A floating fish processor serving the Bristol Bay fishing fleet is fully operational again, in the wake of a fire last month that severely reduced its storage capacity.
The Hannah, operated by startup Northline Seafoods, arrived in the region earlier this year. It uses super-cold spiral freezers to quickly freeze fish and then store them on board until the end of the season. But just before Bristol Bay’s salmon season hit its peak, one of those spiral freezers had an electrical fire. Because of the June 30 blaze, the Hannah has operated at reduced capacity for the last two weeks.
On Wednesday, Northline announced that the freezer had been repaired. With that fix, the startup’s floating processing vessel is back to full capacity.
“We definitely missed a few days of the peak, which we can’t get back. But we intend to continue to buy hopefully into the fall here,” said Northline CEO Ben Blakey.
The freezer broke after the fire. Blakey quickly told his fleet that drift boats with access to other marketers should try to sell their fish elsewhere, “just so that they wouldn’t lose fishing time and wouldn’t lose income,” he said.
Around half of Northline’s initial fleet of around 100 boats left for other processors. Then, millions of fish hit the Nushagak district.
Blakey says at first, the Hannah kept taking fish. But then, to catch up with the fish it had already purchased, it stopped accepting new deliveries from the Nushagak for 24 hours, right at the peak of the season. After that, a few more drift boats left for other processors. Blakey says around 45 boats kept fishing for Northline.
“We’re still buying from a significant portion of our fleet, and we’ll continue to buy until there are no more fish left to be caught and until people no longer want to fish,” Blakey said.
Northline also laid off eight of the Hannah’s workers because there were less fish to process. Blakey says some of those layoffs would have happened anyway as the season slowed down; the remaining 64 workers will stay through the end of the season. Northline will continue to take fish into August, after some other Bristol Bay processors close.
“I expect to have some of the existing fleet that we had, at the start of the season, come back, but then probably a few additional outside boats that are just looking for late markets,” Blakey said.
Blakey says he does not expect the fire to have a long-term financial impact.
“It’s not, not, not a hit that’s going to keep us from coming back or keep us from fixing what we have and moving forward,” Blakey said.
Blakey says that in addition to some long-term adjustments to the freezers, he plans to spend the winter working on other improvements.
“With any first year operation you’re gonna find dozens, if not hundreds of small tweaks,” Blakey said. “I could go on and on. But essentially, we have a laundry list of small tweaks and additions that I think that collectively will kind of help us operate a lot smoother next summer.”
Those tweaks will include changes to the Hannah’s fish buying stations and top deck that will make the vessel more user-friendly for fishing boats.
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