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The 184-foot factory longline vessel Northern Leader combines diesel electric power and a low-impact fishing method to land quality product with a lower carbon footprint. Alaskan Leader Fisheries photo.
One indicator of the health of a fishery is the number of new boats being built for it, and design trends of those boats add more to the story. North Pacific fisheries journalist and author Peter Marsh estimates that between West Coast and Alaska boatbuilders, somewhere close to 30 new gillnetters will enter the healthy Bristol Bay salmon fishery in 2021.
“And this is a slow year, due to the pandemic,” he says.