Unalaska, AK – Westward Seafoods has sold 163,000 pounds of Eastern District Brown Crab quota to the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Community Development Association (APICDA) to be processed in Atka. Westward, like many Unalaska processors, is at its quota cap and cannot legally process the crab. Unalaska Crab Incorporated, a non-profit headed by the mayor and the city council that represents the city's interests, voted Saturday to allow the quota transfer out of the community.

"If the City of Unalaska through Unalaska Crab Inc. decided to exercise their right to keep the crab here, they would have had to match the offer from APICDA to Westward for that crab," explained Mayor Shirley Marquardt, who is the chairperson of Crab Inc.'s board.

City employees and the board estimate the offer from APICDA to be around $500,000. "So we would have to come up with half of a million dollars of city money to purchase those crab shares and then we would have to turn around and sell it to someone in the city. Yet no one in the city can really purchase it," she said.

The share usually only brings about $12,000 of revenue into the city per year. Marquardt says the city will lose this revenue, but the sale should not impact the support service industry. The council voted to allow the sale because it would not have a large impact on Unalaska, but it would positively impact Atka.

"It's not a whole lot of crab to a community [like Unalaska] that has major, huge processing communities," Marquardt said. "But to Atka, which is building a very small processing plant to try to build some sort of tax base to their community, and jobs, it means quite a bit, actually."

Council member Dick Peck said allowing the transfer would reinforce a "good neighbor policy".

All crab quota transfers out of the Unalaska community must first go through Unalaska Crab Inc. This protects the community from losing crab shares it can process. In accordance with National Marine Fisheries Service regulations, the city council only had 10 days from the original notice of the sale on August 1, 2008, to make the decision.

Other regional processor quota share transfers include transfers of Bristol Bay Red King and Bairdi crab shares from Peter Pan Seafoods in King Cove to Aleutia, the Aleutians East Borough marketing association. Peter Pan will still process the quota.