PORT ANGELES — High Tide Seafoods owner Ernie Vale was upbeat Saturday after discovering that 2014 would not be a repeat of 2013, when his company went through its worst year in four decades.
Vale got the good news late Friday.
A fisherman he buys from who had set crab pots off LaPush was doing well.
“I have crab,” Vale said Saturday.
“I’m averaging 10 to 15 a pot,” he said.
“Last year, I had zero to one.
“Now I can talk very positive.”
He couldn’t do that in 2013, when he did so badly that he owed $22,496 in lease payments to his landlord, the Port of Port Angeles — a fact noted in a recent state audit of the taxing district.
He said he expects to soon make a $9,000 payment to the port.
“I should have the port caught up by the end of December,” Vale said.
Vale, a 70-year-old Port Angeles native, opened his Marine Drive company in 1974, cleaning fish in the backyard of his home on 15th Street.
High Tide buys fish from fishermen and cleans them, processes them and ships them fresh or frozen mostly to the West Coast and Japan, China and Korea.
Vale employs up to about 114 workers, half of them seasonal, and in a normal year has a $1.25 million payroll.
He now has about 55 people working for him, mostly at his Marine Drive plant and at the Quileute tribe’s dock at LaPush.
But in 2013, he laid off all but three people, including his general manager.
“I went six months with no product at all,” he said.
“I totally depend on Mother Nature.”
High Tide usually processes 1 million pounds of crab but in 2013 processed 40,000 pounds.
Coho salmon didn’t show well in Quileute River last year either.
This year, High Tide processed a larger run of coho salmon, Vale said.
“Black cod didn’t show last fall, and that’s a huge part of my business,” he added.
“It was pitiful,” Vale said.
“And this year, it’s doing pretty well.
“I’ve been through this time and time again with no product, and you’ve just got to dig your way out.”
Karen Goschen, the port’s deputy executive director-finance director, said High Tide usually makes lease payments based on the seasonal fishing cycle.
The port has reduced the space leased to the company, she said.
“We have had struggles with other fishing-related tenants,” Goschen said.
“They’ve fallen behind and gotten caught up.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
