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State officials and industry leaders trying to rescue the ailing Alaska seafood industry are facing daunting challenges, recently released numbers show. The industry lost $1.8 billion last year, the result of low prices, closed harvests and other problems, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Direct employment of harvesters last year fell by 8% to the lowest level since 2001, when counts of harvesting jobs began, the Alaska Department of Labor said. The monthly...
Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) officials hear that processors have mostly cleared out their overflowing inventories of Alaska salmon from the 2022 and 2023 seasons, but the problem remains that Americans don’t buy enough seafood to sustain consistently profitable sales, particularly in years of strong salmon runs. And while last year’s problem was an oversupplied market, which pushed prices paid to fishermen to as low as 20 cents a pound for pink and chum salmon, this year’s harvest may come up short of a robust supply, Greg Smith...
Trident Seafoods’ plan for its Wrangell plant this summer “is to run hard,” with as many as 180 workers on the processing lines, packing headed-and-gutted pinks and chum salmon for the fresh-frozen market. “You’ve got to get them out of the water and into the freezer” to have the best fish for consumers, said Jeff Welbourn, senior vice president of Alaska operations. It’s all about time and temperature, he said of producing a quality product. The company has added a new fish oil plant to its Wrangell operations for this summer, he said. “We...
A Pacific Northwest seafood business owner, whose family has been active in commercial fishing in Alaska since 1981, plans to buy and expand the operations of Fathom Seafoods in Wrangell. Peninsula Seafoods has applied to the borough for transfer of the lease on a small dockside parcel at the Marine Service Center. The port commission has recommended approval of the transfer, sending the issue to the borough assembly. As soon as the assembly signs off on the transfer, which could come at its Jan. 23 meeting, Jeff Grannum, general manager of Pen...
May 31, 1923 The first aerial mail ever received through the Wrangell post office came from Lake Bay Wednesday morning, having been brought by the seaplane Northbird piloted by Roy Jones with Glen Day as engineer. Mr. Jones stated that the flight from Ketchikan to Lake Bay was made in 55 minutes. Arriving here, it soon became known that the Northbird had brought mail and there were many visits to the post office with the result that about a dozen persons received letters within 45 minutes from the time they had left Lake Bay. While the...
Trident Seafoods is on schedule with preparation work to reopen its processing plant on the Wrangell waterfront after a three-year closure. “We expect to start handling fish the week of July 10,” focusing on chum and pink salmon, Southeast regional manager John Scoblic said May 15. The company expects to have 100 to 110 workers on the job, somewhat under the count of past years, he said. Trident has said weak chum returns were behind the decision to keep the plant closed since 2019. Some workers will start before the first salmon come into the...
Wrangell has come up short in good economic news in recent years, what with business closures, the loss of Alaska Crossings a year ago, not-so-great salmon runs and crab harvests, rising consumer prices and worker shortages. So it was especially welcome news when Trident Seafoods announced it will open its Wrangell plant this summer after a three-year shutdown. The company plans to start work at the downtown waterfront plant within the month, getting it ready for the summer season to handle pinks and chums for the fresh-frozen market. The...
The biggest fish processing plant in the Haines borough will stay closed next summer for the third straight season, OBI Seafoods’ Excursion Inlet plant manager Tom Marshall said last week, citing a low pink salmon forecast and the company’s ability to handle the regional load at its Petersburg plant. The continued suspension of processing at Excursion means the borough will see another year of low raw fish tax revenue. Haines averaged about $200,000 in taxes on fish landed locally in the five years prior to the Excursion plant’s closure, compa...
Readers can find both an optimistic view and gloomy numbers in the borough’s annual economic conditions report, issued last month. “With some of the lowest electrical rates in Alaska, the highest school district test scores, the potential to grow its visitor industry, the lowest unemployment rate on record, and a high level of entrepreneurship (more than a quarter of all workers are self-employed), Wrangell has potential to improve its prospects,” says the report, prepared by Juneau-based consulting firm Rain Coast Data. However, the repor...
Seattle-based Trident Seafoods will not open its Wrangell processing plant this summer, the third year in a row the operation has been closed. As in the past two years, the company cited weak chum salmon returns for its decision not to run the plant. Company officials did not return calls to the Sentinel last Friday or Monday. News of the plant closure was presented in Borough Manager Jeff Good’s report for Tuesday’s assembly meeting: “They have notified us that they do not intend on running this year but are hoping for next year.” “We wou...
Some commercial fishermen prefer to sell their hauls in Wrangell. Some look for the best price, even if it's a few cents higher. Some decide where to sell based on services offered. No matter what determines where a fisherman will sell, processors try to lure as many their way throughout the year, including buying a bevy of different species. "What Pacific Seafood does here in Wrangell, we have our hands in a little bit of all of it," said Cody Angerman, general manager at the processor's plant...
The state Board of Fisheries’ decision last month to move the Southeast commercial shrimp pot fishery from a fall start to spring means there will be no harvest this year. The Department of Fish and Game told the board that a spring harvest could help build up the region’s shrimp stocks, which are in decline, by taking fewer egg-laden shrimp than in the fall. Wrangell shrimpers, however, are questioning the wisdom of the switch, which they said could hurt marketing efforts and reduce the value of the catch — with no clear benefit to the resourc...
