**Title**: Energy in the North - Linda Behnken
**Date**: December 17, 2025
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Linda Behnken

00;00;00;12 - 00;00;04;29 [Linda Behnken] All the operating costs are going up and fisheries, but the price of fish hasn't really.

00;00;04;29 - 00;00;29;18 [Amanda Byrd] This week on energy in the North I speak with Linda Behnken, director of 91ÊÓƵ Longline Fishermen's Association, based in Sitka. Linda and her team have been working with Chandler Kemp, an assistant professor at UAF Bristol Bay campus, to make the mariculture and small boat fishing industries more energy efficient. I started the conversation with Linda by asking, how much does the cost of fuel factor into a fishing fleets operating costs?

00;00;29;18 - 00;00;56;06 [Linda Behnken] It's 12 to 40% of your operating costs can be your fuel cost, for any individual trip, how far from town somebody is running. And hydraulics, which are what we are all using now for hauling gear. It's really using way more energy than is needed. If you switch over to an electric motor to do that, it actually uses a whole lot less energy.

00;00;56;06 - 00;01;02;28 [Amanda Byrd] Chandler Kemp has a collaborative project on hybrid boats with you.

00;01;02;28 - 00;01;47;11 [Linda Behnken] We started working with Chandler and the 91ÊÓƵ Fishery Development Foundation to look at energy efficiency and where in the fishing fleet, the small boat fleet, we could help people identify energy efficiencies. So, whether that was operational, keeping the bottom of the boat clean, because that's 20% of your energy use can be if you're dragging around a bunch of barnacles. And then also, changes like turning up your hydraulics when you're not running them, getting your stabilizers out of the water as soon as you don't need them working with the tides instead of against them when you can. So identifying for people how much they could save for making those changes.

00;01;47;11 - 00;03;56;10
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But then also identifying if they wanted to add a bulb bow, just sort of make those more structural changes in their boat what it would cost to do that and how long it would take them to pay that back with energy savings. So that was sort of the first project we work with Chandler on, and with the fleet on, and getting fuel flow meters on boats and helping people see that, collecting a lot of data and then sort of analyzing it and giving that information back to the fleet. But then from there, we had quite a few members who wanted to think about energy transition and how we get away from using diesel. So we applied for an ETIPP award. So working with, National Renewable Energy Labs, and then we also cobbled together funding from a couple different sources, to get started on looking at next generation fuels or what is the next right step in transition. The labs really helped us to recognize that the next right step was hybrids. So we applied and and secured a Department of Energy, vehicle Technology Office grant. So with that project, we're doing two hybrid, installations. One is a parallel hybrid where the boat will have both diesel and electric propulsion so they can charge to the fishing grounds using the diesel and then switch over to using the electric propulsion when they're at low RPMs, which is where our diesel engines are super inefficient. And then the other boat will have an electric propulsion only system, but they will have a generator on the boat that can be used to recharge that battery if needed. So if we switch to the electric deck gear and we can get good variable speed motors, which is was the challenge, then your energy needs in a battery capacity is way less when you switch to hybrid or switch to electric propulsion. So there's a big you know there's a big win there as a next step.

00;03;56;10 - 00;04;05;24 [Amanda Byrd] And then having the hybrid boats where yeah you can have the electric with a backup generator just in case. Because that's always the concern that you could run out.

00;04;05;24 - 00;04;36;14 [Linda Behnken] Yeah.  You could run out. What if you're too far away from a recharge place. Yeah. And the system, the other smart systems with the one that has the, you know, the parallel hybrid, that's diesel. And electric, where if the battery ever gets low, you know, it lets you know and recharges. And once the batteries are charged, it will stop, shut off that charging. So it's really a, you know, gives you sort of a duplicative system which we all love for redundancy and fishing boats and, you know, backup everything.

00;04;36;14 - 00;04;45;23 [Amanda Byrd] I could see the fishermen retaining more of the value of the fish themselves rather than paying it through the fuel.

00;04;45;23 - 00;05;00;03 [Linda Behnken] Yeah, absolutely. All the operating costs are going up in fisheries, but the price of fish hasn't really. So we have to both do a better job of marketing and getting more value out of our catch, but also look at ways to bring down those operating costs.

00;05;00;03 - 00;05;08;08 [Amanda Byrd] Linda Behnken is the director of 91ÊÓƵ Longline Fishermen's Association, and I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the 91ÊÓƵ Center for Energy and Power. Find this story and more at UAF.EDU/ACEP