A paperwork snag with Europe threatens a major market for Alaska seafood

One of the biggest overseas buyers of Alaska seafood is Europe — and a paperwork fight with the European Union is quietly putting some of those sales at risk, in a way that reaches fishing towns and processing jobs, not just export offices.

Alaska processors got a reprieve this summer from the EU's tough new catch-certification system. What they didn't get, NOAA Fisheries confirmed Thursday, is relief from the paperwork underneath it — and NOAA's own systems aren't yet built to produce it. Even with the U.S. allowed to keep using the older certificate through Nov. 30, the EU says a second document is still required for every processed shipment headed to Europe, and it changed how the older one must be filled out.

The bind is that these newly confirmed requirements don't match how NOAA's seafood inspection system is currently set up. For now, exporters have to call their local inspection office just to sort out which forms can be filed together and which have to go separately — a manual workaround, with the reprieve running out at the end of November.

Underneath it is a bigger question about whether Alaska's fleet can meet Europe's rules at all. The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute has argued the EU's system is "operationally infeasible for Alaska's fisheries" and amounts to a trade barrier "equivalent to a ban" on many exports. The sticking point is how Alaska fishes: boats pool their catch from many vessels onto tenders, which is hard to trace the way the EU now demands. The EU counters that the tracking is mandatory to follow fish from the water to the finished product, part of a global crackdown on illegal and unreported fishing. NOAA says it hears the industry's concerns and is still negotiating how the rules take effect.