Trident Seafoods announced on Dec.12 that it’s selling a third of its Alaska plants. For Southeast Alaska, that includes the Petersburg and Ketchikan processing plants.
Many in Ketchikan were caught off guard by the news. Bruce Schactler with the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute said these closures are indicative of a crisis for the seafood market that is years in the making. In a phone call, he called Trident’s announcement “a wake-up call” for the public.
Garrett Vincent, a local Trident fisherman, said it’s too early to tell what kind of impact the sale will have on the fleet. Vincent has been fishing for about 15 years and has had to adapt to market fluctuations. He said this isn’t just a Trident problem – it’s global.
“It’s a very volatile industry. I guess, the difference is whether there’s going to be a market for everybody to participate,” Vincent said.
Industry experts and community leaders agree that it’s too soon to tell what impact this will have on the community.
“How soon might a buyer be found? What would that buyer’s plans be? And how soon would it take to bring them into effect? What is Trident going to do between now and when a buyer is found?” Asked Gunnar Knapp, a retired economist and former director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He said that right now, for Ketchikan, there are only questions.
But there are no easy answers to these questions.
“Even the very best scenario, which is the buyer is found, and the buyer smoothly picks up the operation, and so on – that’s sort of the very best scenario – it’ll be disruptive to plant employees and fishermen and the community,” said Knapp.
Local representatives of the Trident plant in Ketchikan could not be reached for comment. Trident spokesperson Alexis Telfer said that management is currently meeting with employees of their challenged plants. She declined to comment further, saying the company was focused on its employees and fishing fleets at this time.
