April 10, 2024 — Alaska’s halibut and blackcod seasons began on March 15 and will run until Nov. 15, but the processing capacity and low ex-vessel prices may affect the flow of fish from the docks to end markets. As of March 26, the halibut fleet had landed 592,173 pounds of this year’s 17,296,000-pound quota, with blackcod deliveries sitting at 1,520,542 pounds of a 60,794,049-pound quota.
With the Trident Seafoods plant for sale in Kodiak, and openings of other processing facilities scheduled for mid-March or even mid-May, early season fish caught in the breadbasket production areas of the Central Gulf (blackcod) or Areas 3A and 3B (halibut) were landed in Juneau and Seward.
The lack of plants accepting product in the central harvest areas may mean that more fishermen won’t go fishing until they open, which would slow the pace of the harvest early in the season.
The good news for halibut is that all of last year’s product has been liquidated, according to Bob Alverson, general manager of the Fishing Vessel Owners’ Association, in Seattle.
“Inventories are all played out at the end of 2023, so it’s a good market forecast,” he says.
At the end of last year’s season, ex-vessel prices for halibut dropped to a range of $6 per pound to $6.75 at the docks in Bellingham and slumped to less than $5 per pound for deliveries to Seward.