This season, the Bering Sea snow crab fishery opened for the first time in two years, and the first boats began delivering to processors on Jan. 15. But the Trident Seafoods facility in St. Paul — which the company calls the “largest crab processing plant in the world” — isn’t taking any crab.
Trident says the quotas are too small to justify opening the plant. Instead, fishermen will deliver to Unalaska, about 250 miles south. Trident is the only commercial seafood company and the economic hub in St. Paul, so it’s a major blow for the town of around 400 people — which now finds itself adapting to an uncertain future.
“Things have been tough, but we're weathering the storm,” said John Wayne Melovidov, the tribal council president for St. Paul’s tribal government, the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island.
The community has struggled since the snow crab fishery first closed in 2022 due to a massive stock decline.
“We’re trying to keep the hope up that fisheries come back but trying to plan for just in case they don’t,” he said.
Bracing for the possibility of no more fishing in the future means diversifying the economy. The Pribilof Islands are among the richest marine ecosystems on the planet. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration even has a permanent lab there, and Melovidov thinks they can attract more researchers and academics to build facilities in the community. The tribe opened the Bering Sea Research Center in the summer of 2024, and it's currently hosting researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
“I keep saying we're working on pivoting to a research economy, but I feel like we're doing it now,” Melovidov said. “We're not working on it. We're doing it.”
Historically, the Pribilofs have remained somewhat separate from the Aleutians, about 200 miles south, but Melovidov stresses the importance of regional collaboration. In October, he attended the Aleut Environmental Justice working group – a meeting between Aleutian tribes in Anchorage, which the U.S. Department of Energy put on to address environmental issues. He said the discussion was a breath of fresh air.
“We all have a lot of the same problems,” he said. “We all come up with our own solutions. It would be nice to talk and just share those solutions with each other, make life a little easier for each other.”
Among those solutions could be an increased military presence. Regional leaders have turned to the military as a way to diversify local economies, especially as the Pentagon shows an increased interest in Alaska. Unalaska has promoted itself as an Arctic port, encouraging the federal government to establish a larger naval presence there. St. Paul put forth a similar effort last year, hosting a visit from the U.S. Coast Guard, which had a permanent presence on the island until 2010.
“We did a potluck with them, and (former Coast Guard commandant Adm. Linda) Fagan and Sen. (Dan) Sullivan said that the halibut chowder they had here was some of the best chowder they've had in the world,” Melovidov said.
But the region’s military history is fraught. The United States government forcibly evacuated Unangax̂ people from the Pribilofs and Aleutians during World War II and forced them to live in abandoned seafood canneries where many died. Melovidov said he recognizes the risk of rekindling that trauma.
Whatever path St. Paul takes, Melovidov says working together with other communities in the region will be key, and he thinks regional events like St. Paul’s growing culture camp are other ways to bring communities together too. Unalaska’s summer fair has grown in recent years, and Melovidov thinks it would make an ideal gathering for towns all around the region.
“We could gather again as a region and celebrate being Unangan, celebrate our culture, our language,” he said. “We need that as a people. We need that gathering to feel complete again.”
Melovidov said these connections are vital — not just for cultural preservation, but for building a stronger future for the region.
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