August 5, 2026 — When Bristol Bay’s salmon run reaches its peak, the spotlight usually falls on the fishermen hauling sockeye over the rails. But just offshore, another fleet is working around the clock to keep the fishery moving.
Tender boats shuttle thousands of pounds of salmon from fishermen to processors, fuel skiffs, deliver groceries and gear, and often serve as floating support vessels during one of the busiest commercial fisheries in the U.S. Without them, many fishermen simply couldn’t keep fishing.
For Washington native Evan Blankenship, tendering has become an essential part of his livelihood.
“I stumbled into fishing and Alaska because of my high school history teacher,” Blankenship shared. “She told stories about working in a remote Alaskan cannery in the 1990s. It sounded like such a wildly different experience from where I grew up.”
In 2006, at age 19, Blankenship headed north to Naknek for his first summer working in a cannery. One season turned into many. He eventually moved from processing to tendering in Bristol Bay, then into salmon seining in Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound before buying his first seine boat in Kodiak in 2015.
Today, his operation splits the summer between Bristol Bay tendering and Kodiak salmon seining, a combination that provides both stability and opportunity.
Blankenship began combining tendering and seining in 2018 after several unpredictable years in Kodiak’s salmon fishery.