With nearly 34,000 miles of coastline and more than 100 ports of access to the rich waters of the North Pacific - not to mention the at-sea processing capacity - it's a small wonder that seafood would again top Alaska's list of exports.
     But Alaska's seafood wealth isn't what it used to be.
     Most-recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau puts last year's seafood crop during the first eight months of the year 2000 at $532 million, about seven percent less than for the same period in '99.
     In 1999, Alaska's seafood exports to Japan - the mainstay market for Alaska's salmon and groundfish -totaled $45 million. That's half of what they were in 1993. The good news in the equation is that trade values have recovered from below the $22 million mark in 1997 and appear to be tracking in line with 1995. Much of the monetary recovery has been attributed to relative strength of the Japanese yen, moreover that it stabilized at less than 110 to the U.S. dollar for the better part of last year. (The yen reached its nadir when it traded north of 120 to the dollar back in 1998.)
     The bad news behind the numbers is that an increase in the export values of Alaska's seafood doesn't necessarily stack up to more volume for the waterborne carriers plying Alaska's waters. Last August, a judge's ruling, calling for 20-mile, no-trawl zones around the headlands of Kodiak to protect endangered Steller sea lions, reduced the pollock harvest to a fraction of what it had been in years past. Slim opilio crab seasons in the Bering Sea and sockeye salmon harvests of less than 40 million fish in Bristol Bay not only spelled less loaded containers sailing south or west of Dutch Harbor but a shortage of materials moving north for carriers supplying the fishing industry.
      "We're scrambling for northbound freight," said Farrel Thomas, Western Pioneer's customer service and marketing manager. "There's no money in hauling air." To that end the company has made efforts to supply the Pacific cod fleet working the waters near Adak and added two new northbound stops in Southeast Alaska: Gustavus and Craig. "That's a bit of a bright spot for us," he said.
     Thomas added that the downward trend in salmon production along the north and south sides of the Alaska Peninsula has crimped volumes of construction materials the company hauled north from Seattle to Sand Point, King Cove and False Pass. "There are shorter seasons, which means there are less fishing supplies, and there's less construction materials than in the past." Wally Stilson, port operations manager for Samson Tug and Barge in Sitka agrees that fishing isn't what it used to be for suppliers - or the haulers. "The fishing seasons have everyone in disarray," he said.
     To curb expenses, Samson and Northland Services shared barges on 10 northbound trips from November to March, said Stilson. "Instead of having two barges empty, we had one half full." Samson recently won the contract to haul housing units and equipment to supply the state's cleanup of the mothballed military site at the Aleutian Island of Amchitka. Stilson said the load aboard the 335-foot barge was the first of its kind in a two-year project calling for the removal of a World War II military installation. Stilson says Samson and its competitors will be watching closely for work moving loads to and from the site at Amchitka as well as presidential action on the construction of a anti-ballistic missile site on the island of Shemya.
     All eyes, of course, are on President Bush and Congress this year as government and environmental groups grapple over tapping into reserves within the boundaries of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.ng portions of the refuge to exploration could spell increased throughput from the North Slope to the pipeline terminus in Valdez.
     Though there has been little optimism that new drilling efforts will bring production to the record 738 million barrels the fields produced in 1988, developers are hoping to bump the pumping by another million barrels per day to offset volumes imported from the Middle East.
     Come what may in the form of crude oil volumes shipped from Valdez, Polar Tankers Inc., a division of Phillips Petroleum, plans to haul North Slope Crude aboard the Polar Endeavour, the first of its five new double-hulled, millennium-class tankers in June. The second tanker, Polar Resolution was christened in March. The 125,000-deadweight-ton tankers are the first to be built for the Alaska trade since Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and will haul ANS Crude to refineries along the West Coast and Hawaii.
