Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Investors are backing Southeast’s largest oyster farms

February 12, 2019 — The largest ever oyster farms in Southeast Alaska could be coming soon. That’s in line with the state’s Mariculture Task Force that sees the potential for a $100 million industry in Alaska.

Silver Bay Seafoods has been buying and processing salmon and herring at its plant in Sitka for the past decade.

The company says it wants to do something new.

“Alaska waters produce the highest quality seafood products in the country, if not the world,” said Tommy Sheridan, a former state fisheries biologist who now works as a company representative. “There is significant demand for Alaska oysters.”

Silver Bay recently chartered a boat to take a group of local business people, academics and seafood industry boosters to see the site of its oyster venture about 13 miles from Sitka’s harbor.

It’s in a cove near rocky shoreline. Not much to see – yet.

“If this were to go through, what you’d see here would be a series of rafts that we’d use to suspend oysters from,” Sheridan tells the group.

Read the full story at KTOO

Tri Marine to sell California wetfish plant to Silver Bay

October 25, 2018 — Bellevue, Washington-based tuna supplier Tri Marine International will sell its California wetfish processing business to Alaska salmon processor Silver Bay Seafoods, the companies announced.

The deal, the terms of which were not disclosed, includes Tri Marine’s San Pedro processing plant but not an affiliated fleet of vessels. Those vessels, owned by the Tri Marine affiliate Cape Fisheries, will continue to deliver fish to the facility under Silver Bay’s ownership.

Tri Marine said in a press release that the move was made to focus on its core tuna business.

“I’m delighted that we’ve reached an agreement to sell to a highly regarded, strategic and successful company like Silver Bay,” ” Renato Curto, Tri Marine’s chief executive officer, said. “The sale of our California coastal pelagic assets and business will enable Tri Marine to concentrate our efforts and our resources on our core business – global tuna supply.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Immigration fight cripples Alaska fishing as foreign help vanishes

August 7, 2017 — Not many Americans want to spend the summer processing seafood in Alaska for 16 hours a day, seven days a week, earning $10 an hour straight time and $15 an hour overtime.

But the prospect of working 112 hours and grossing about $1,400 a week — in a good fishing year — appeals to workers from countries where the pay for unskilled labor is a good deal lower than $10 an hour.

“It’s very hard to work 16 hours a day, but after three weeks you receive your first paycheck,” Danica Spasic, an elementary school teacher from Belgrade, Serbia, said about working for a Valdez fish processor on a temporary visa.

In a video posted on YouTube as a recruiting tool for Serbian workers, she talks about how pleased she was to work for Silver Bay Seafoods in 2015 with weekly summer paychecks of about $1,000.

“You do not want to have day off because in Serbia you cannot earn that amount of money for sure,” she said.

The workday — during good fishing seasons — leaves time for work and sleep but not much else before the long flight home.

She said that the managers of the plant knew that the Europeans wanted the overtime hours and were there to work hard, and “that’s the reason they allow us to work more than the Americans.”

In fact, Americans are free to work those same hours for fish processing companies in remote locations on short-term jobs, but many of them have better opportunities closer to home.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

US fishing industry breathes sigh of relief as H-2B visa program expanded

July 24, 2017 — An announcement made last week by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to expand a guest worker program was met with a mix of cheers and frustration by seafood industry representatives and elected officials from key states in the trade.

DHS Secretary John Kelly said he agreed to expand the H-2B visa program through the rest of the fiscal year, which ends in September. The visa program, designed for temporary workers coming to the country to fill nonagricultural jobs, helps employers fill jobs they say would otherwise sit vacant.

Congress established a cap of 66,000 such workers this year, with 33,000 visas available during both halves of the year. However, in May, lawmakers gave Kelly the authority to consider a one-time extension in the program. Over the last couple of months, DHS officials worked with the U.S. Department of Labor to establish guidelines regarding the expansion.

In past years, the seafood industry benefitted greatly from the visa program. According to data from the Center for Immigration Studies, Alaska-based Silver Bay Seafoods employed 971 H-2B workers – more than any other employer in the country last year. Peter Pan Seafoods, Inc., received approval for nearly 400 H-2B workers at its Alaska operation, while in North Carolina, Capt. Charlie’s Seafood employed 200.

Read the full story at Seafood Source