July 22, 2024 — Alaska’s fishing industry has faced major challenges this past year. Low fish prices and high overhead costs have led some of the industry’s biggest players to sell or shutter their processing plants, sending shock waves through the coastal communities that rely on those canneries.
Perhaps no other community has been harder hit than the small city of King Cove, near the tip of the Alaska Peninsula, 600 miles from Anchorage, the closest major city.
Its only seafood processor closed almost overnight this spring, and the city is reeling, not only from the loss of 75% of its revenue, but from the larger questions of the city’s survival.
King Cove didn’t even exist until 1911 when a seafood company, Pacific American Fisheries, opened a salmon cannery and Alaska Native folks moved in from surrounding villages to work there.
That fish processing plant grew to become one of Alaska’s largest. Peter Pan Seafood Co. employed about 700 seasonal workers at its King Cove facility during a typical summer. That meant housing 700 people in company bunkhouses and feeding those people daily.