As salmon fisheries open across Alaska, it’s easy to track catches for all five Pacific species in all regions.
One click will take you to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Blue Sheet at its commercial fisheries web page. You’ll also find weekly summaries of all Alaska salmon harvests with comparisons to past years.
When it comes to buying and selling all that salmon and all other Alaska seafoods , the
Commercial Operator’s Annual Reports (COAR) from Alaska processors show fish prices and landings by region back to 1989 – and how much of it was sold frozen, fresh, or canned and what processors bought and sold it for.
You’ll find that at Fish and Game under Statistics and Data –
For 2020 it shows, for example, the average pink salmon price of $.33/pound was the lowest in five years and a drop from $.40 in 2019.
Sockeyes averaged $1.06 per pound, down from $1.61, and chums at $.46 were down from $.54 the previous year.
Dock prices increased for coho salmon to $1.24 on average, up by $.11 and Chinook at $4.74 was up by $.38 from 2019.
Frozen sockeye outpaced all other salmon for first wholesale value with over 118 million pounds sold by Alaska processors at $480.5 million, followed by 60 million pounds of canned pinks at $205 million.
For other Alaska catches, red king crab was the priciest product averaging $11.88 to fishermen, an $.11 increase from 2019.
The Dungeness crab price at $1.77 was a drop from $2.88.
Halibut prices at $4.23 also were down by more than a dollar.
Yelloweye at $1.09 a pound was the most valuable of the 25 rockfish species on the COAR list, and gray cod at $.44 was up a penny.
An array of flatfish fetched from $.03 to $.23/lb at the docks.
Lumpsuckers and majestic squid were sold for a penny a pound and Pacific sleeper sharks and jellyfish had zero value.
