Alaska Fisheries

Silver Bay Seafoods will acquire processing plants in Dillingham and Port Moller, along with fishery support sites in Dillingham and North Naknek. Silver Bay announced the acquisition from Rodger May, the former co-owner of Peter Pan Seafoods, in a press release Wednesday. The Dillingham and Port Moller plants are Silver Bay’s fourth and fifth plant acquisitions this year. It also took over Peter Pan’s plant in Valdez last spring, and Trident Seafoods plants in Ketchikan and False Pass.

The At-Sea Processors Association, representing Alaska's pollock industry, has announced that its long-time leader, Stephanie Madsen, will retire at the end of the year. Madsen has been with the association since 2007, following a career in fisheries that spanned nearly five decades. She was also the first woman to chair the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

The international advocacy organization Oceana is pushing for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to take action on trawling. The nonprofit released a statement Monday calling on the council to limit trawling in the Bering Sea and Alaska fisheries, saying it is a threat to sensitive seafloor habitats.

It’s unclear how the sale will affect King Cove, which relied on the processing facility as its main economic driver until it closed in January.

When Peter Pan Seafood Co. announced in April they were ceasing all operations, the City of King Cove lost its only economic engine. Now, the town is struggling to survive, while Alaska’s seafood industry continues on an uncertain path.

The mayors of Unalaska and the Aleutians East Borough traveled to Washington, D.C. last month, sounding the alarm on the challenges jeopardizing Alaska’s fisheries.

Fishermen-owned Silver Bay already operates a facility in False Pass, just next to the Trident plant. Silver Bay President and CEO Cora Campbell said owning adjacent facilities would make operations more efficient, and allow them to provide more opportunities to the fleet.

Alaska Congresswoman Mary Peltola introduced two bills Wednesday that aim to deliver on one of her campaign themes: Reducing the number of salmon that the Bering Sea fishing fleet catches by accident. One of the bills would curtail the use of fishing nets that scrape sensitive parts of the sea floor. It would require regional fisheries management councils to designate bottom trawl zones and limit that kind of fishing to those areas.

A price collapse in 2023 bodes ill for the seafood industry, the report said. Because of inflation, consumer demand dropped, notably in the United States, where it fell below pre-pandemic levels. There was a large amount of 2022 harvested fish leftover as inventory, making wholesalers and retailers less inclined to buy fish in 2023, and the global supply of key species like pink salmon and pollock increased dramatically, notably from Russia but also in Alaska, the report said.

The pollock fishery currently has a cap on Chinook bycatch, but those asking for stricter limits say the restrictions don’t go far enough.