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ALASKA: ‘Everybody’s worst nightmare’: Bering Sea fishermen on edge after COVID-19 closes second plant

January 25, 2021 — One of North America’s largest fish processing plants is shutting down as a COVID-19 outbreak grows and owner Trident Seafoods struggles to test its 700-person workforce.

The plant, on the isolated island of Akutan, is the second in the Aleutians to shut down this year, just as the billion-dollar Bering Sea pollock fishery was set to kick off.

Now, fishermen and industry leaders are anxious that they might not have places to offload their catch and that their plants might be the next to close down, said Dan Martin, who manages a fleet of nine pollock trawlers for a company called Evening Star Fisheries.

“Any hiccups like this, you really have to reshuffle the deck and try to figure out, ‘Okay, what’s the next step?’” said Martin, a retired skipper. He called the shutdowns “everybody’s worst nightmare.”

The winter fishery for Bering Sea pollock, which goes into products like McDonald’s fish sandwiches, officially opened Wednesday. But two of the region’s largest processors are both shut down: the Trident plant in Akutan, and the UniSea plant located 35 miles to the southwest in the Aleutian port town of Unalaska.

Read the full story at KTOO

Alaska’s COVID-19 plans for fishing communities are now being put to the test

June 4, 2020 — In a normal fishing season, Dan Martin would fly straight from the Pacific Northwest to the Aleutian Islands, where his pollock trawler, the Commodore, would be waiting for him to take the wheel.

But this year, the veteran skipper is stepping onboard in Seattle, where he, four crew and two federal fisheries observers are taking COVID-19 tests and hoisting a quarantine flag. Then they’ll squeeze onto the vessel for a week-long voyage to Alaska’s biggest fishing port, Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands.

“We might have to eat in shifts,” Martin quipped. “Because I don’t know that we can fit that many people at our galley table.”

There’s no hospital anywhere in the Aleutians, and Dutch Harbor has not yet seen a single confirmed case of COVID-19. Martin says the industry’s biggest fear is bringing the virus in with them.

Read the full story at KTOO

As the Bering Sea warms, this skipper is chasing pollock to new places

February 7, 2019 — The pollock fishing in the Bering Sea was “about as good as it gets,” skipper Dan Martin said as he steered his 133-foot trawler, the Commodore, over a dense school of the fish last month.

From the bridge, Martin watched as his sonar showed the fish streaming into his net – so thick that his instruments couldn’t distinguish the pollock from the ocean floor.

After just a few hours of fishing, Martin had filled the Commodore with more than 200 tons of pollock. As the wind and waves picked up, he started the nine-hour run back to Dutch Harbor, the Aleutian Island port.

The trip was what Martin called “classic” winter fishing: The pollock could be easily found at their traditional spawning grounds. But that’s not the case year-round, Martin said.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

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