Snow crab fishing. (Photo: Trident Seafoods/FIS)

Trident Seafoods beefs up its production capability this snow crab season

Trident Seafoods will add about 50 employees this snow crab season to swell its production capability to about 500,000 lb per day.

The nearly 42 million lb of snow crab, or opilio, designated for delivery to the North Region in 2012 means a need for more workers at the facility on St Paul Island, which usually employs about 400 people during peak operations with a capacity of 450,000 daily lb.

Beginning in the 2005-6 season, the Bering Sea crab fisheries were rationalized, and this entailed regional landing requirements place to protect historical processing participation by communities.

Trident Seafoods Chief Legal Counsel Joe Plesha said the additional workers, “should be sufficient to process the available opilio quota assuming weather conditions do not close the harbor or otherwise delay fishing for an extended period,” Alaska Journal of Commerce reports.

The average snow crab delivery in 2010 was 146,444 lb per vessel, which means the North Region will take nearly 300 deliveries this season.

Since rationalization, the landing requirements for St Paul have been hampered by the harbor icing up, which can prevent or delay deliveries and bring safety issues. Regardless of the weather, the sheer volume of snow crab figures for 2012 is expected to generate logistical challenges.

If the plant in St Paul has to shut down because it is being blocked by ice, more boats may have to deliver in Unalaska, which would change staffing and other needs there.

The harvest set by Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) increased from 54 million lb in 2011 to 88.9 million lb in 2012, or 64 per cent -- the largest harvest since 1999.

Bering Sea snow crab is now considered recovered and able to sustain high harvest levels for the next few seasons.

The North Region share of 42 million lb in 2012 is heftier than the total harvest for the entire Bering Sea from 2000-7.

Trident touts itself as the leader of the Alaska seafood industry in the production of crab, canned sockeye salmon and frozen Bristol Bay sockeye. It ranks among Alaska’s top five producers of pollock, cod, herring and canned pink salmon.

Related article:

- Snow crab TAC up 64 pc; red king crab TAC cut in half

By Natalia Real
editorial@seafood.media
www.seafood.media

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