The story of Trident Seafoods starts back in 1961, when a 19-year-old kid with nothing but a dream drove an old Ford from Tennessee to Seattle, in search of a great adventure at sea.
That 19-year-old kid was Chuck Bundrant. And that little “adventure” stretched into a 12-year journey across Alaska, aboard any ship he could find, discovering everything there is to know about fishing and crabbing along the way.
Chuck met two other likeminded crab fishermen in the early 1970s, Kaare Ness and Mike Jacobson. All three pooled their money together and built the Billikin—a 135-foot boat that not only changed the course of their partnership, but also changed the course of the entire seafood industry. The ingenious Billikin was the first vessel of its kind to feature crab cookers and freezing equipment onboard, so their fresh catch could be processed as soon as it was pulled out of the water instead of coming all the way back to shore.