cyclical
change to poor ocean conditions (i.e., an absence
of nutrient-rich upwelling) in 1996-97, which did
not reverse itself until about two years ago.
The ocean conditions had much to do with the
economic changes - the signal drop in revenues
came between 1996 and 1997, the same period
scientists say they saw the shift in ocean
conditions. But a lot of other factors were in
play, too, from what the regulators found to be
overfishing on some groundfish species, to the
Northwest's multi-faceted salmon crisis. Now,
along with a return of good ocean conditions,
other factors have improved, too.
A restructured industry
The total volume of fish commercially landed in
Oregon in 2004 was 294.1 million pounds, well up
from 225.7 million in 2003. The 2004 figure was
the highest back to 1970, the starting year of the
study data. In 35 years, only 1995 and 1996 came
close to the 2004 volume.
Yet the rise in tonnage reflected, in large part,
a shift from low-volume, high value species, like
salmon, to high-volume, low value species, such as
whiting and sardines. The salmon are paid for in
dollars per pound; the whiting, in cents per
pound.
The high-priced salmon dropped from 19.6 million
pounds in 1970 to 5.9 million in 2004, while
whiting, which did not exist as a fishery until
1989, rose from 5.0 million in that initial year
to 130.2 million in 2004. The numbers for both
show highs and lows over the intervening years and
decades, but the 2004 salmon level was near bottom
and the 2004 whiting catch near the top. It is
clear the salmon catch has been declining, and the
whiting numbers rising.
Similarly, the groundfish catch, which in the
1970s rivaled the salmon in value, and starting in
the mid-1980s replaced the salmon as the chief
money-maker for the fleet, declined severely in
catch in the 1990s. By 2002 and 2003, the
groundfish catch value of $14.7 million was half,
or less what it has consistently been in the 1980s
and most of the 1990s. The groundfish catch value
for 2004, which was below the 2003 number (even if
slightly higher than that for 2002), gave little
evidence of any turnaround in this formerly
favored fishery.
The trend to lower value catch, the report stated,
"has also had the effect of concentrating landings
in ports that have high-volume harvesting and
processing capabilities, such as Newport and
Astoria." Newport is the top whiting port, with 43
percent of the coastwide volume coming into it.
Astoria and Charleston follow, and several other
West Coast ports take in the rest.
The transition to being, in large part, a whiting
port wasn't easy in Newport. In the late 1990s
there were numerous complaints about potent
noxious odors from what was then the Arctic Alaska
whiting plant. Trident Corporation picked up
Arctic Alaska when it bought Arctic's parent,
Tyson Seafoods, and invested sufficient funds in
the Newport plant to cut odor complaints to near
zero.
Not all species are of an especially high, or
especially low, value per pound. Some species with
good volume and moderate prices, like the
Dungeness crab and albacore tuna, have been stable
or better for the fishermen.
The Dungeness crab, in fact, have been the
brightest spot in the whole picture. Their
landings in 2004 came to a record 27.2 million
pounds in 2004. That beat 2003's record-setting
figure of 23.9 million pounds. Those two years
were the two highest in the dataset going back to
1970, and the first back-to-back record hauls.
They brought a record $42,787,000 in 2004, and
$36,736,000 in 2003 to Oregon crabbers - almost
half of the $97,350,000 total landed value in 2004
and over a third of the $82,395,000 of 2003.
There are not a lot of Oregon vessels that
specialize in tuna, the report noted, mainly
because hunting tuna usually means heading far out
to sea to find the highly migratory fish. But the
tuna become "an opportunity fishery," the report
explains, "when ocean conditions displace the cold
California Current and bring warmer waters closer
to shore." That makes the tuna more accessible,
especially to smaller boats. Largely because of
this, the tuna catch has increased for the past
three years, reaching 10.6 million pounds in 2004.
That still did not come close to the peak years of
the 1970s, but after the paltry catches of the
1980s and 1990s, the 2003 and 2004 numbers were a
notable turn-around.
Thus the shift from high-value salmon and
good-value groundfish to low value whiting (and
sardines) has been buffered not only by the great
whiting volume but, more recently, by banner years
in crab and good tuna years.
The shake-out
The industry clearly has seen a shake-out as well
as a restructuring. In the salmon fishery, the
state provided some retraining for ex-fishers in
the Hire The Fisher program, which was later built
upon with the Groundfish Disaster Outreach
Program. The 2000 Strategic Plan for the
groundfish, written by the Oregon Department of
Fish and Wildlife, sought a 50 percent cut in the
size of the groundfishing fleet. And that did
occur - in part as fishers who could not survive
dropped out of the industry, in part as a
federal/industry permit buyback program bought up
groundfish permits - and shrimp permits, too - and
took many of their owners off the waters. (Some
kept fishing, usually crabbing.)
But those who managed to stay in have seen a
growth in revenue. The report's bar chart for the
number of fishing vessels and the average revenue
per vessel did not give precise numbers. But it
clearly showed (despite occasional ups and downs)
an overall drop since 1981 in the number of
vessels, and a rising line of revenues for that
declining number of participants.
In 1991, roughly 3,600 Oregon vessels saw an
average of less than $30,000 income per vessel. By
2004, the report indicates, just over 1,000
vessels homeporting in Oregon saw an average
income that was three times higher.
Between the carving away at the groundfish fleet
and the endangered species listing of the salmon
on the one hand, and the rise in low-value whiting
(and sardines) on the other, the past decade has
produced "a reduced number of small boats and
increased annual revenues for the remaining
boats."
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