After a three-year closure blamed on weak chum returns, Seattle-based Trident Seafoods plans on running its Wrangell processing and cold storage plant this summer.
“We’re going to operate in July and August,” focusing on chums and pinks, employing a little over 100 workers for the season, said Shannon Carroll, Trident’s director of public affairs, on Jan. 26. That would be a smaller payroll than in past years, he said.
Chum salmon returns to Southeast have improved the past couple of years.
In advance of running the processing lines again, workers “will be showing up soon” for maintenance, repairs and some improvement work at the facility, Carroll said.
“It sounds like they’re going to be putting some money into it,” Borough Manager Jeff Good said Jan. 25.
In addition to the jobs in town, the borough could earn an additional $100,000 as its 50% share of the state’s raw fish tax which goes to municipalities where the fish is brought ashore for sale or processing.
In the six fiscal years 2015 to 2020, the borough’s share of the state tax averaged about $310,000 a year, substantially more than the $210,000 average for the past two years when the Trident plant was closed. Tax receipts depend on price and harvest.
“The town really needs the fish tax,” said Winston Davies, a gillnetter who has targeted mostly chums the past few years.
He noted that Trident has invested a lot of money into its facilities in Wrangell, including bunkhouses near the waterfront plant. And regardless of the plant closure the past three years, “our gillnet fleet has grown tremendously,” he said.
Chris Johnson, who has gillnetted in Southeast the past 38 years, also commented that Trident has invested heavily in its Wrangell operation.
In addition to jobs and tax income, the plant is a big customer of electricity and water when it operates, providing revenue to the two municipally owned services.
During the closure of the Wrangell plant, Trident continued to buy salmon in the area and tendered the fish to its plants in Ketchikan and Petersburg.
Trident purchased the Wrangell plant almost 14 years ago. It can handle about 750,000 pounds of fish per day, which is almost four times the volume of the Petersburg plant, according to the company’s website. The Ketchikan plant, with canning lines in addition to freezing lines, is the company’s largest operation in Southeast.
Trident also owns eight other processing plants across Alaska.
“We’re hopeful,” Carroll said of this year’s salmon returns, acknowledging “they’re forecasts, and can shift.”
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game commercial pink salmon harvest forecast for this summer pegs the catch at between 12 million and 29 million fish, predicting 19 million, which would be about 10% more than last year’s catch. The 2021 pink harvest was more than 48 million, giving hope for better returns this summer in the two-year pink salmon cycle.
Chum returns have been building the past few years, from 4.6 million in 2020 to 7 million in 2021 and 9.4 million in 2022. Last year’s catch exceeded the pre-season state forecast by about 1 million fish.
“There’s optimism” about this year’s chum catch, Johnson said. Though Southeast returns are not back to historic averages, they have been on the uptick. Last year provided a strong return of 3-year-old fish, giving hope to a strong run this summer of 4-year-old chums, he said.
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