Community Participation Indices

The ACEPO analysis considers four performance metrics of community fisheries participation to understand the different ways that communities are involved in Alaska fisheries: commercial processing engagement, commercial harvesting engagement, the processing regional quotient which measures the percentage of all Alaska commercial landings within the specific FMPs occurring in each community, and the harvesting regional quotient that measures the percentage of all Alaska landings attributable to vessels owned by residents of each community. Time series summary tables of these four metrics provide a quantitative measure of community participation in Alaska commercial fisheries and how that participation may have changed from 2008 through 2023, the most recent available data. The Community Participation Indices are relative, in that each community’s level of engagement is dependent on the other communities included in the analysis, which in this case includes eight non-Alaska community groupings: Bellingham, WA; Other Washington; Newport, OR; Other Oregon; All California; All Other States; the At-Sea Processor grouping; and the Seattle metropolitan statistical area (Seattle MSA) which is defined as King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties of Washington, including: Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, and Bellevue. These groupings were chosen to maintain consistency with Council analyses.

By examining fishing community participation over time, it is possible to trace sustained participation in specific fisheries, as well as flag changes in participation for some communities. Further research may then clarify some of the drivers of these changes. ACEPO presents an overview of communities substantially engaged in FMP groundfish and FMP crab fisheries, and highlights those communities highly engaged according to the established criteria. Due to the differences in the overall fisheries framework, involvement in CDQ programs was not among the criteria used to identify communities.

Note on Confidentiality Due to the small number of reporting entities, some results are suppressed to protect the confidentiality of proprietary information. For example, confidentiality concerns required that Akutan, Sand Point, and King Cove’s fishing engagement data be aggregated to avoid disclosure of confidential information. For that reason, the Akutan community sketch provides information specific to the community of Akutan, but presents aggregated fishing data from Akutan, King Cove, and Sand Point communities.*

Additional data about those communities are provided in order to offer valuable rich context and best available science to inform decision making. The dataset includes data on Alaska commercial fishing activities from 2008-2023 for all communities in the U.S. In line with continued efforts to increase relevance, we could expand to include additional information in the future.

In response to comments from the SSC, the analysis presented here remains limited to participation in the commercial processing and harvesting sectors in North Pacific fisheries groundfish and crab FMP fisheries. If interest grows, additional fisheries can be added to the analysis. Effort was made to provide most relevant fisheries data while adhering to confidentiality constraints. Most communities that emerged were discrete entities; however Kodiak Island Borough (KIB) was analyzed on the borough level separately from the City of Kodiak in order to reflect the significance of smaller communities on Kodiak Island, which may otherwise be obscured. For communities where the small number of participating entities requires the suppression of individual statistics, reasons for data aggregation are noted.

Several assumptions were made within this analysis. Vessels were assigned to the community based upon the ownership address listed in the Alaska Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission (CFEC) registry. Vessel ownership can be dynamic; and there are multiple reasons for registration practices that may not relate to residency of owner(s). Permit information was assigned when possible. Given a mobile workforce and possibility of multiple home ports, these indicators only allow for a partial understanding of the flow of economic and social benefits associated with individuals and vessels. Shoreside processors were associated with geographic location although it is understood that economic benefits likely extend beyond one geographic community.

Commercial Fisheries Engagement Indices

The study population includes communities with any shoreside landings for FMP groundfish and both at-sea and shoreside landings for FMP crab; and communities with residents owning vessels that fished in those fisheries. For the groundfish fisheries engagement indices, communities were included if they had shoreside landings in any of the 15 years from 2008-2023 or residents owning vessels that fished in any year from 2008-2023 while for the crab fisheries engagement indices communities were included if they had shoreside landings in any of the 23 years from 2000-2023 or had residents owning vessels that fished for FMP crab in any year from 2000-2023. At this time, the engagement indices exclude inshore floating processors that we cannot assign to a location as well as any landings where the landing port is unknown or missing. The analysis separates variables into two categories of fisheries involvement: commercial processing, which reflects the port of landing, and commercial harvesting, which reflects residency of the vessel making the landing, for each FMP. Processing engagement is represented by the amount of landings and associated revenues from landings in the community, the number of vessels delivering any FMP groundfish or crab in the community, and the number of processors in the community processing any FMP groundfish or crab. Harvesting engagement is represented by: the volume of FMP groundfish and crab landings from vessels owned by residents, revenues associated with vessels owned by community residents, the number of vessels with FMP groundfish or crab landings owned by residents in the community, and the number of distinct resident vessel owners whose vessels made FMP groundfish or crab landings in any community. By separating commercial processing from commercial harvesting, the engagement indices highlight the importance of fisheries in communities that may not have a significant amount of landings or processing in their community, but have a large number of fishers and/or vessel owners that participate in commercial fisheries who are based in the community.

