The federal government's help easing the impact of recent Alaska salmon fishery failures wasn't enough to provide relief to all the players involved.
That's according to a new study from the National Marine Fisheries Service, which analyzed the economic impact of chinook salmon fishery failures in the state from 2010 to 2012.
Alaska initially received nearly $8 million in federal money after declaring a disaster in 2012 due to low king salmon runs on the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers and in the Cook Inlet region. That was part of nearly $21 million Congress allocated to Alaska in 2014.
While that first round of money eased economic impacts of the king salmon fishery failures, the report said, "they were still significant."
"Many commercial fishery stakeholders may have gotten little benefit from the relief payments because they were made to permit holders and may not have made their way to other key fishery participants," it said.
Those others include the nonpermit holding crew, vessel owners, suppliers of fishing inputs and owners, employees and suppliers of fish processing companies. Giving federal money to only permit holders wasn't enough to compensate losses for these others.
The money "was too small to fully offset the impacts of the failures," NMFS researchers wrote.
Fish harvesters and processors would have lost $40 million without the first round of disaster relief.
Output was down 10 percent for salmon fishermen and down 1.4 percent for seafood industries overall as a result of the fishery failures. Employment dipped 10 percent for salmon fishermen, and about 1 percent for the industry.
Early last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration approved a second round of disaster relief funds for additional stakeholders. Chang Seung, an economist with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (part of NMFS) and one of the people who worked on the study, said that new money wasn't considered in the report because of time constraints.
It's still not clear what caused the poor runs of the king salmon in those years, the report said.
In 2012, then U.S. Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank granted disaster status for Alaska salmon fisheries because of the low fish runs on those rivers and the Inlet region.
Low salmon runs affected commercial, subsistence and sportfishing of king salmon. Harvests of other salmon species were also limited.