It’s not easy or always profitable working in commercial fishing or running a seafood processor — going after salmon and a lot more in the coean, packing it on ice or freezing it for customers, shipping it to market and hoping nothing goes wrong among what you can control and what you can’t.

The list of what can go wrong includes weak salmon runs, bad weather during commercial fisheries openings, diesel fuel prices that drive up the cost for fishing boat owners and the processors’ tenders that bring in the catch.

Unfair competition from low-priced Russian salmon dumped on the market drove down prices for Alaska fish, but that seems to have abated after the federal government imposed a ban on Russian imports into the U.S.

And if the industry can navigate all those challenges, it can always get caught in the economic net of a weak economy.

Inflation pushes consumers to save money when they shop, which means cheaper protein on the dinner table. Think canned tuna, farmed salmon, chicken and beans — not fresh Alaska wild salmon or halibut.

And if persistent, routine inflation wasn’t bad enough, gasoline and diesel fuel prices that have jumped higher than a fighting coho at the end of a line are making it harder on shoppers to splurge on Alaska seafood.

Yet with all that dragging on the industry, the two main seafood processors in Wrangell — Trident Seafoods and Pacific Seafood, doing business as Sea Level Seafoods — have both shown a financial commitment to the community.

Pacific Seafood in March closed on its purchase of the Sourdough Lodge near the downtown harbor. The company plans to operate the building as a bunkhouse for its crew.

And Trident last month reopened its plant from its winter slumber a couple of months earlier than in past years to buy, process and ship black cod and halibut. It will gear up to handle summer salmon in mid-June.

It would be better news if the Alaska Department of Fish and Game was not forecasting lower pink and chum salmon harvests this summer than last year in Southeast. But commercial fishing isn’t easy, or guaranteed, for the boat owners, their crew members or the seafood processors and their workers.

The fact that Pacific Seafood and Trident Seafoods are pushing ahead with investments in their businesses is a good start to what everyone hopes will be a good year for the industry and Wrangell’s maritime economy.