Today,
a thriving, year-round commercial fishing industry
is the economic engine that drives Kodiak. Consistently
ranked as one of the top three fishing ports
in the US, Kodiak is homeport to more than 700
vessels. The site of the former Naval Air Station
is now the country's largest Coast Guard Station,
servicing the fishing fleet, freighter traffic
and recreational boaters in the North Pacific.
Since the early 1800s, Kodiak's economy has
been based primarily on the fishing industry.
The advent of Russian occupation, with the introduction
of salt, paved the way for commercial salmon
harvesting. The first salmon cannery was built
on the Karluk spit in 1882 to take advantage
of the huge sockeye runs. By 1889, 5 canneries
were operating on the mouth of the Karluk river.
Between 1887 and 1928 records indicate that
the sockeye harvest ranged between 1,004,500
(1887) to 4,826,200 fish (1901). Intense competition
led to the expansion of commercial fishing into
other species of salmon. From 1984 to 1994 the
average ex-vessel value of the salmon harvest
has been $41.4 million. A record harvest of
39 million salmon occurred during 1993 in the
Kodiak Management Area (KMA). Kodiak's highly
productive salmon industry is due in part to
the fact that there are over 800 salmon streams
in the KMA.
Before 1950, most Kodiak processing facilities
were devoted to salmon. In 1950, 60,000 pounds
of king crab were landed and processing capacity
was added by building new plants and expanding
older ones. The king crab fishery became a major
force in Kodiak's economy from 1950 to 1959
as the catch increased from 60,000 to 21 million
pounds. In 1968 the City of Kodiak became the
largest fishing port in the United States in
terms of ex-vessel value. In the late 1960s
and the early 1970s when harvest levels began
to fall, several processors made the decision
to relocate to Unalaska and Dutch Harbor to
be closer to the crab supply. This diverted
part of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Island harvest
away from Kodiak. The 1982/83 season king crab
harvest of 8.7 million pounds was the lowest
in 24 years, followed by a closure of the fishery
by the Department of Fish and Game due to poor
stock condition.
The 1950s also marked the beginning of the
Kodiak Shrimp fishery, with a harvest of 31,886
pounds in 1958. The fishery grew rapidly to
an annual catch of 10 to 12 million pounds in
the early 1960s. The fishery slowed when shore
plants and the fishing fleet were badly damaged
by the 1964 earthquake and tidal wave, but then
grew rapidly to a peak of 82.2 million pounds
in 1971. As Kodiak shrimp catches declined in
the late 1970s, much of the vessel effort shifted
into the Chignik and South Peninsula areas until
those areas demonstrated similar declines in
the late 1970s.
As the rate of return for Kodiak processing
plants declined due to increased competition
for resources and over harvesting, major efforts
were made to develop the groundfish fishery.
Throughout the 1980s, the wholesale value of
the groundfish landings in Kodiak increased
from less than $4-million to more than $45-million,
making this one of Kodiak's most valuable fisheries.
Fish processing has provided from ten to nearly
forty percent of the total industrial payroll
in Kodiak since 1980. Those sectors of the Kodiak
economy not directly engaged in fishing consist
largely of support services for the fishing
industry, or of enterprises which support the
people who engage in fishing activities or its
support.
Today, fish harvesting and seafood processing
still dominate the employment opportunity in
Kodiak. Together, these two industries provided
a combined 33% of total employment in Kodiak
for 2000.
For more about the fishing industry in general,
look at our Economy Section.
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