With its fishing industry, St. Paul is looking for a new way forward – Anchorage Daily News

During this season fishing for crab Bering sea snow Discovered for the first time in two yearsAnd the first boats began to deliver the processors on January 15th. But the Stident Seafoods facility in St. Paul – which the company calls “the largest crab processing plant” – does not take up any crabs.

Trident says quotas are too small to justify the opening of the plant. Instead, fishermen will deliver to Unalaska, about 250 miles to the south. Trident is the only marine gift company and the St. Paul Economic Center, so it’s a major blow to a city of about 400 people – now adapting to an uncertain future.

“Things were difficult, but we are wearing the storm,” said John Wayne Melovidov, chairman of the tribal council for the tribal government of St. Paul, the Aleut Community on St. Paul Island.

The community is fighting from Fishing for the first time closed in 2022. Due to a massive fall in stocks.

“We are trying to keep the hope that fisheries are coming back, but we try to plan only if they do not,” he said.

Supporting the possibility of no more fishing in the future means diversification of the economy. The Priobilof islands are among the largest sea ecosystems on the planet. The National Ocean and the Atmosphere even has a permanent laboratory there, and Melovidov believes that they can attract more researchers and scientists to build facilities in the community. The tribe opened the Bering Sea Research Center in the summer of 2024 and is currently hosting researchers at Alaska Fairbanks University.

“I continue to say that we are working on rotating a research economy, but I feel like we are doing it now,” Melovidov said. “We don’t work on this. We do it. “

Historically, the harvesters remained somewhat separate from Aleutians, about 200 miles south, but Melovidov emphasizes the importance of regional cooperation. In October he is present at Aleut’s ecological justice working group – A meeting between Aleutian tribes in Anchorage, which the US Department of Energy set up to deal with environmental problems. He said the discussion was a sip of fresh air.

“We all have very the same problems,” he said. “We all come up with our own solutions. It would be nice to talk and just share these decisions with each other, to make your life easier for another. “

Among these decisions may be an increased military presence. Regional leaders have turned to the military as a way of diversifying local economies, especially since the Pentagon has been interested in Alaska. Unalaska has increased as an Arctic portEncouraging the federal government to establish a more naval presence there. St. Paul made such an effort last year, hosted by the US coastal security, which had a constant presence on the island until 2010.

“We have made a suppression with them and [Coast Guard] Adm. Fagan and Seni. [Dan] Sullivan said that the chalbow he has here is some of the best glasses they had in the world, “Melovidov said.

But the region’s military history has been implemented. The United States government forcibly evacuated unansx̂ The people of Pribofofs and Aleutians during World War II and forced them to live in abandoned canned food, where many die. Melovidov said he acknowledges the risk of maintenance of this trauma.

Whatever the path of St. Paul, Melovidov says that working with other communities in the region will be key and believes that regional events such as St. Paul’s enjointing culture are other ways to combine communities. Unaalaska Summer Fair It has grown in recent years, and Melovidov believes that this would make an ideal gathering for cities throughout the region.

“We could reunite as a region and celebrate that we are Unangan, celebrate our culture, in our language,” he said. “We need it as a people. We need this collection to feel again. “

Melovidov said that these connections are vital – not only for cultural storage, but also for the construction of a stronger future for the region.