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Commercial fishing still impacted by Exxon Valdez
Keven Hartwell
In Prince William Sound, commercial fishing is more than an industry, it’s a way of life. A decade ago, on March 24, 1989, everything changed when the oil tanker Exxon Valdez grounded on Bligh Reef. “It’s hard to describe,” said Mark Somerville, who worked at the Sawmill Bay salmon hatchery at the time of the spill. “Try to picture a place that you care about, that you’ve put all your heart and soul into, then think of it with several feet of oil dumped onto it, black crud, and doing everything you can to clean it up and knowing it’s pretty futile.”
Eleven million gallons of North Slope crude poured into the region just as the herring and salmon fisheries were about to get under way. Fisheries were closed in Prince William Sound, Cook Inlet, the outer Kenai coast and Kodiak, ending the season before it had begun.
Pink salmon were hit hard. Approximately 75 percent of the sound’s wild pink salmon spawn in intertidal areas, the same area that served as a repository for much of the oil. Pink salmon eggs proved to be especially vulnerable to the effects of toxic hydrocarbons and suffered high mortality. In 1991, the year these fish should have returned, the fishery collapsed. Effects on wild fish stocks still felt Gerry McCune, president of Cordova District Fishermen United, is certain that fishermen are still feeling effects from the spill 10 years later. “There’s still a lack of pink salmon wild stocks; they are rebounding in certain years now,” says McCune, who also said many people like to point to the record runs right after the spill. “It’s true we did, but those fish were already out in the ocean maturing, so a lot of the effects we didn’t see until (two years) after.”
Researchers studying the effects on pink salmon proved that higher egg mortalities occurred at least through 1993 from oil leaching into spawning streams when exposed by winter storms. This has created a more chronic problem with egg survival, and a possible reason that the wild stocks have not been declared “recovered” even after 10 years.
The lucrative herring fishery in Prince William Sound also has not recovered. The population peaked at 113,000 metric tons in 1989 before crashing to a low of 16,400 metric tons in 1994.
“We’ve missed quite a few herring seasons, and herring is still weak,” says Michelle Hahn O’Leary of Cordova. “It’s cut my income and my husband’s income about in half since the spill.” Since the herring spawned within a few weeks of the spill, they too suffered high egg mortalities, however the big crash in 1993 and lack of recovery since is now attributed to a virus. Researchers studying the problem now feel that the oil may have served as a stress factor that enabled the virus to take hold. During the past two years, the herring fishery has opened to very limited commercial harvest, with returns improving but still at very disappointing levels to fishermen. Economic impact on fishing complex The economic impact to fishermen has been lengthy and complex. The period before the spill saw some of the highest per pound prices for salmon, and increased capitalization for the fishery. In 1989 expectations once again ran high in the fishing communities, until the oil spill.
In addition to fishery closures and reduced catches following the accident, the spill had other impacts to commercial fishing in Prince William Sound. “It changed the whole way we do business nowadays,” says McCune. “My belief is that before the oil spill, prices were slipping a little bit, but they wouldn’t have slipped as fast. It provided the farmers a perfect opportunity to slide in and take our markets, which they admit that they did.”
Natural variability in fish returns, coupled with other economic changes, have made it difficult to determine exact financial impacts to fishermen. However, salmon runs still hover somewhat below 1989 levels after reaching a 15-year low in 1992-93 (the crash years). Ex-vessel prices were highest between 1987 and 1989, and have been below prices of the early 1980s ever since.
After 10 years, both state and federal governments have been financially compensated for the spill by Exxon, while fishermen still await payment of the federal jury’s compensatory award in their private lawsuit, which Exxon is still appealing. “I don’t think fishermen have been treated very well by Exxon,” says O’Leary. “Even if we ever did get that settlement I don’t think it would begin to cover our losses.”
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