American Seafoods is giving a total of $12,500 to 10 Kodiak archipelago nonprofits. That’s despite the company only processing at sea and shipping exclusively out of Dutch Harbor.
“We do not fish in Kodiak proper or the waters around Kodiak,” Mike Cusack, the company’s vice president of sales said. “However, Kodiak is a very important, strategically located maritime commercial fishing industry port, primarily with the Coast Guard base there as well, which obviously, Base Kodiak is utilized all over the Bering Sea.”
All of the Kodiak grantees received between $500 and $2,000 each. Recipients include the Alutiiq Museum, Brother Francis Shelter, Hospice and Palliative Care, Island Trails Network, Kodiak Kingfishers Swim Club, Kodiak Maritime Museum, Kodiak Women’s Resource and Crisis Center, Old Harbor Alliance, Senior Citizens of Kodiak, and the Salvation Army Alaska’s Kodiak corps.
American Seafoods is the largest pollock harvester in the Bering Sea, with 45 percent of the catcher-processor market share there. That means they both harvest and process before docking, unlike other processing companies like Trident or OBI Seafoods.
Despite not having a presence in the Gulf of Alaska, the company has given grants across the state for 27 years. Across all of the state’s regions, the company gives out $150,000 split into two grant cycles per year.
Cusack said they try to help as many people as possible.
“It’s a wide scope that we donate to and it’s just a matter of applying,” he said. “We’ll go through it and it’s $12,500 twice a year. People can apply for all of that or part of that and we go from there.”
The due date for the next cycle hasn’t been set yet, but Cusack said applications will likely be due as soon as March 2025.
