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Trident Seafoods, one of the largest seafood processing companies in the country, will finalize sales for three of the four plants it listed for sale late last year. According to a press release on March 8, the Ketchikan, Petersburg, and False Pass plants all have buyers.
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A years-long Alaska seafood battle over a complicated shipping exemption has been settled. Two Bering Sea seafood shipping companies, Alaska Reefer Management LLC and Kloosterboer International Forwarding LLC, settled a lawsuit in January challenging penalties that had been levied by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Alaska Reefer Management is a subsidiary of American Seafoods, one of Alaska’s biggest fishing companies. Together, the companies will pay the federal government $9.5 million after violating federal shipping laws.
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Nearly 100 tribes and communities in western Alaska, including the Association of Village Council Presidents, signed their support for an emergency petition that would set a zero bycatch limit on chinook salmon in the pollock trawl fishery for 180 days, a move Unalaska Mayor Vince Tutiakoff Sr. said would “effectively shut down the entire pollock fishery of the Bering Sea,” and create a “dire situation” for Unalaska.
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The state-water cod fishery for pot gear boats of 58 feet or less in the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict opened Thursday, Feb. 1 at noon. Those harvesters have a limit of 60 pots per vessel and a guideline harvest level of a little more than 44 million pounds. That’s the largest harvest level the fishery has ever seen. Last year’s was the second biggest at just over 38 million pounds.
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The cargo ship that caught fire on Christmas and has moored in Unalaska Bay is moving into port
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The U.S. Department of Commerce is giving the Aleutian Islands community of King Cove $888,789 for a new boat hoist, an action it says will support the region's fishing industry.
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Alaska pollock’s “A” season opened saturday. That’s when the pollock trawlers set out into the Bering Sea to scoop up the whitefish that keeps Unalaska’s lights on.
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In a major hit to Southwest Alaska’s fishing industry, Peter Pan Seafood Co. will keep its huge plant in the village of King Cove shuttered this winter, meaning that the company won’t be processing millions of dollars worth of cod, whitefish and crab.
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A cargo ship carrying lithium-ion batteries reported a cargo fire Thursday morning, and is currently sitting outside of Unalaska Bay while the Coast Guard works to stabilize the vessel. As of Friday afternoon, the fire was contained but still burning.
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The company announced their facilities in False Pass, Petersburg, and Ketchikan are for sale as well. The company will also either sell or retire the historic Diamond NN Cannery in Naknek and its support facilities in Chignik.
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The total amount of pollock allowed to be scooped up by trawlers in the Bering Sea will stay the same in 2024. In its Dec. 9 meeting in Anchorage, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council moved to keep the total allowable catch for pollock at its current level of 1.3 million metric tons, a move that has generated criticism from conservationists, tribes, and the trawling industry alike.
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The majority of Alaska’s Bristol Bay commercial red king crab have been caught for the season. This year’s quota was rather low, coming in at about 2.1 million pounds for the entire fleet. To compare, that’s less than half the total allowable catch, or TAC, for the 2018/2019 season. Ethan Nichols is the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s area management biologist for groundfish and shellfish in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands region. He said even just a couple million pounds was a welcome amount for harvesters during historic lows in the state’s commercial crab industry.