WANCHESE — Started as a small business 88 years ago by a native Outer Banks fisherman, the Wanchese Fish Co., now a global behemoth, is closing the doors of its production fish offloading and packing operations here.
The fish operation on Mill Landing Road in this historic fishing village on the south end of Roanoke Island will be shuttered March 29, confirmed Vice President of Public Relations Joel Richardson at Suffolk, Virginia-based Cooke Inc. in an email Tuesday to Coastal Review.
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Wanchese Fish Co., located along the wharf in Wanchese Marine Industrial Park, was purchased by Cooke Seafood USA in 2015, part of the Cooke family’s international aquaculture and seafood company. The Wanchese company had maintained its family-owned operation after the sale.
Wanchese Trawl & Supply Co., a marine and fishing equipment retail store that Wanchese Fish Co. started in 1976, will remain open, Richardson said. Also, Shoreland Transport USA, an associated cargo and freight company based in Suffolk, will continue to operate its Outer Banks route.
“We will be providing support and services to our employees as part of our transition package,” Richardson said in the email.
Further information on the number of employees who will be affected and other details about the closure were unavailable Tuesday, but one employee who declined to be identified said it was about 10.
But the loss of jobs is much smaller than the implications of downsizing one of the most iconic and historically significant businesses on the Outer Banks.
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From its start in 1936 as a fish processing plant established by W.R. Etheridge, a Wanchese fisherman from a centuries-old Outer Banks family, Wanchese Fish Co. was considered groundbreaking at the time, according to the company’s website.
In 1946, Etheridge’s new son-in-law, Malcolm Daniels, a member of another old Outer Banks family, was put in charge of the company. Daniels and his wife Maude had 15 children, all of whom contributed in different ways to building the company into an international seafood supply powerhouse.
For generations, the Etheridge and Daniels families were renowned not just for their reputation as innovators in the fish production, packing and shipping business but also for their dominance in the seafood industry culture on the Outer Banks.
The already successful business really took off in the late 1990s, when it developed scallop “medallions” by binding small sea scallops with natural protein into larger scallop shapes, the website said. The new product proved to be extremely popular and profitable.
The company subsequently opened a 300,000-square-foot facility in Suffolk with a processing plant, cold storage and corporate offices. Fishing operations and offices were also opened in Europe and South America.
Describing itself as a “vertically integrated seafood harvester, processor, and distributor,” Wanchese Fish Co. said it has harvested more than “4,000 tons of wild scallops, shrimp, oysters, southern king crab, and other seafood products each year.”
Cooke Inc., headquartered in New Brunswick, Canada, is a “family-owned, vertically integrated sea farming and wild fishery corporation” that ships its products to 65 countries, according to its website. It operates salmon farming operations in Atlantic Canada, Maine, Washington, Chile and Scotland.
