It’s a cold, snowy day down by Sitka’s marine haulout. Inside the giant unheated commercial workspace, I can still see my breath as men weld and work on boat parts around me.
Off to one side is a giant engine — or should I say two, one white and one dark grey — stuck together in an intricate pattern of metal and tubing. This engine is hybrid electric and is about to be put in the 50-foot fishing vessel Mirage.
The Mirage could be Alaska’s first official hybrid electric fishing boat, and it’s one step closer to hitting the water. The boat is part of a pilot program based in Sitka to address high fuel costs for the fishing fleet and maybe make fishing just a little bit greener.
“We hauled out at the end of October, early November, cracked a lot of eggs, making this big omelet,” said Ben Matthys, of Southeast Sparks, who’s been working to adapt and install the hybrid engine for the boat’s owner the past couple of months. He said they’re pioneering this technology to the fleet to prove that hybridization is viable.
“Diesel is reliable,” he said, “but as we’re looking to save beyond those low hanging fruits, where do we go? And we decided that diesel electric is the way forward.”
The program is funded by a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, and includes converting two hybrid commercial fishing boats and one fully electric mariculture boat.
While the initial investment is high, Matthys said hopefully it’ll pay off for fishermen down the line.
“The margins for fishing are getting tighter,” he said. “The price per pound of what people can market the fish for, or what’s purchased at the plant, is lower, and fuel and all operating costs are higher, so most are still tied to going to spaces A, B and C to go get the fish, and even sometimes having to work harder to find that same amount of fish to pay the bills. So as we move forward to the next options to save and become more profitable, this is it.”
Another benefit is helping to address the climate impacts of fossil fuels, and make it healthier for fishermen onboard who are often exposed to harmful fumes, according to Linda Behnken, a commercial fisherman and director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA), which is pioneering the program. Fishermen might even be able to market their product as greener than the next guy and may be able to get a better price for their fish.
“So we think there are health benefits for fishermen, as well as for the ocean, and for people’s bottom line,” Behnken said.
She said they’ve worked for years to find ways for the fleet to operate more efficiently, by changing certain boat operations, or making certain modifications to vessels. And after a lot of input from people at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, they identified hybrid technologies as the next best step for fishing boats operating out of small communities.
“At a national level, there’s definitely a lot of interest across the country in hybrid or fully electric vessels,” Behnken said. “Folks in Maine at the Island Institute there have been working with their fleet to look at electric and hybrid. There’s some work being done in Norway on electric and hybrid, or alternative fuels. But up here, we’re really breaking new ground.”
Jeff Turner owns the Mirage. He fishes for spot prawns, salmon and halibut, to name a few, throughout the Gulf of Alaska.
Turner said he used to longline out of Kodiak, which took about three days to travel to one way. At the end of the trip, he said, he’d rack up about $3,500 in fuel costs. If he could knock that down by a couple thousand dollars by longlining on a battery, he said that could be huge.
“Hybridization, for me, started with, ‘Oh my god, I’m spending so much on fuel. There’s got to be a better way,'” Turner said. “This grant money came up and there was interest…I raised my hand and said, ‘I’ll try this.”
Throughout the process, Turner said, he’s been learning a lot, and there’s still a lot left to learn. But, he said, he’s ready to install the engine and hopefully hit the water in January.
“I’m really excited about the data they’re going to collect, [to see] how it changes the way I fish and what other people can do with it too,” he said. “So, I mean, it’s exciting [that] every day I go out, I’m going, ‘I’m fishing and researching.’ So it’s kind of nice that way too.”
Matthys, the marine electrician, said that collecting data is going to be important when proving to other fishermen that converting to hybrid energy will be worth the investment.
“I’m excited to see the technology move forward, advance the fleet. We’re running mostly on 100 plus year old technology moving boats around. And I can understand, you know, grandpa did it, dad did it. It worked for them, and it’s working for me type deal. But as we advance to new technologies, I’m excited to see this stuff come forward,” Matthys said. “I look forward to serving the fleet, both in a traditional sense, and then in this new realm of technology.”
After the Mirage hits the water, Matthys will be working on installing an electric propulsion system on a gillnetter from Juneau and setting up a fully-electric mariculture vessel in Kodiak.
