Pink and chum salmon. Photo credit: Scott Smiley.
About FITC
The mission of the UAF Fishery Industrial Technology Center is to increase the value of Alaska's fishing industry and marine resources through research, technological development, education and service.
Alaska's commercial fishing industry
Alaska accounts for more than 60% of the continental shelf area and more than half the shoreline of the entire United States. Alaska's share of wild fish harvested for human food is about 75% of the US total, worth upwards of $3.0 billion annually.
Created by the Alaska Legislature in 1981, Fish Tech works with the industry to develop new solutions to industry's problems. We direct our efforts in five areas: seafood harvesting technology, seafood processing technology, seafood quality and safety, contaminants, and collaborative ecosystems research.
Located in Kodiak, Alaska, at the center of Alaska's fishing industry, Fish Tech is housed in a 20,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art facility built on Near Island in 1991.
Of greater interest in the past couple of years have been our efforts in developing more cogent fisheries oceanography of Alaskan waters. The fauna in waters around Kodiak Island have undergone remarkable shifts over time. Harvest records indicate a harvest of about 100,000 metric tons (mt) per year of the major commercial species. The nature of harvested species cycles with a roughly decadal period. At the end of the cycle, the regime shifts and a different commercial species or species assemblage characterizes subsequent harvests. In the 1970s, harvesters took about 100,000 mt. per year of crustaceans from these waters but since the 1980s, the 100,000 mt annual catch has been groundfish, mainly pollock in the 1980s and Pacific cod or flatfish in the '90s.