Two major processors of wild Alaska seafood have been honored as top donors to SeaShare for donations of millions of servings to food banks and other feeding programs since the nonprofit was founded 30 years ago to engage the seafood industry in fighting hunger in America.
In awards presented at Seafood Expo North America in Boston on March 10, SeaShare saluted Trident Seafoods for donations of more than 30 million servings of seafood to the nation’s food banks and OBI Seafoods for its contribution of 20 million servings.
“It’s staggering to think that one in five Americans don’t know where their next meal will come from,” Trident Seafoods CEO Joe Bundrant said. “Through our work with SeaShare, we’re proud to have donated more than 30 million servings of nutritious, wild Alaska seafood to food banks and feeding centers around the country since 1994.”
“While the work to end hunger doesn’t stop with this award, we’re honored and humbled to be recognized by SeaShare,” he added.
“Giving back to the communities it operates in aligns with Trident’s core values of caring for each other and doing the right thing, and the company recognizes the incredible health benefits that seafood provides to those facing food insecurity,” SeaShare officials said in a statement.
OBI Seafoods, formed in 2020 by merging Alaska operations of Ocean Beauty Seafoods and Icicle Seafoods, was honored for its donations of 20 million servings of seafood. OBI also cohosts an annual golf tournament in Seattle, with proceeds benefitting SeaShare.
SeaShare was founded in 1994 on Bainbridge Island, Wash. by a small group of commercial fishermen who took unintentionally harvested fish, known as bycatch, that were required by law to be thrown back into the sea, and gave those fish instead to food banks. It is the only U.S. nonprofit focused on seafood as a source of nutrition for food banks. Over the years the number of partners supporting SeaShare has grown to include harvesters, processors and many others engaged in the seafood and transportation industries. To date over 265 million seafood servings have been distributed.
SeaShare’s long time executive director, Jim Harmon, has announced that he plans to retire in August, and Hannah Lindoff, a long-time executive with the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, a public-private economic development partnership between the state of Alaska and Alaska’s seafood industry, was named to fill the post effective April 1.
Trident Seafoods, founded in 1973 by Chuck Bundrant and two fishermen partners, is privately owned, with a global supply chain that includes sourcing from a network of seafood producers worldwide.
OBI Seafoods is now owned by Ocean Beauty Seafoods, the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp. and Cooke Seafoods