Last week, the City of Adak and the Adak Community Development Corporation bought $2 million worth of fish processing equipment at auction. Now, they’re looking for someone to operate it.
The equipment was up for sale because Icicle Seafoods pulled out of Adak earlier this year. City Manager Layton Lockett says in an ideal world, another seafood processor would have swooped in and bought it up. Instead, the apparent high bid was from a scrapper that wanted the equipment for parts, so Lockett stepped in.
The Coast Guard hoisted a 43-year-old crewman with multiple injuries off the F/V Alaska Juris Friday afternoon. According to the Coast Guard, the crewman had been struck in the head with a box of frozen fish.
The 238-foot catcher-processor was about 200 miles southeast of Unalaska when the incident occurred, and repositioned to the north in order to rendezvous with a Coast Guard helicopter from the cutter Boutwell. The patient was hoisted from the Alaska Juris, and transported to Unalaska for further medical care.
The Commerce Department appointed one new member, and one old, to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council Thursday.
Duncan Fields will retain his seat for a third term as one of Alaska’s representatives on the council. Fields is a fisherman and natural resources consultant from Kodiak.
David Long will take over Councilor Sam Cotten’s seat. Cotten would have been eligible for a third term, but wasn’t nominated by Gov. Sean Parnell. Long is a commercial fisherman from Wasilla.
The Aleutian Islands’ community development quota group is branching out. They’re currently in the final stages of a deal to buy Cannon Fish Company, a Seattle seafood marketer and supplier. The acquisition is meant to help the CDQ group behave more like a big-time seafood business.
The Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association, or APICDA, was founded on fish. The group owns all of part of about two dozen fishing vessels, which harvest their federal quotas of pollock, cod, halibut, and sablefish.
In the wake of several high-profile cases of alleged scale-tampering by Bering Sea groundfish vessels, the National Marine Fisheries Service is revising its regulations for weighing fish at-sea. The new measures are aimed at making it more difficult for vessels to underreport their catch.
The Bering Sea’s large catcher-processors weigh their harvest as it heads to the processing line on what’s known as a flow-scale – a section of conveyor belt that takes dozens of measurements per second. When properly calibrated, flow-scales give fisheries managers a very accurate estimate of the amount of fish being harvested. But like all scales, they can be manipulated.
The future of Adak’s seafood processing plant is up in the air. Following an announcement last month that Icicle Seafoods would permanently shutter its operation in the community, the processing plant’s equipment is being auctioned off, and there’s no guarantee it will stay on the island.
A factory trawler that frequently participates in the Bering Sea pollock fishery caught fire Monday afternoon.
The catcher-processor Arctic Storm was working off the coast of Grays Harbor, Washington, processing Pacific whiting, when a fire started in the engine room.
The Coast Guard sent helicopters and lifeboats to the scene to help evacuate crew. According to the vessel's parent company, Arctic Storm Management Group, none of the 120 people on board were injured. The 334-foot ship is being towed back to port so the owners can assess the damage.
Two Bering Sea groundfish catcher-processor vessels have been accused of tampering with the scales used to weigh their harvest. As KUCB’s Stephanie Joyce reports, the alleged violations carry hefty penalties for the vessels’ parent company, American Seafoods.
The charges levied against the Northern Eagle and Ocean Rover essentially amount to stealing fish. The technical charge is that the vessels “adjusted their flow scales to record lower weights.”
Icicle Seafoods closed its plant in Adak last month, but fisheries business on the island didn’t grind to a halt -- fish buyers are moving in to fill the void left by the processor.
Pete Hartman is in charge of purchasing for Hart Sales, a fish broker based out of Victoria, B.C. He says a group of small-boat fishermen approached him in February looking for someone to buy their halibut, sablefish and rockfish this summer.
