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Aaron Selbig/Turnagain Times Cordova fisherman John Johnson fills up his boat, The Inspiration, at the Shoreside Petroleum fuel dock in Whittier. |
By Aaron Selbig
Turnagain Times Correspondent
2008 is turning out to be a bad year to be a fisherman from Cordova. Still smarting from last month’s US Supreme Court decision to drastically reduce punitive damages in the Exxon Valdez settlement and suddenly reeling from poor salmon returns on the Copper River, dozens of Cordovans have turned their boats east toward Whittier, where they hope to find some relief—and some fish.
“The whole Cordova fleet came over here this year,” said Jerry McCune as he and his buddy John Johnson filled up Johnson’s boat at the Shoreside Petroleum fuel dock in Whittier. And he appeared to be right. Dozens of fishing vessels lined slips throughout the Whittier harbor, and almost all of them were from Cordova.
McCune and Johnson are lifelong Cordovans and come from generations of Cordova fishermen. Both men lamented the fact that fishing in Cordova this year is the worst they’ve seen in decades and has forced them to leave their community and their families to fish out of Whittier for the remainder of the summer. To add insult to injury, when Johnson is finished pumping gas into his boat, the Inspiration, he’s hit with a fuel bill of just over $1,000.
“The fuel price is definitely changing peoples fishing habits,” said Johnson, who hasn’t left Cordova to fish for over 20 years. “It seems like the fuel situation is gonna get worse and worse for us for awhile.”
Shoreside Petroleum is the only game in town when it comes to boat fuel. They have been in business at the Whittier harbor since 1993, and ship a 23,000-gallon railcar full of fuel to Whittier every week. On July 9, their price for a gallon of regular gas was $5.07 and marine diesel hovered at $5.45.
Jeremy Lancaster, manager of the Shoreside Petroleum dock in Whittier, blamed the rising prices on the transportation costs of bringing the fuel through Whittier’s Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel. Additionally, he said, the City of Whittier recently raised their sales tax from 3 percent to 5 percent thereby affecting fuel costs for his customers.
“If you include the 5 percent sales tax and figure in the cost of transporting fuel down to Whittier, you’ll see that our prices really aren’t that much different from Anchorage,” said Lancaster. “We would be hurting if it weren’t for the Cordova fleet coming over to this side of the Sound.”
Some fishermen working out of the Whittier harbor—including McCune and Johnson—disagreed with that assessment, however, believing that Shoreside Petroleum is taking advantage of their lack of local competition.
“The business that’s prospering in town is Shoreside Petroleum,” said Epic Charters employee and Girdwood resident Obadiah Jenkins. “They come close to a monopoly.”
“It’s not a monopoly,” replied Lancaster. “It takes a lot of money to get into the fuel business, but anyone who wants to do it is more than welcome to. We wouldn’t mind the competition.”
Jenkins said that Epic Charters has been lucky so far this year, as the majority of their business comes not from charter fishing but from sea kayakers seeking access to remote areas of Prince William Sound. Epic Charters operates the 32-foot “kayak hauler” Fera Mare and has been in business in Whittier for 10 years.
“Sea kayaking here is extremely popular,” he said. “Whittier provides the best access to western Prince William Sound that you could have.”
Still, Epic Charters has had to get creative to deal with rising fuel costs. They have begun combining charters to save their customers money and are offering shorter trips to save on mileage. Some of the more serious sea kayakers, said Jenkins, are skipping the boat ride altogether and simply paddling out to where they want to go. Also, like many charter outfits in Whittier harbor, Epic Charters has had to raise their prices, from $8 a mile last year to $9.50 a mile now. If the fuel prices continue to climb at their present rate, Jenkins foresees having to raise prices again before the summer is over.
“People are still coming kayaking and people are still coming fishing, but if this trend continues, it will definitely start impacting business a lot more than it is,” he said. “People are only willing to spend so much money to get to the places they want to go.”
As for the Cordova fishing fleet, they have found some relief in healthy runs of chum salmon in the Whittier area but, for many, it will not be enough to recoup their losses from a disastrous Copper River run. After only two weeks of fishing there, the season on Copper River reds was shut down by Fish & Game.
“Right now, this is the only place where there’s fish,” said Cordovan John Wiese, who usually fishes out of Whittier when the Copper River run is over. “Chums are okay, but everything else has been kind of a dump here.”
Wiese, too, has had to get creative to save money on fuel costs. He has changed his fishing habits, seeking out new territory closer to the Whittier harbor. He estimates that he will spend a total of $20,000 on fuel this summer—twice as much as he spent just last year. Also, boat fuel is not the only cost that is increasing for him and other fishermen like him—his net gear and other rigging for his boat is twice as expensive as it was just a few years ago.
Weary from what has already been a tough year, Wiese wonders when the breaking point will come.
“Write in your newspaper that Exxon sucks,” he added.