Petersburg once was host to sound enterprise of commercial shrimp fisheries and processing plants, drawing in hundreds of thousands – even millions of pounds of shrimp, ranging from the tiny pink crustaceans commonly found gracing salads to their larger brethren that are fried, grilled, battered and steamed in cuisine across the world.
Most of that ended in 2005, after Trident Seafoods acquired the local venture, Norquest Seafoods, once Alaskan Glacier Seafoods, and shut down its last shrimp processing line in favor of higher volume, easier to process catches of salmon and other lucrative lines, facing dwindling catches and escalating costs.
In the near decade that has passed, pink shrimp, once touted as the town's saviors through the 1928 depression and later fires at processing plants, became passing mention in conversation as residents recalled shelling catches after high school.
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