June 7, 2021 — America’s largest seafood producing state kept working through the covid-19 pandemic, but under difficult and constantly changing conditions. Seafood consumers were unable to eat out but became hungrier than ever for everything from king crab to Alaska pollock fish sticks to canned salmon. For at least nine months retail seafood sales were up 20-30 percent above pre-pandemic levels — a higher sales bump than all other parts of the grocery store. Those increases tell the story of high demand, but also of the hard work and sacrifice that kept boats fishing, processing lines operating, and shippers moving products to where they were needed.
To better understand how covid-19 is affecting the industry, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute commissioned McKinley Research Group (formerly known as McDowell Group) to produce a series of surveys and briefing papers.
Mitigation and Response Costs
Fortunately, Alaska’s winter/spring Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands fisheries were already underway when covid hit in early 2020, limiting initial impacts in those massive fisheries. Heading into the peak summer salmon season, processors and harvesters scrambled to set up new protocols and spent heavily to protect workers and communities. Sporadic outbreaks occurred, but fisheries that were once in question were widely heralded as successful.
Our research indicates that Alaska seafood processors spent roughly $70 million in 2020 to mitigate the spread of the virus through quarantines, chartered travel, and other measures. Seafood harvesters who responded to a separate ASMI survey reported spending an average of $9,350 per vessel on covid mitigation in 2020, while 82 percent said they expect covid-19 costs to be the same or higher in 2021. Uncertainty also resulted in fewer fishermen on the water. Crew license sales data from Alaska Department of Fish and Game show a 31 percent drop in commercial crew license sales from 2019.
Unfortunately, covid-19 cases exploded across the country at the end of 2020, just before the start of the 2021 winter/spring fisheries. Despite extensive precautions including prework quarantines, chartered travel and regular testing, several of Alaska’s largest seafood processors experienced outbreaks. Rapid responses and expanded vaccine distribution contained and mitigated the spread of the outbreaks. However, because of the high costs of bringing thousands of workers for these winter fisheries, as well as the response costs associated with outbreaks and mitigation measures that will continue throughout the year, the mitigation price tag for processors in 2021 is expected to exceed $100 million.