Lowell A. Wakefield.

• Author: Brynko, B.L.
• Position: Profile

Not long after the end of World War II, enterprising Lowell A. Wakefield caught a whiff of the sweet smell of success. He literally bet his bottom dollar that there was a large market in the United States eager to taste a new seafood delicacy - king crab. And he was right.

From modest beginnings in 1945, Wakefield nurtured an Alaskan king crab venture that began as Deep Sea Trawlers and later became Wakefield Seafoods Inc., a leader in the fisheries industry. By 1955, his firm was producing 85 percent of the total king crab catch for the United States. And by the mid-1960s, the company boasted annual sales of $10 million from its top-quality king crab. An article in a 1965 issue of the Pacific Fisherman noted, Lowell Wakefield has contributed more to the growth and development of the United States king crab fishery than any other individual. "

Says Richard Pace, who worked for Wakefield for 10 years and is now president of Unisea Inc. in Seattle, Wakefield's greatest accomplishment was developing king crab as a white-tablecloth gourmet item. The Wakefield label is still known to seafood buyers... The name connotes quality, the tops, the best there is. "

In reality, king crab was not a new commodity. The Japanese had been canning king crab since 1892. Even several Alaskan companies, namely Arctic Packing Co. and Alaska Year Round Cannery in Seldovia, had dabbled with king crab packing in the 1920s.

Wakefield knew the market for king crab was there, too. After all, the United States had imported 7 million pounds of canned king crab from Japan and 2.7 million pounds from the Soviet Union in 1933, before the war halted production. The Wakefield family had canned several hundred cases of king crab during the war years at their herring plant at Port Wakefield on Raspberry Island, northeast of Kodiak.

Lowell was born to Lee - a Texas native well-known in the Pacific Coast salmon and herring industries - and Emma Wakefield in Anacortes, Wash., on Aug. 17, 1909. Though Lowell attended the University of Washington for undergraduate studies, then Columbia University, where he earned a master's degree in anthropology, he nevertheless followed in his father's footsteps. He journeyed to Alaska in 1938 to help at the Raspberry Island herring plant.

Lowell Wakefield saw the potential of the king crab market long before his competitors. A creative entrepreneur, he did not stick to the beaten path. For instance, he discovered that freezing was a much better...