ST. PAUL ISLAND

This season, the Bering Sea snow crab fishery opened for the first time in two years, and the first boats began delivering to processors on Jan. 15. But the Trident Seafoods facility in St. Paul — which the company calls the “largest crab processing plant in the world” — isn’t taking any crab.

The Aleut Community of St. Paul Island announced Friday that it has signed an agreement with the federal government aimed at jointly managing the waters surrounding the Bering Sea island.

Trident Seafoods’ St. Paul processing plant won’t open to take snow crab deliveries this season. But the Pribilof Island community will still see some economic benefits from the harvest, thanks to a new agreement between the cities of St. Paul and Unalaska. The Unalaska City Council unanimously approved a resolution at a special meeting on Jan. 3 that will allow snow crab, or opilio, that’s normally processed by Trident in St. Paul to come to Unalaska instead. St. Paul will receive the seafood taxes and fisheries business taxes associated with that portion of the harvest, like they normally would.

Alaska processor Trident Seafoods announced Monday that it probably won’t be processing crab in the Pribilof Island community of St. Paul this season. That comes after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s decision to reopen the snow crab or opilio fishery after a two-year closure. The state’s announcement on Friday surprised many fishermen. It was also a surprise to Trident.

A former police chief of the remote Pribilof community of St. Paul was sentenced last week to seven years in prison for sexual abuse of a minor. The victim’s mother, Stacy Bourdokofsky, hopes this will help the family move on, but stops short of calling the sentence “justice.”

The Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, the tribal government on St. Paul, hopes the project will open new revenue streams and lower prices in the island’s community store.

U.S. Coast Guard Rescue teams from across the state responded to five calls for help over the weekend. Teams operated rescues for fishing vessels, a cruise ship and a stranding.

After nearly two years without a stable police force, the remote Pribilof Island community of St. Paul is welcoming new Village Public Safety Officers. City Manager Philip Zavadil said he thinks the transition from a police force to public safety officers will be a good change for the remote community. “Not only is it a good fit for St. Paul, I think for most of rural Alaska, it's a better fit because we're not big [cities],” Zavadil said. “We have different problems, different ways of resolving those problems, different challenges.”

The collapse of the Bering Sea crab fisheries has put St. Paul Island at risk of losing some of its essential services.The city’s economy is about 90% dependent on the harvest of snow crab, which closed for the first time in the fishery’s history in October. Without Bering Sea snow crab or Bristol Bay red king crab — which has been closed since 2021 — the City of St. Paul is estimating a roughly $2.7 million hit.In light of those anticipated losses, St. Paul’s city government declared a cultural, economic and social emergency in late October, following the fishery closures, and subsequently implemented budgetary cuts, hiring freezes and other measures.Now, the Pribilof Island community faces the loss of its emergency medical services.

The recent closure of the Bering Sea snow crab and Bristol Bay red king crab fisheries has some of Western Alaska’s coastal towns taking a hard look at their futures, and one small island is bracing for a huge hit. The Pribilof Island of St. Paul runs on snow crab — also known as opilio crab. The community’s Trident Seafoods is one of the largest crab processing plants in the world. So when fisheries management officials announced the species “overfished” and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game shut down snow crab for the first time in the fishery’s history in October, City Manager Phillip Zavadil knew the community needed to act fast. “We're trying to get creative and have people understand that this is going to happen more and more, and that we need to address it,” Zavadil said. “We can do something now, instead of waiting for next year, when we don't have any funding or we can't provide services.”