Seattle-based American Seafoods will forgo additional COVID-19 screening of the Ocean Rover factory trawler, a move that has some crew worried and wanting more assurances the disease has not found its way onto the Alaska-bound vessel.
American Seafoods has been buffeted in the past two weeks by test results from crews of three other vessels unloading frozen fish in Bellingham. Testing positive: 94 crew on the American Dynasty, four on the American Triumph and 21 on the Northern Jaeger, findings that rattled the North Pacific seafood industry, which is struggling to keep the virus off boats and shore-based plants as the busy summer harvest season approaches.
This week, American Seafoods announced it would boost efforts to keep the new coronavirus off its factory trawlers, switching from preboarding testing coupled with quarantines of at least five days to longer two-week quarantines.
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