Former Seal Hunters Open Fish-Processing Port on Booming Bering Sea : Development: Aleuts of the Pribilof Islands lost their livelihood to a conservation effort. Their new harbor has no shortage of business.

The natives of the Pribilof Islands, no longer allowed to hunt seals, are looking to the vast fishing grounds of the Bering Sea to revive their flagging economy. For them, the key to revival is a new $58-million harbor that was dedicated in August.

“I wouldn’t have come back before, because it was so hard to find a job,” said David Shane, a 23-year-old Aleut who left St. Paul to finish his schooling. “The opportunities now are enormous.”

Shane returned last year to work in St. Paul’s new crab plant, in a building where seal hides were processed.

When federally managed seal hunting was halted here in 1985, Pribilof Island villagers had to rebuild their economic base or see their community dissolve.

St. Paul, in the heart of the booming Bering Sea fishing grounds and closer to many of the stocks than the larger Dutch Harbor, is betting its future on fishing.

The success of the new harbor depends partly on whether the city, the TDX Native corporation and the tribal council can cooperate in the venture.

But residents are optimistic.

“This has been a struggle for freedom and independence,” TDX chairman Ron Philemonoff said. “We are free, and with the harbor here, we will soon be independent--financially independent.”

Aleut seal hunters were forcibly settled on the Pribilofs by Russian fur traders in 1820. When the United States bought Alaska in 1867, the islands quickly were designated the nation’s first wildlife refuge and the government contracted the seal harvest to private companies. In 1910, it assumed administrative duties itself, withdrawing in 1983.

The government banned commercial sealing in 1985 because seal populations were becoming depleted. It set up a trust to help pay for the transition to an independent, port-based economy.

Alaska commerce commissioner Larry Merculieff, who hails from St. Paul, said the islanders’ reputation as seal hunters had denied them independence and unfairly saddled them with blame for harming the animals.

“They labeled our gentle people as brutal, bloodthirsty,” he said. “But we understand that the Aleut way is to produce answers, not tears.”

During the dedication ceremony, over the rumble of a visiting ship’s motor, Orthodox Bishop Gregory of Sitka blessed the harbor and the villagers and sprinkled holy water on the sea, the dock and the gathering.

The harbor is small--about 10 acres of moorage and 300 feet of docks--and can’t accommodate ships longer than about 300 feet. Big factory trawlers will anchor outside and take skiffs to shore to pick up provisions.

With its small clinic and airfield, St. Paul already was a temporary stop for some ships on their way to Dutch Harbor to process their catch.

Dutch Harbor, which is the nation’s busiest fishing port, is overwhelmed by ship traffic. It also is more than 20 sailing hours from St. Paul.

And more ships keep entering the arena.

An estimated 2.4 billion pounds of bottom fish, valued at $200 million, were harvested in the eastern Bering Sea in 1989, local officials said. Nearly 90% of Alaska’s crab harvest, valued at more than $182 million, also comes from there.

Local officials said they expect that 500 to 1,000 fishing vessels to call at St. Paul each year. Many processing and service companies are looking for a toehold in what has been dubbed “mini-Dutch Harbor.”

Pribilof Islands Processors’ crab plant already is operational and eventually could process 150,000 pounds of crab meat daily. A $50-million surimi plant with a capacity of 400 metric tons a day, being built by Saint Paul Seafoods, is to open Jan. 1. It will be able to process daily 400 metric tons of surimi, a paste of reconstituted fish that is used to make fish sticks, imitation crab meat and fake lobster.

“We’re ready to come in. We’re just waiting for an invitation,” said Dick Pace, president of UniSea, a Seattle fishing and processing firm that is building a $75-million surimi plant in Dutch Harbor.

Japan imports a lot of surimi, and large amounts of it are sold in the United States, mostly as imitation crab meat. It is a relatively new product that makes use of formerly unattractive bottom feeders, such as pollock.

UniSea wants to build at least one crab plant, to employ 190 people, in St. Paul, Pace said. Local officials said that expansion has been held up because of disagreements among the city, TDX, which owns most of the land, and the tribal council.

“The city’s been talking with virtually every major producer,” said the city manager, Vern McCorkle. “We’re expecting them to take up additional negotiations with the village corporation.”

A variety of Dutch Harbor service companies would like to expand to St. Paul, said Dutch Harbor Mayor Paul Fuhs, who has helped put together business tours of St. Paul.

The future of both port communities is closely tied to the changing fishery, which some fear is in danger of depletion.

When the 1976 Magnuson Act “Americanized” the fishery by designating an exclusive economic zone and extending U.S. jurisdiction to 200 miles off the coast, American fishermen scrambled to take advantage of the void left by foreign trawlers.

About 1,900 U.S.-registered vessels operated in the bottom fish and crab fisheries off Alaska in 1989--more than 700 of them in the eastern Bering Sea, officials here said.

“This is an enormous resource--the last of the great fishing grounds,” Shane said.

And Paul Shebolin, a city worker carrying his 11-month-old son, Moisey, on his back, said that change may be slow, but it is inevitable.

“This is going to be his home,” he said of the baby. “We’re building something for the future--something the children can fall back on.”