August 6. 2020 — Late last month, sickness took hold of a fishing trawler that had left port in Seattle in June. The sick crewmembers spurred the American Triumph, part of a fleet of six vessels owned by American Seafoods (ASF), to dock in Alaska, where more than 80 crewmembers soon tested positive for Covid-19.
This wasn’t the first Covid-19 outbreak aboard a vessel owned by ASF, a Seattle-based seafood company that bills itself as one of the largest at-sea processors of fish in the world. In early June, three of the company’s Seattle-based fishing trawlers—including the Triumph—were forced to dock in Bellingham, a college town a couple hours north of the Emerald City, after crewmembers fell ill with Covid-19.
Any outbreak on a commercial fishing vessel—many of which are roughly the length of a football field, with the ability to process and freeze hundreds of tons of fish right on board—is noteworthy. But what makes the recent Alaskan outbreak aboard the American Triumph particularly noteworthy is that it represents the second such outbreak aboard that same vessel during this fishing season. That’s despite ASF having taken seemingly thorough precautions against Covid-19 before the company’s vessels left port in May. The company had screened crewmembers for the virus, tested them for antibodies, and quarantined them prior to setting sail. Other Seattle-area seafood companies have screened and quarantined crews on their vessels, too, and none have experienced outbreaks so far.
So why—even after imposing stricter measures—did the American Triumph experience a second outbreak? While some critics panned ASF’s earlier preventative steps as half-measures, the latest outbreak occurred only after ASF appeared to follow industry and government recommendations for preventing outbreaks of Covid-19 aboard fishing vessels. Just what went wrong?