One of our largest regional non-profits in our area, Tanana Chiefs Conference, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars of sockeye salmon to our area from Bristol Bay. Oftentimes they would come in, and we would have these whole frozen salmon. That's one thing that they've done.
I'm not sure how well you know the State of Alaska system right now, but within the last year or so, they've had backlogs of up to eight months for review of the food assistance programs, the SNAP, that they operate. There have been people who haven't even been able to access food cards in Alaska.
We've tried numerous ways to contract some of those programs and make sure that some of those processes work better for our people, but that's not a really great long-term solution, flying in fish from other areas, and it's not sustainable for a lot of our people.
The freight costs in our area are pretty outrageous. It's upwards of 50ยข a pound. You know, if you have five sockeye salmon, they're at minimum 15 pounds apiece, so it can be very, very expensive and very, very unwieldy to fly in salmon, especially to people who are very used to fending for themselves, taking care of themselves and being able to fish for themselves.