In March, aboard the new factory trawler Araho, all was a bustle.
The vessel, moored at Pier 91 in Seattle, was fresh from making the Panama Canal from Eastern Shipbuilding in Panama City, Fla. Vendors were testing equipment, inspectors were inspecting, and the ship’s officers and crew were tweaking the electronics and machinery while loading trawl gear and provisions for the trip north to the unforgiving fishing grounds of Alaska.
Araho, the first U.S.-flagged freezer-processor built in the United States in almost 30 years, is owned by the O’Hara Corp. of Rockland, Maine. The company was founded by Francis J. O’Hara in 1907. Back then, the company fished for haddock, cod and halibut with a sail fleet on Georges Bank. Today, in the Northeast, the company owns a marina in Rockland and operates a herring seine fleet, supplying bait for lobster and scallop fishermen. O’Hara’s Alaska fleet, operated from an office in Seattle, targets groundfish, ocean perch and other whitefish in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska.
By May, Araho had lived up to its promise. “I just made it home after being on board for the first three fishing trips,” said chief engineer Casey Reynolds. “The vessel stands out at the fuel dock in Dutch Harbor in a good way. No other boat looks quite like it.”
Araho is the flagship of O’Hara’s Alaska operation, which includes Alaska Spirit, Constellation, Enterprise and Defender. The vessels are part of what is called the Amendment 80 fleet. Amendment 80 dictates target species and by catch quotas for catcher-processors in Alaskan waters, and its regulations also cover other issues affecting the fleet. Adopted by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in 2008, Amendment 80 had no legal mechanism to replace aging vessels in the fleet until the passage of Amendment 97 in 2012.
This story is from the American Ship Review 2018 edition of Professional Mariner.
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This story is from the American Ship Review 2018 edition of Professional Mariner.
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