Seattle, Washington-based Trident Seafoods will keep its Wrangell, Alaska, seafood-processing plant closed for the 2022 season due to a low predicted run of chum salmon.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has predicted 15.4 million chum salmon will be caught in Alaska in 2022, and in Southeast Alaska, it predicted a chum salmon catch of 8.4 million fish. While that figure is up from last year’s regional catch of 7.4 million chum, it’s below the return of 12 million fish Trident said is necessary to make its Wrangell plant economically viable.

Trident bought the plant a decade ago to service a fleet of independent purse-seine and gillnet vessels fishing all species of Alaska salmon, according to its website. It can process up to 750,000 pounds of raw fish daily and specializes in frozen headed-and-gutted product.

Trident first shuttered the plant in 2020, when the annual chum haul totaled around five million fish, according to The Cordova Times. The plant, which had employed up to 250 workers, remained closed in 2021, with Trident running tenders to take fish from Wrangell to its Petersburg and Ketchikan processing plants.

"They have notified us that they do not intend on running this year but are hoping for next year," Wrangell City Manager Jeff Good said in a report issued before a recent Wrangell borough assembly meeting.

Sea Level Seafoods, a buyer of buying salmon as well as halibut, crab, and black cod, will remain open as Wrangell’s only processor serving the local fleet.

This story first appeared on SeafoodSource.com and is republished here with permission.