TV crab boat captain warns of shortage on Japan market

An American who captains an Alaskan crab boat featured in a popular TV series told lawmakers Friday that the government shutdown risks causing king crab shortages on the Japanese market.

“If the Japanese buyers don’t have Alaskan product on hand for the New Year’s holiday they will source their crab from Russia,” Keith Colburn, captain of the Wizard, featured on the reality show “Deadliest Catch,” told the Senate Commerce Committee.

“If the crab isn’t caught, processed, and shipped out of Alaska by the second week in November, we stand to lose access to that market,” he said.

Alaska’s seafood industry contributed $4.6 billion to the state’s economic output, according to a 2011 report by the Marine Conservation Alliance.

In 2009, Alaska exported $1.6 billion worth of seafood to Japan, China, South Korea, Canada, and Europe.

According to a report issued by the Senate committee on the impacts of the 2013 shutdown, “a delay of even one week in the fishing season could mean that the opportunity to export to the holiday market in Asia would be missed, and Japan is the fleet’s largest buyer.”

Colburn said missing the holiday market would cut into his revenue by as much as 25 percent.

“Market watchers are already noticing uncertainty in the Japanese trade press over the Alaskan supply,” said Colburn, who remarked that this is the first time in 28 years he has not been on the Bering Sea at this point in October.

Colburn added that Alaskan operations are scientifically managed to prevent overfishing, unlike Russia’s.

“The Russian king crab fishery is unsustainably managed and subject to a significant amount of pirate fishing,” he said.

“This pirate fishing has already cost the Alaskan crab fleet an estimated $500 million since 2000. If this shutdown continues that amount will only increase.”

The people who issue fishing quotas from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been sent home on unpaid leave as part of the government shutdown that began October 1.

If his and other boats in the Alaskan fleet cannot get off the docks and start fishing as planned October 15, high prices may hit world markets and the US fishing industry could lose millions of dollars, he said.

While the fishing boats are privately run, they depend on government-issued permits and quotas as well as federal observers, Colburn said.

The Alaskan king crab season is only about two months long, but drives “hundreds of millions in economic activity and provides thousands of jobs,” Colburn said.

“I’m a small businessman, in a big ocean, with big bills. And I need to go fishing.”