A few times this summer, Jared Danielson, who fishes for salmon on the Alaska Peninsula, found himself fighting back tears in his bunk.
Aboard the F/V Five Star, his boat, Danielson and his deckhand put away as many pounds of fish as they could. They had no breakdowns. But his seafood processor is paying him 70 cents per pound for his salmon — half of last year’s price — which means that instead of his usual six-figure haul for a summer of hard work, he might only break even, or go home to his family in Washington with $10,000, if he’s lucky.
“I’ve done everything right,” Danielson, 36, said in an interview this week. “It’s pretty demoralizing — you take all this risk, all this sacrifice, and you go home essentially without a paycheck.”
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