Alaska Fish Factor

Alaska’s seafood industry will be “open for business” starting January 1 when some of the biggest fisheries get underway long before the start of the first salmon runs in mid-May.

Cod will begin it all in the Bering Sea, which has a 305.5 million pound catch quota, down about a million pounds from 2019. Less than 6 million pounds of codfish will come out of the Gulf.

A 400,000 Tanner crab fishery at Kodiak starting on January 15 will be helpful to a town whose economic bottom line will be badly battered by the Gulf cod crash.

But it will be the opening of Alaska pollock on January 20 that will...