Circle Seafoods is preparing for its third season buying salmon at Metlakatla Indian Community’s Annette Island Packing Co., while building out a retail market for wild Alaska pinks and paying Circle fleet members top dime for their salmon.
The company’s processor barge, Circle I, will be moored alongside the dock for a second season.
At the peak of the summer salmon season, Circle will maintain more than 100 jobs in Metlakatla and the company aims to recruit 20 seine boats to deliver their catch this season, said Circle Seafoods fleet and marketing manager Kit Culbert
Meanwhile, Metlakatla Indian Community (MIC) is marketing a new line of freeze-dried pink salmon pet treats, named “Ksa Hoon.” MIC is processing and packaging the 100% tribally caught pink salmon treats at the Annette Island plant.
Mayor Albert Smith he’s heartened by how Metlakatla’s salmon sector has evolved since Circle Seafoods and MIC began working together in 2024.
Smith noted how Circle last month announced the prices that it will pay its fleet members — including a price of 61 cents per pound for pinks, more than double the average price that other Southeast processors paid in 2025.
“I myself have been commercial fishing for over 40 years, and I’ve never seen a market come out with a price before the season started,” Smith said. “That’s good for the fishing fleet as a whole across the region. It keeps things competitive.”
Circle’s announcement of its 2026 prices – 61 cents per pound for pinks, $1.07 per pound for chums and $2.50 for sockeye – “are the best starting prices, to my knowledge, that I’ve seen in 40 years,” Smith said.
In 2025, Southeast salmon fishermen earned an average of 25 cents per pound for pinks, 66 cents for chum and $1.81 for sockeye harvested in state-managed fisheries, according to preliminary data from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Culbert explained how the Circle barge employs patented technology to freeze whole fish at ultra-low temperatures at sea. Circle further processes the fish for shipping on demand.
Circle is now retailing its frozen “Ultra-Low Temp Pink Salmon Filets” in roughly 4,000 stores across the U.S., including Whole Foods, Sprouts Farmers Market and Harris Teeter locations.
“We also have pink salmon in fresh cases in Europe,” Culbert said. “In the first quarter of this year, we broke into the Japanese roe market.”
Freezing fish whole, rather than headed and gutted, he said, protects the quality of the roe.
Circle expanded the capacity of its freezer barge this year so that it can take in about 500,000 pounds of salmon per day and hold a total of 10 million pounds to be shipped aboard the barge.
Once the barge is holding in 10 million pounds, Circle will begin shipping frozen salmon south, Culbert said.
The company is leasing about 30% of the Annette Island Packing Co. facility this year, including cold storage space, a loading dock, bunkhouse and galley.
For the first time, the company will be operating a tender vessel to buy fish from participants in state-managed fisheries in Districts 3 and 4 (west of Prince of Wales Island and the outlying islands), as well as from Metlakatla Indian Community fisheries.
Culbert said the company will be ready to buy fish by the last week of June.
In the interim, MIC is marketing a freeze-dried salmon dog treat – “Ksa Hoon - Just Fish” – which workers are producing and packaging at the AIP Co. plant.
“We thaw it out, we’ll chunk it up, we’ll freeze dry it, we’ll package it,” the mayor said.
Smith said he envisions the dog treat line as a “niche market” that will continue as a small component of the operation.
