December 24, 2023 — Gerry Cobban Knagin is a commercial fisherman. She and her family have fished around Kodiak and sold their harvest to Trident Seafoods, one of the largest seafood processors in the country, on and off for decades.
But on Dec. 12, the company announced it’s selling off about a third of its Alaska processing plants, including their year-round facility in Kodiak. She said the announcement was a huge shock for almost everyone on the island.
“Speaking with [Trident] management, there wasn’t any heads up for anyone,” Knagin said. “And they decided, according to management, that they wanted full transparency so that the fleet would know.”
Trident Seafoods has a huge footprint in Kodiak – the processing plant is one of the biggest buildings in the city’s downtown and can process more than a million pounds of pollock a day.
The company has been a part of the community for half a century and employs between 100 and 300 people, depending on what fishery they’re processing. That doesn’t even include all of the fishermen who run independent businesses that sell fish to them, like Knagin.
But now, all of those people are left questioning their job security.
The archipelago’s Tanner crab season starts next month but Knagin said she’s dismayed that there seems to be little commitment from the company for upcoming fishing seasons.
“They [Trident] will be buying Tanners, and they will be buying for the A season of Pollock – they cannot expand on anything else past that,” she said. “So, we are salmon fishermen, and they cannot guarantee that they will be available for us to buy our salmon.”
Alexis Telfer, with Trident’s corporate communications, declined to verify if they will be buying Tanner crabs or salmon next summer, and refused to comment further. She said they’re focused on supporting their employees, fishermen, and partners at this time.