Seafood is Alaska’s biggest export by far, and state legislators want the federal government to get tougher on trade policies that they say unfairly hurt global sales. Two resolutions (Senate Joint Resolution 16 and SJR17) were advanced last week by the House Fisheries Committee that address Russia’s ban on buying any U.S. foods since 2014 and also punitive seafood tariffs by China since 2018. Meanwhile, the U.S. is importing an increasing amount of seafood from both countries. Both resolutions were introduced by Kodiak Sen. Gary Stevens and...
It's a familiar storefront sight throughout Wrangell: "Help Wanted" signs placed in business windows. For various reasons, employers are having trouble filling positions. "We couldn't find someone to hire, even if we wanted to," said Jennifer Ludwigsen at the Totem Bar & Liquor Store, which is looking for extra workers. The business is currently down to three staff members, but finding new employees has been challenging. It isn't unique. "A lot, especially the larger businesses, the grocery stor...
It’s looking to be a very good summer for pink salmon commercial fishing, much better than last year’s dismal catch. The pink harvest in Southeast was just over 44 million fish as of Sept. 3, over 50% more than the 28 million forecast issued after the 2020 season, according to the state’s preliminary commercial salmon harvest report. And more than five times the catch of last year. “For pink salmon, we’re around 40 million for the harvest for the Southeast region,” said Paul Salomone, a management biologist for the commercial fisheries d...
Salmon harvests are coming in slowly in the Wrangell-Petersburg area, according to Sea Level Seafoods and the state fisheries biologist out of Petersburg. Though it’s too early for a lot of specific numbers, both report catches have been lower than in previous seasons. “It’s going pretty slow,” said Nik Morozov, manager at Wrangell’s Sea Level plant. “We’re close to half of what we normally do.” Morozov said he has three tenders out right now, and had been assuming they would fill up and bring back loads of fish quickly, but that is not hap...
The borough assembly on Tuesday night rescinded $70,000 in funding to cover COVID-19 tests for employees of Sea Level Seafoods, after rejecting an amendment to expand the funding to all seafood processors in Wrangell. The assembly originally approved a motion on May 25 to use $70,000 in federal funding to cover the costs of COVID-19 tests for Sea Level employees, which passed on a 4-3 vote. The borough used federal funds to pay for the tests last year. The item resurfaced Tuesday when Assemblymember Patty Gilbert offered an amendment to the...
The borough again this summer will use federal funds to cover the cost of COVID-19 testing for Sea Level Seafoods employees. The borough assembly voted 4-3 at its May 25 meeting to appropriate up to $70,000 in federal funds to pay for testing this year. Testing last year cost the borough about $22,000. “Administration is requesting an amount more than triple last year’s expenditure because it is our understanding Sea Level would like to institute a far more robust testing regime than last year,” Borough Manager Lisa Von Bargen briefed the assem...
Trident Seafoods has notified city officials the company will not reopen its Wrangell plant this summer. Plant manager Nick Ohmer called on Tuesday with the expected news, Borough Manager Lisa Von Bargen told the assembly at its evening meeting. "I had a conversation with him about what it would take to get the plant back open here in Wrangell," Von Bargen said. Ohmer responded that the seafood processor would need "to see somewhere between 40% and 50% more fish chums than were projected to retu...
Alaska coastal communities will get a bit of an economic boost in 2021 from increased catches of Pacific cod. The stock, which crashed after a multi-year heat wave starting in 2014 wiped out several year classes, appears to be rebounding throughout the Gulf of Alaska. No cod fishery occurred at all this year in federally managed waters (from three to 200 miles out) where the bulk of the harvest is taken, and a catch of under six million pounds was allowed in state managed waters (out to three miles). For 2021, the North Pacific Fishery...
December 17 Jamie Roberts, with the Wrangell EOC, reported that there are currently no active cases of COVID-19 in the community. Statewide, Alaska’s case count is 41,859 as of yesterday. This is an increase of 3,151 from last week. Wrangell received its first shipment of COVID-19 vaccines Wednesday afternoon, Dec. 16. According to SEARHC, following guidance from the Alaska Vaccine Advisory Council, vaccinations will be given to frontline health workers first, along with first responders, and l...
Several local fishermen have been volunteering their time and energy, more so than usual, at Wrangell's sole operating seafood processor. With the decision by Trident Seafoods to not operate this summer, Sea Level Seafoods has been the only local option available for fishermen to process their catches. However, thanks to a number of factors brought on by COVID-19, Sea Level has been shorthanded. This has led to a number of fishermen volunteering to help process crab, as well as catch them....
City officials organized an online town hall meeting last Thursday evening, June 18, to try and answer some community questions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. The town hall also saw some special guests from the state level take part in the Q&A session: Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink and Dr. Joseph McLaughlin. Representative Dan Ortiz also participated in the web conference. As the doctors had a limited window of time to take part in the town hall meeting, city officials spent previous...
The number of COVID-19 cases in Wrangell has increased since last week's edition of the Wrangell Sentinel. As of Tuesday, June 23, there are eight total cases of the virus in town. The fourth case was announced on Wednesday, June 17. According to a joint press release from the city and SEARHC, the patient was an unnamed traveller. He was identified through the airport testing program and is currently in quarantine. "So far, the State's airport testing program has proven to be effective," Borough...
Surveys of Alaska's fish, crab and halibut stocks in the Bering Sea have been called off or reduced due to constraints and dangers posed by the coronavirus. In what they called an "unprecedented" move, NOAA Fisheries announced in late May that five Alaska surveys will be cancelled this summer "due to the uncertainties created by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the unique challenges those are creating for the agency." NOAA said in a statement that they found "no way to move forward with a survey plan...