The study population includes communities with any shoreside landings for FMP groundfish and both at-sea and shoreside landings for FMP crab; and communities with residents owning vessels that fished in those fisheries. For the groundfish fisheries engagement indices, communities were included if they had shoreside landings in any of the 15 years from 2008-2023 or residents owning vessels that fished in any year from 2008-2023 while for teh crab fisheries engagement indices communities were included if they had shoreside landings in any of the 23 years from 2000-2023 or had residents owning vessels that fished for FMP crab in any year from 2000-2023. At this time, the engagement indices exclude inshore floating processors that we cannot assign to a location as well as any landings where the landing port is unknown or missing. The analysis separates variables into two categories of fisheries involvement: commercial processing, which reflects the port of landing, and commercial harvesting, which reflects residency of the vessel making the landing, for each FMP. Processing engagement is represented by the amount of landings and associated revenues from landings in the community, the number of vessels delivering any FMP groundfish or crab in the community, and the number of processors in the community processing any FMP groundfish or crab. Harvesting engagement is represented by: the volume of FMP groundfish and crab landings from vessels owned by residents, revenues associated with vessels owned by community residents, the number of vessels with FMP groundfish or crab landings owned by residents in the community, and the number of distinct resident vessel owners whose vessels made FMP groundfish or crab landings in any community. By separating commercial processing from commercial harvesting, the engagement indices highlight the importance of fisheries in communities that may not have a significant amount of landings or processing in their community, but have a large number of fishers and/or vessel owners that participate in commercial fisheries who are based in the community.

To examine the relative harvesting and processing engagement of each community, a separate principal components factor analysis (PCFA) was conducted each year for each category to determine a community’s engagement relative to all other Alaska communities. Two PCFAs are conducted (processing engagement and harvesting engagement) each year for 15 years for groundfish or 23 years for crab (total of 30 PCFAs for groundfish and 46 PCFAs for crab). PCFA is a variable reduction strategy that separates a large number of correlated variables into a set of fewer, linearly independent components. These components are used to create quantitative indices of engagement for each community by using the regression method of summing the standardized coefficient scores multiplied by the included variable values. A unique processing index and harvesting index value for each community in each year is created using the first unrotated extracted factor from the PCFA, each of which resulted in single factor solutions with second factor eigenvalues below 1.00 for all 76 PCFAs. Each index is normalized to have a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. These indices are relative scores: they represent each community’s engagement in commercial fisheries relative to all other communities in that year. Indices are then combined across all years to create a series of relative engagement over time. Communities that scored above one (above one standard deviation from the mean of zero) for any year are classified as Highly Engaged for that year. Communities that were Highly Engaged in all 15 years from 2008-2023 for groundfish or 23 years from 2000-2023 for crab were used in additional analyses to explore the changes in their fisheries participation in processing engagement or harvesting engagement.

These are relative indices: a large change in the total number of active vessels over time will only cause a change in an index if one community loses a larger share of their vessels (or other commercial fisheries activities) than another community. If the change in number of active vessels (or other commercial fishing activities) are directly proportional to the existing number of vessels across communities, there will not be a change in the indices. This also means that the indices do not provide consistent values near zero participation and additional statistical methods are needed to identify communities with little participation losing what little participation they had. AFSC authors have developed those necessary methods and expect to published the results in a scientific journal in early 2024 and use the methods for next year’s ACEPO (data through 2023).

Regional Quotient

The regional quotient (RQ) measures the proportion of a specific fishery (for all fisheries in aggregate) associated with a particular community, in relation to all communities within the region. This metric is meant to reflect a community’s degree of involvement (as measured by fisheries landings in that community) in a select fishery, in both the harvesting and processing sectors. The RQ is calculated both as the landings and revenue attributable to a community divided by the total landings or revenue from all communities. To reflect each community’s share of landings or revenue of the total fishery, the RQ takes into account landings in the at-sea sector (catcher processors and motherships) and at inshore floating processors, and treats the “at-sea” group as a separate community of practice. Calculated separately for the dimensions of processing engagement and harvesting engagement, the RQ uses the same criteria for inclusion as the commercial fisheries engagement indices for all selected fisheries.