Saving Seafood

Commercial fishing groups welcome new USDA seafood liaison position

November 18, 2025 — Commercial fishing groups are praising U.S. lawmakers for establishing a new seafood liaison position within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) – a long-held goal for the industry. 

“American seafood is a heart-healthy protein, and our fisheries are managed for sustainable harvest. Support from USDA will provide well-deserved support to U.S. fishermen to ensure Americans have ready and continued access to domestic and locally harvested seafood,” Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association Executive Director Linda Behnken said in a release.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Ice all but disappeared from this Alaskan island. It changed everything.

April 28, 2025 — This tiny island in the middle of the Bering Sea had recently completed its longest winter stretch in recorded history with above-freezing temperatures — 343 consecutive hours, or 14 days — when Aaron Lestenkof drove out to look at Sea Lion Neck.

It was another warm February day. He saw no sea ice; scant snow on the ground.

Lestenkof is one of the sentinels on the island, a small team with the Aleut tribe who monitors changes to the environment across these 43 square miles of windswept hills and tundra. He is also one of 338 residents who still manage to live on St. Paul, something that has become significantly more complicated as the Bering Sea warms around them.

Over the past decade, steadily warming waters have thrown the North Pacific into turmoil, wiping out populations of fish, birds and crabs, and exposing coastlines to ever more battering from winter storms. The upheaval in the waters has brought so much change to this remote island, where residents still fill their freezers with reindeer and seals, that it has forced many to consider how long they can last.

The warm waters killed off about 4 million common murres — the largest die-off of any bird species ever recorded in the modern era — including almost 80 percent of those that nested on St. Paul. They wiped out about 10 billion snow crabs; caused the collapse of the main Alaskan fishery that relied on them; and prompted the closing, three years ago, of St. Paul’s largest source of tax revenue, a Trident Seafoods crab processing plant.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

ALASKA: Pacific Seafood to acquire Trident Seafoods’ Kodiak facilities

October 22, 2024 — Trident Seafoods and Pacific Seafood have jointly announced an agreement in principle for Pacific Seafood to acquire Trident’s processing facilities at Kodiak.

The two seafood processing firms said on Oct. 14 that they are currently completing their due diligence efforts and expect to finalize the transaction in November.

They said that both parties are committed to providing job security and ensuring continuity of the Kodiak operations.

“Our top priority is to reassure employees and the fleet that this is a handoff, not a shutdown,” said Joe Bundrant, CEO of Trident. “We are committed to a smooth transition with Pacific Seafood, so they are well prepared to operate for the 2025 A season.”

Frank Dulcich, CEO and president of Pacific Seafood, said his company is excited about this opportunity to expand their Kodiak operations and leverage its diverse national and international distribution channels to provide even more opportunities for Kodiak team members and the fleet.

Dulcich said Pacific Seafood plans to retain all employees of the Kodiak facility as part of the deal.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

Trident, High Liner, Sysco cut ties with Chinese companies tied to North Korean labor

February 27, 2024 — Trident Seafoods, High Liner Foods, and Sysco are among the U.S. seafood firms that have suspended relationships with Chinese processors named in the latest Outlaw Ocean Project report, which revealed their use of North Korean labor, in violation of U.N. sanctions and U.S. law.

The use of North Korean laborers was prohibited in 2017 by the United Nations Security Council in response to the country testing a series of nuclear and ballistic weapons, and the U.S. has also passed a law categorizing the use of North Korean labor as forced labor unless credibly proven otherwise. Despite that, Outlaw Ocean estimates more than 120,000 metric tons (MT) of seafood have been shipped from companies using North Korean laborers to American importers since 2017.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Trident Seafoods planning sale of Alaska plants, announces layoffs

December 13, 2023 — Trident Seafoods announced 12 December it plans to sell off a significant portion of its assets in Alaska and to trim its workforce by 10 percent.

The Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.-based vertically integrated seafood harvesting and processing firm, which has around 9,000 employees globally, said it will aim to divest itself of its Alaskan assets in Kodiak, Ketchikan, Petersburg, and False Pass, as well as the South Naknek Diamond NN cannery facility and its support facilities in Chignik.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Channel Fish, Trident split USD 1.75 million pollock award

December 5, 2023 — Channel Fish Processing and Trident Seafoods split USD 1.75 (EUR 1.6 million) in Alaska pollock contracts awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on 1 December.

Braintree, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based Channel Fish will supply USD 988,559 (EUR 913,854) worth of frozen pollock sticks, while Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.-based Trident will supply bulk surimi worth USD 759,924 (EUR 702,497).

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

ALASKA: Snow crab decline hits Bering Sea island community of St. Paul

April 11, 2022 — The Trident Seafoods plant tucked inside this island’s small port is the largest snow crab processor in the nation.

On a cold clear day in January, three Trident workers, within the hold of the Seattle-based Pinnacle, grabbed bunches of the shellfish, and placed them in an enormous brailer basket for their brief trip across a dock. The crab were fed into a hopper to be butchered, cooked, brined and frozen.

Few of the 360 people who live on St. Paul, largest of the four Pribilof Islands, have opted to work in the plant. Instead jobs are filled with recruits from elsewhere.

But the plant still remains a financial underpinning of this Aleut community. Trident pays taxes that help bankroll the expansive services of a city government, which rents apartments, leases construction equipment and even provides plumbers and electricians to make repairs.

This year, the snow crab harvest dropped nearly 90% in a body blow to the city’s budget and to its efforts to keep people from moving away.

City officials estimate the decline in the snow crab harvest, along with the cancellation of the 2021 fall king crab harvest, will result in a loss of $3.25 million in tax revenue. That amount is equal to nearly half of this year’s budget, so city officials in 2023 will have to decide what services to maintain and what they might have to cut back or give up.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times 

Peter Pan posts USD 1.10 per pound for Bristol Bay sockeye

June 21, 2021 — Peter Pan Seafood shook up the world’s largest wild salmon run on 19 June with the announcement it will pay a base price of USD 1.10 (EUR 0.84) per pound for sockeye salmon in Bristol Bay, Alaska.

The price upholds reports of a strong market for wild sockeye and is a welcome development for Bristol Bay fishermen, who were disappointed by last season’s base price of USD 0.75 (EUR 0.63).

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Alaska’s seafood processors expect to spend more this year than last on the pandemic; seafood market looks promising in some areas

May 17, 2021 — Alaska’s seafood industry has a lot of moving parts. There are the fishermen, the processors, the market, as well as the fish themselves.

By all accounts, the pandemic has been hard on the processors. Last year, they spent about $70 million in mitigation measures and responding to the pandemic. But this year it’s expected to be even more…over $100 million.

In fact, a lot of it has already been spent this year.

“There were challenges and some plant closures that happened despite all these protocols,” Lesh said.

Dan Lesh is with McKinley Research Group that surveyed processors and others in March about the effects of COVID on Alaska’s seafood industry. He says the flat fish industry was hit hard with outbreaks in January causing expensive plant closures. Those costs are in addition to the ongoing price for pandemic mitigation.

“A lot of these costs are already baked and my understanding is that most the mitigation measures will be continued.”

So, basically there are more months this calendar year dealing with the pandemic.

Read the full story at KFSK