     A recent surge in exploratory drilling outside of ANWR has made for increased loads of steel pipe and other supplies moving north. The Alaska Railroad Corporation, which has operated its Alaska Railbelt Marine Service (under various names) between Seattle and Whittier since the 1960s, has been doing the hauling. The railroad and Lynden Inc. launched a venture to operate three tug and barge units between Seattle and Whittier. The Alaska Railroad ended its long-standing contract with Crowley Marine Services in February.
     While Alaska's crude oil crop could fluctuate in the coming years, the future for shipping Alaska's mineral deposits looks optimistic: Cominco's Red Dog mine, about 100 miles north of Kotzebue, has been setting production records nearly every year since the zinc and lead mine started up in 1988. The addition of an ore storage facility in 1997 enabled the mine to stockpile the ore in the months beyond the ice-free shipping window of mid-July until mid-October. Last year's production of just under a million metric tons of zinc ore and 143,000 metric tons of lead ore mirrored 1999, according to John Key, general manager of Red Dog operations.
     Which isn't bad, considering that breakup came late in spring, and the Bering Sea froze up early in fall. Key said supply barges made it through the ice according to schedules in spring. But the cooperation of weather and currents shifted the ice east and clogged the port. "We had all the equipment, but we couldn't do anything because we were blocked in with ice," said Keys. Early winter didn't help production either. "We ended up shortening the season because winter was closing down on us," said Key, who in the same breath predicted the mine will put out more than 1 million tons of zinc ore if the climate cooperates this year.
As for the hauling, Keys said the ore has been lightered to Panamaxes and Handymaxes with barges towed by Foss. The larger Panamaxes carry a payload of 70,000 metric tons each while the Handymaxes (SP?) have been loaded with up to 43,000 metric tons and sail primarily to Asian ports where the docks and offloading facilities are smaller than Canada, Europe and other ports.
     Nearly 1,000 miles southeast, an optimistic year is shaping up for containerized traffic. "We're experiencing a mini boom," said Bill Deaver, vice president and general manger of TOTE in Anchorage. "Our volumes are up from last year." Deaver added that freight volumes rise in accordance with the two percent growth rate in Alaska's population, which at last estimate hovered just above the 610,000 mark. But toss in a few infrastructural projects, such as the construction of BP's new $90 LNG facility at Nikiski, and the number of northbound containers jumps even more.
      "We've very excited, " said Deaver. Over the horizon are the possibilities of a gas pipeline from the North Slope, the anti-missile site at Amchitka and drilling in ANWR, plus three other projects that could coincide with the arrival of TOTE's two new diesel-electric ships, the first of which should enter service in October 2002. Deaver said that the first of the diesel-electric ships should arrive at the Port of Anchorage in October 2002.
     While TOTE takes care of increased ro-ro cargoes, CSX will bring home the groceries. CSX felt the surge in retail freight volumes after last year's merger between Carrs and Safeway. Carrs had formerly shipped goods to Anchorage aboard containerships belonging to TOTE; CSX (then Sea-Land) hauled groceries north for Safeway - the grocery merger last year brought consolidation in the shipment of supplies. The contract, which began this January, went to CSX. "That caused quite a bit of shift," said Eric Britten, manager of business planning with CSX in Anchorage.
     Britten said that CSX has been doing a little shifting of its own, since its departure from its parent, Sea-Land (now Maersk Sealand) 16 months ago. "We've gotten back to the basics," he said.
     Upgrades to the company's e-commerce capability and renovations to its web site improved the connection between the company and its customers, says Britten. The new site allows customers to book a load, track their freight, by land or sea and to create their own online databases or spreadsheets. Not all of Alaska's cargoes are frozen, or for that matter, containerized. A rapidly growing commodity crop flows in and out of the state aboard cruise ships each summer, particularly in the southeast.
     As Alaska continues its popularity as a destination among travelers worldwide-and the already-established stops at Juneau, Sitka and Seward wane in exotic appeal-cruiseship companies hope to expand their offerings. Industry predictions put the number of cruise ship visitors for this year at around 650,000.

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