Silver Bay Seafoods announced it was partnering with former Bristol Bay competitor Northline Seafoods in April, just days after Northline’s CEO resigned. This sudden shift occurred just a few months before the start of the sockeye season, leaving fishermen feeling uneasy about Bristol Bay’s market diversity.
Dan Rigsbee has fished for the processing company Northline Seafoods for three years, since the company’s first season operating its barge, the Hannah.
“Northline was always a risk, I guess, being a younger startup company,” he said.
In a region where shore-side processors are the status quo, Northline’s business model revolves around the Hannah. The floating processor anchors seasonally in Nushagak Bay. The company freezes fish whole aboard the Hannah, and then processes the fish throughout the rest of the year in the lower 48.
Rigsbee said despite the risk, he initially signed on because he trusted the team leading it to take care of its fleet.
“This year deciding to stay with them has been much more challenging because I don't know the board and the people running the company now, like we used to.” Rigsbee added, “It does still feel like a risk.”
This season, Northline Seafoods is partnering with its former competitor, Silver Bay Seafoods, in what the company described as a custom processing arrangement. The arrangement has Silver Bay fishermen delivering to one side of the Hannah and Northline fishermen delivering to the other. The announcement followed the resignation of Northline’s co-founder and now former chief executive officer Ben Blakey.
The partnership also follows several years of steady expansion by Silver Bay Seafoods, both in Bristol Bay and across the state. The processor acquired multiple Bristol Bay facilities from Peter Pan Seafoods in 2024, as well as several regional OBI seafood plants last year. It’s now one of just three major processors in the Bay.
But many fishermen, like Rigsbee, say they’re concerned about processor consolidation in the Bay, and reduced markets for fishermen.
“I think that's the biggest problem that a lot of the people that fish for Northline had with Silver Bay is just how much of the market share they have,” Rigsbee said. “I think for the most part they have been very fair with their fishermen—it’s just worrisome to see.”
A few boats down in the boatyard, Chris Rhoades is working on his Fishing Vessel called Sound and Fury. Rhoades has also fished for Northline since the Hannah’s first season in Bristol Bay.
“The reason I fished with them originally is still the reason that I fish with them now—I believe in having diversity in this fishery, and I want to have a company like this survive,” he said.
Rhoades said the consolidation of processors in Bristol Bay is a concern, but he understands the partnership as a business decision for Northline.
“I know that they were in a tough spot, and that this team up between them and Silver Bay is helping them get through what has been a difficult situation over the last couple years,” said Rhoades.
In the Hannah’s first season operating in Bristol Bay, a fire onboard knocked out its primary freezer during the peak of the sockeye season.
Jacob Resneck is a reporter for the fisheries trade publication Undercurrent News, and covers the shifting landscape of seafood processors in Alaska. He said that fire was one of several setbacks that got the company off to a shaky start.
“When 2025 rolled around, we heard that there were some unpaid vendors who had put liens on the vessel, so we looked into that, and sure enough, it owed quite a bit of money to some metal fabricators and welders and things like that down in Washington state,” Resneck said.
Following this stretch of financial instability, Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation, or BBEDC—the region’s community development quota group, stepped in. It acquired Northline CEO Ben Blakey’s interest in the company in an effort to keep Northline operational.
Northline is now directed by BBEDC’s leadership, with technical support and additional direction from Silver Bay. Their custom processing arrangement was announced in April.
Silver Bay Seafoods declined to comment on its partnership with Northline and BBEDC. Northline Seafoods leadership did not respond to requests for comment by this publication. Former Northline CEO Ben Blakey also declined to comment publicly.
Frank Woods is fishing for Northline this season, and is also on BBEDC’s board of directors. He said over text that whoever controls the resource controls the price, and that this processor partnership supports the corporation’s goals.
“I don't know what the long-term plan is, but I think BBEDC is doing right by the fishermen, they're keeping it local, watershed resident oriented, and hopefully, you know, we succeed in our mission statement,” Woods said.
That mission is to promote economic growth and opportunities in Bristol Bay. Woods said despite this processor partnership, consolidation is a concern for him too, and the goal is to keep Northline an independent company.
“That's the goal—that we don't join a consortium of companies that dominate the whole industry,” he said. “There's enough of that going on all right now with Canfisco and Trident and Silver Bay being the majority.”
Even with good intentions, many fishermen who are part of the Northline fleet, including Woods, said that with all of the leadership and operational changes this spring, a lot remains unknown.
“There's a whole list of concerns: delivery concerns, market concerns, profit sharing concerns,” Woods said. “There’s a list that we started with in April, and those concerns are still going to be in the air, we just have to all work together.”
Get in touch with the author at jessie@kdlg.org
