By Robert L. Wallack, AJOTBering Sea Opilio snow crab catch reports of January show harvesting season well under way and within Total Allowable Catch of 66 million pounds. Alaska seafood producers are landing vessels at Unalaska, Dutch Harbor with higher value seafood destined for Sendai, Qingdao and Pusan ports. North Asia seafood consumers and processors are recognizing the value of the numerous fresh and frozen species of Pacific salmon, pollock, cod and crab from Alaska fisheries of the Bering Sea, Aleutian chain and the Gulf. The Last Frontier’s icy waters transform the largest state in the union into a seafood lover’s paradise to produce over fifty percent of the United States’ seafood. The abundant and sustainable annual harvests of salmon, whitefish and shellfish species are renowned for “superior flavor and healthy for low in saturated fats and high in good fats: heart healthy omego-3s,”according to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI). Alaska is the only state that wrote conservation laws into its Constitution. For any seafood species, once the quota is reached, then the season is closed. Seafood is the leading export of Alaska. In 2010, total exports amounted to $4.2 billion of which seafood accounted for 44 percent of the total for $1.8 billion followed by mineral ores with 32 percent and energy with 10 percent. Japan, China and South Korea are the top export markets. Dutch Harbor, Unalaska is situated on the southwestern most of the Aleutian chain between the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska and a main international seafood port. Export services are provided for producers in a very competitive seafood system. Harvested seafood is mostly shipped frozen to Japan, China and South Korea from frozen seafood handling facilities in Dutch Harbor direct to those markets by APL, Maersk or Horizon Lines. Logistics service providers also arrange transshipments from Dutch Harbor vessel landings across the 2,048 nautical miles of the Gulf to Seattle, Washington for further processing, then to Sendai, Qingdao and Pusan ports. Trawlers, longlines, and shell fish pot vessels are “little fish factories,” stated one transshipment service provider. Crab and salmon are hand stowed onto vessels bound for Seattle because they do not cube out. However, pollock is denser and the fishermen on their boats at sea “cut the pollock, process, place into 15 pound sleeves, package three sleeves into corrugated cases of 52 pounds each and place 60 cases on a pallet for loading into 40 foot refrigerated export containers. Exports to Japan and Korea are large quantities of frozen Alaska pollock. Alaska pollock surimi exported to Japan from January through November, 2012 amounted to over 60 million kilos and for $141,986,075 in value of a total Alaska seafood export of $425,912,519. South Korea exports of Alaska Pollock surimi was over 43 million kilos for $140,961,425 in value of a total export of $331,058,634, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Marine Fisheries Service. In Japan, surimi is processed further to make Kamaboko, a paste to be molded into loaves or artistic patterns, but not for sushi. In the U.S.A., Alaska pollock (whitefish) are found in popular branded products such as McDonald’s Fillet-0-Fish and in supermarkets for imitation crab packaged products. Japan and Korea processing factories import Alaska seafood to China for the low wage labor and market opportunities. However, the processing industry in China is suffering because of lower sales to the European Union (EU), Japan and the U.S., higher labor costs and an appreciating Chinese Yuan, as well as Chinese import restrictions, according to an Alaska seafood freight forwarder. In the first three quarters of 2012, China processed and re-exported 821,800 tons of seafood worth $3.85 billion, a 9 percent drop in value from 2011. Shandong province (Qingdao port), Fujian and Guangdong are the top three in order of volume and value for all of mainland China’s fish and seafood expor