Fishing boats line the docks in Kodiak’s St. Paul Harbor on Oct. 2, 2022. Fish-harvesting employment has been declining since 2015, with multiple factors at play, according to an Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development analysis.
The House passed it nearly unanimously on Saturday. The Senate, which originally passed it on April 19, on Sunday gave unanimous approval to changes made in the House. “We have not seen an impact of our fisheries like this, I don’t think, in my lifetime,” he said. Twenty years ago, there was a crisis in the Alaska salmon industry, which spurred the creation of a salmon task force that produced some solutions, he noted. “This time, we’re dealing with virtually all our fisheries,” with effects not just in smaller coastal towns but throughout the state, he said.