_{Photo by Paul Critz}

Crescent City Harbor commissioners are holding a Westport, Washington-based seafood buyer to its promise to reopen the ice plant Pacific Seafood shuttered in October.

The Harbor District last week entered into lease agreements with Ocean Gold Seafoods to operate hoists on Citizens Dock and to produce ice locally. If the company fails to reopen the plant within six months, the Harbor District will consider that a default of its lease, Interim Harbormaster Mike Rademaker told Redwood Voice Community News on Feb. 10.

“This gives us the confidence the commitment will be fulfilled,” he said via email. “Restoring essential ice production is critical to maintaining the quality of our local seafood as it reaches the marketplace.”

Though they held negotiations and a vote in closed session, three Harbor commissioners heard final pitches from Ocean Gold Seafoods and Tacoma, Washington-based Fathom Seafoods at a special meeting Feb. 7.

Commissioners Rick Shepherd and Annie Nehmer, both commercial fishermen, recused themselves from the discussion. Nehmer said she recused herself because she may sell her catch to either or both companies in the near future.

Though Shepherd had heard both proposals at the Harbor District’s Jan. 21 meeting, Rademaker said that the district’s legal counsel advised Shepherd to recuse himself since “he’s identified with reasonable certainty that he may be selling to one of these companies.”

Rademaker also told commissioners and the public on Feb. 7 that Crescent City Harbor staff weren’t recommending one processor over another.

A third company, Pacific Dream Seafoods, of Anacortes, Washington, also indicated an interest in operating the hoists though its representative Austin Sterkel told commissioners on Feb. 7 that they hadn’t submitted a proposal yet.

Both Fathom Seafoods and Ocean Gold Seafoods have been operating for about three decades. Both are on track to land 1 million pounds of Dungeness crab in California this year and are prepared to purchase black cod out of Crescent City.

But on Feb. 7, Ocean Gold’s director of operations, Aaron Dierks, said his company had entered into an informal agreement with Pacific Seafood to lease the equipment that’s in the ice plant on Citizens dock. Though the Clackamas, Ore.-based processor told Harbor District officials that it was going to remove its equipment from the building, it hasn’t followed through, Dierks said.

“If we get the hoist and if we can come to an amenable agreement on the building, Ocean Gold is prepared to offer the ice service,” he said, adding that he toured the ice plant on Feb. 6. “We got that to add to our proposal.”

Dierks said that not only would Ocean Gold “love to get a squid market going” in Crescent City, it would also purchase shrimp and truck it to its facility in Westport for processing.

“We’d be unloading here,” he said. “Our boats were fishing down here last summer. We feel it would be more effective to truck the shrimp rather than have boats do it.”

Nick Mareno, Fathom Seafood’s vice president of procurement, said that while he wasn’t surprised at Ocean Gold’s offer to reopen the ice plant, he said it’s not as simple as putting in new equipment and “it turns on.”

“There are tremendous infrastructure changes and financial things that they need to make happen to get things turned on,” he told harbor commissioners. “It’s not as simple as it sounds to bring equipment in there and start running it. I do agree ice is crucial for these fishermen and we would like to have the same opportunities to operate and bring in ideas to do so.”

Mareno also said that he has been trying to get other companies, including Ocean Gold, to unload shrimp in Coos Bay only to be told that trucking it to processing plants elsewhere isn’t economical.

Mareno said if there is an opportunity to unload shrimp in Crescent City, Fathom would “1,000 percent pursue that opportunity with the companies we work with.”

“As a business model, larger companies that do shrimp have consolidated their shrimp operations and have built their businesses around shrimp being delivered via vessel to the shrimp locations,” he said, adding that Ocean Gold has operations in Coos Bay and Eureka, neither of which unload shrimp. “I’m not sure there’s going to be any difference in Crescent City.”

Dierks said that the fishing grounds for shrimp are off the Del Norte County coast and before Pacific Seafood shuttered its processing facility in Eureka, it trucked shrimp out for processing every day.

Ocean Gold’s director of operations also responded to a claim from Mareno that Ocean Gold and Pacific Seafood has an ownership share. According to Dierks, Pacific Seafood CEO Frank Dulcich personally owns a minority share of Ocean Gold Seafoods.

“We don’t own any part of Pacific Seafood,” Dierks told the Harbor Board.

According to Rademaker, Ocean Gold Seafoods will pay a lease rate $3,000 per hoist per month, which is double the previous rate. This will bring an estimated $72,000 in annual lease payments to the Harbor District.

Ocean Gold is also expected to bring in about $20,000 per year to the Harbor District in poundage fees, Rademaker said.

For the ice plant, Rademaker said the terms of Ocean Gold’s lease with the Harbor District is the same as the lease Pacific Seafood held. Ocean Gold will pay the Harbor District 5 percent of its gross receipts from ice sales.

Rademaker said Harbor District’s lease with Pacific Seafoods for the ice plant has expired since they have abandoned the facility.

As for state EPA violations, Pacific Seafood removed all the ammonia from the ice plant when they stopped operating it, Rademaker said.

Public commenters in the Feb. 7 meeting were mixed as to whose proposal they supported. Sandy Moreno, a former bookkeeper for Fashion Blacksmith, said she liked Fathom Seafoods because they were young and hungry. But, she said, it sounded like the Harbor District favored Ocean Gold, especially when the company sweetened the deal by promising to reopen the ice plant.

Randy Smith, owner of the Mistasea fishing vessel and member of the Crescent City Commercial Fisherman’s Marketing Association, said 69 million pounds of shrimp were caught on the West Coast this year with 45 to 50 percent coming from one shrimp bed near Crescent City.

Ocean Gold has made Westport, Washington the No. 10 seafood processing port in the United States, he said.

“The only way we’re going to get shrimp processed and done in California is with Ocean Gold,” he said. “We have the chance to build this port back to what it was, which it used to be, the biggest shrimp and crab delivery port in California. Now it’s not.”

Ben Platt, owner of the Miss Heidi, said he felt there was room for both companies to operate hoists at the Crescent City Harbor. The port needs the infrastructure and the capital. And, he said, “we need shrimp unloading here,” Platt said.
“That’s the big missing piece here in this harbor. We can’t just make it on crab, whether you’re a boat or a buyer or a port. We got to have those hoists going up and down year round.”

Ocean Gold should begin operating their hoists no later than Feb. 21, Rademaker told Redwood Voice. The leases on the hoist and the ice house will be subject to renewal in two years, he said.