Tag Archives: Ben Blakey

A Sitka mobile processing plant built to chill out the Bristol Bay fishery

Alaska’s Bristol Bay sockeye fishery is intense, lucrative — and also remote. Much of the fish landed there is frozen whole and shipped long distances for secondary processing. Although the product is famous, there are some who think the quality could be improved. In Sitka, a pair of entrepreneurs is betting $2 million that they can deliver a better Bristol Bay sockeye. Meet Northline Seafoods. The relentless pace of sockeye fishing can’t be overstated: two openings a day, four hours between openings, with harvests topping 13 million pounds a day during the peak of the season in June. Twelve processors buy fish in Bristol Bay. And next year there will be a thirteenth: Northline. “They’ll go under the deck. There’ll be three more of these ice machines here…” This is Pat Glaab, who with his partner, Ben Blakey, has bought a 150-foot former helicopter logging barge and is converting it into a floating fish processor. click here to read the story 08:12