The Peter Pan fire sale

Rodger May, half owner of the collapsed processor Peter Pan Seafood, has won an auction for an assortment of the company's remaining assets, edging out a competing bid from Silver Bay Seafoods.

A notice filed in King County Superior Court in Seattle, where Peter Pan is being liquidated through receivership proceedings, indicates May bid $37,324,000 to Silver Bay's $37,067,320.

Results of the bid are subject to court approval.

May's bid consists of a $25,324,000 cash component and a $12 million credit bid, court papers show.

Here's a table designating the purchase price for individual assets.

Some of the prices seem shockingly low for properties once regarded as crown jewels in Alaska's seafood industry. For example, the price for the huge King Cove processing plant is $200,000 cash ($1 for the real property and fixtures, and $199,999 for the equipment and machinery).

The Dillingham processing plant has a purchase price of $11 million, but only $3 million of that in cash.

The most expensive sale item appears to be equipment and machinery in the Port Moller processing plant, priced at $8.75 million cash. This makes sense, as the Port Moller plant was rebuilt in 2018 following a fire.

Will these Peter Pan assets function again as they once did? That remains to be seen.

Halibut dinner for orcas?

A four-page paper posted on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council website looks at the practice of halibut deck sorting on certain trawl vessels operating off Alaska.

The idea with deck sorting is to quickly collect halibut hauled aboard as bycatch and return them to the sea, hopefully to swim away alive and uninjured.

There's concern, however, that these halibut don't swim away, but instead are chomped by feeding orcas hanging around the vessel.

With the paper, regulators are looking to better account for marine mammal feeding on halibut discards.

Here's a slideshow on how halibut deck sorting works.

This year's Permanent Fund dividend $1,702

Here's the official announcement.

Legislature to the rescue?

The legislative task force evaluating the economic troubles facing Alaska's seafood industry is meeting this week, with the second and final session set for tomorrow. Alaska Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang and others are scheduled to make presentations.

For more information, check out the task force website.

Please help?

As expected, this season's pink salmon bust is beginning to spawn calls for assistance.

State Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, chair of the House Special Committee on Fisheries, has sent a letter asking the governor to seek federal fishery disaster relief for Prince William Sound and other areas.

Bigger price, smaller fish at Bristol Bay

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has posted its summary of the 2024 Bristol Bay salmon season, and the numbers certainly are interesting.

• The average ex-vessel price for sockeye was 89 cents per pound, way better than the 52 cents indicated in the 2023 season summary.

• The high proportion of younger fish in this year's run resulted in the smallest average sockeye weight on record at 4.53 pounds. Last year's sockeye averaged 5.54 pounds.

• The year's harvest tallied 31.6 million sockeye, well below the more than 40.5 million last year.

• Despite the smaller fish and reduced harvest, this year's sockeye fishery was worth more at a preliminary value of $127.4 million, compared to last year's $116.8 million.

Those sneaky Russians

Writing in the Anchorage Daily News, Einar Gustafsson, CEO of American Seafoods, which operates a fleet of Bering Sea pollock factory trawlers, complains about market competition from Russia.