Byline: John Wolfson
Nov. 4--Joe Malley hung up the phone in his Bellevue home and multiplied the numbers in his head. He's been a fisherman long enough to know that 65 cents a pound means $1,300 a ton, but the price was so bad he couldn't get his mind around the calculation.
At that very moment, his 100-foot troller was churning home with 80 tons of albacore tuna aboard. Malley tried not to panic: He had just built a house, he had a baby and another on the way, and he had the St. Jude, his boat, to pay for. Just a year ago "white tuna" sold for as much as $3,000 a ton. Now he wouldn't be offered even half that.
The truth is that America's 500-boat albacore fleet ...