The Sitka-based Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust has announced a large financial boost from the Rasmuson Foundation to help restore rural and Indigenous access to commercial halibut fisheries.

Earlier this month, the fisheries trust announced over $900,000 in Rasmuson support. The nonprofit will use the money to purchase commercial halibut quota shares for a newly created Southeast regional community quota program. The shares will be assigned to individual communities and fished only by residents of those communities.

Under federal rules, the community quota program is limited to towns of less than 1,500 residents, which will exclude Wrangell from the new effort.

“With this funding … we will anchor access to the halibut fishery in rural communities and ensure residents enjoy the cultural, social and economic benefits of participating in Alaska’s commercial fisheries,” said Linda Behnken, president of the trust.

The trust plans to use the funds to launch the Southeast Village Fisheries Collective, a Southeast regional Community Quota Entity. The organization is working with project partners Sealaska Corp., Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, and Spruce Root to develop the regional effort.

In Kasaan, Nang K’adangáas Eric Hamar said securing halibut quota for village residents could bolster the local economy and encourage young people to stay in the community.

“It would give our younger generation especially a culturally relevant vocation where people could become self-reliant and financially independent,” said Hamar, who works for the Organized Village of Kasaan.

Kasaan residents are almost entirely dependent on government jobs and tourism. While some in Kasaan have commercial fishing experience, no residents currently own individual fishing quota shares for halibut, Hamar said.

He said getting into the industry would be a tall order for most residents, given the cost of purchasing a vessel and fish quota, as well as gear, fuel and maintenance supplies.

Halibut quotas are selling for $42 to $45 per pound, Behnken said. The shares, which vary in size between under 100 pounds and several thousand pounds, give fishermen the right to catch that volume of halibut each year.

“It seems like a lot of these villages, Kasaan is no different, we’re kind of coming to a time of reckoning here where the older generations have made money off of industries that don’t exist anymore for younger generations,” Hamar said.

He said Kasaan leaders have been discussing the idea of securing community fishing quota for about a decade, and the idea took hold over the past year with the fisheries trust and its project partners.

“I’m hopeful … we could get a couple guys in Kasaan each fishing a couple hundred pounds of halibut off of their skiffs,” he said. “That could show some need for some infrastructure to create some sort of sustainable local economy.”

Hamar said he envisions that securing halibut quota for Kasaan could inspire local infrastructure and jobs in fish processing that would in turn provide village residents with fresh, local food.

“Nobody’s going to be getting rich off of it, but hopefully we can develop enough of a local economy around it that the state at some point might make it a little easier for people to get into the industry that started with Native people,” Hamar said.

He noted that Indigenous people established communities throughout Southeast at sites near productive fishing grounds and spawning streams. “We’ve been here for 10,000 years, how are we going to stay here for another 10,000?”