A portion of the lucrative Bristol Bay red king crab harvest nearly went to waste this season, after a catcher processor that was set to take the crab was forced to shut down.
In early November, the City of Unalaska stepped in to take St. Paul’s crab deliveries, and is now making sure that the Pribilof island gets its cut of taxes for that harvest.
Unalaska’s Natural Resource Analyst, Frank Kelty, told city council members last week that about 135,000 pounds of red king crab was nearly left to spoil.
“This was a really rush deal,” Kelty said. “People were concerned that that northern crab was going to face some dead loss issues if it didn't get taken care of.”
Under the crab rationalization program, a certain amount of Bristol Bay red king crab is required by law to be landed in each of the North and South regions of the fishery. Another portion of the harvest is undesignated and doesn’t have a regional landing requirement.
The only facility for the North region of the fishery this year was forced to shut down after experiencing issues with its boiler. That was the catcher processor F/V Bountiful, which was previously owned by Trident Seafoods and sold to Shelford Fisheries last year.
With crab in their tanks, a group of Bering Sea fishermen had nowhere to land their catch. And at a dock price starting at around $12 per pound, that would have been a hit of at least $1.6 million to those crabbers.
That’s when the City of Unalaska stepped in.
Mayor Vince Tutiakoff Sr. said they had to act fast.
“We needed to get some agreement in place within like 12 hours,” Tutiakoff said. “So we had two or three meetings in those short periods of time.”
The city sent the agreement to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which approved the deal, and that million-dollar catch was saved.
This wasn’t the first time Unalaska has made an agreement like this. Earlier this year, the island processed St. Paul’s northern snow crab shares after the only processor in the region, Trident Seafoods, closed for the season.
Under the agreement, Unalaska gave St. Paul certain seafood and business taxes that it would normally receive for those landings.
On Nov. 25, the city approved a similar contract for the red king crab it processed for the fall fishery. Kelty said Unalaska will withhold taxes on the catch and remit those to St. Paul, like it did for snow crab.
“Basically, it'll be about $95,000 in fish tax revenue going to St. Paul for this 135,000 pounds of crab,” Kelty told council members.
That includes taxes for about 65,000 pounds of North Region-designated king crab and 71,000 pounds without a regional landing designation, which was headed for St. Paul’s processor when it broke down. Unalaska’s processors are part of the south region, which landed the remainder of the crab harvest.
Trident Seafoods announced recently that it won’t be opening its St. Paul processing plant again this snow crab season.
“We are optimistic about the positive trends in the crab fishery and remain committed to operating our St. Paul plant as soon as quotas allow this to be financially viable,” Trident spokesperson Alexis Telfer told KUCB in an email. “Our fleet and ops team is currently working on options to process crab in Akutan in 2026.”
Telfer said the company will share more information about their plans as information becomes available.
Kelty said officials will need to finalize and sign a separate agreement for Unalaska to process St. Paul’s shares of that fishery.
