May 24, 2026
MSN
Lauren Owens Lambert and Leah Douglas
ALFA Executive Director Linda Behnken was featured in MSN's article "Fishing boats worldwide tuck dockside as diesel prices surge on Iran war"
"Fuel can account for as much as 40% of the expenses for a fishing trip, according to Linda Behnken, a fisherman in Sitka and executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen's Association.
"It went up over a dollar a gallon from one week to the next and right before everybody was filling up with full tanks to start the season," Behnken said. "That’s a really big impact on the cost of operation."
For now, the prices of halibut and sablefish, also known as black cod, are high enough that boats fishing for those species are still making regular trips, Behnken said. But when the less-profitable salmon season starts in July, diesel costs may be too high to justify leaving the dock, she said. "