WARRENTON — The sudden closure of Warrenton Deep Sea, a popular seafood market on the banks of the Skipanon River, caught the former manager and customers by surprise.

The seafood market, around since at least the 1960s, was purchased by Bornstein Seafoods in 2006. The company announced on social media June 13 that the market would close a week later.

“We truly felt we were the little fish market that could, but alas, too many small things have added up and taken their toll,” a statement from the company said.

The announcement didn’t go into much detail on the closure. Bornstein Seafoods co-owner Andrew Bornstein declined to comment further.

Malcolm Cotte, the general manager of Warrenton Deep Sea for the past seven years, said the shop was operating with coronavirus protocols. After closing in March, it had reopened with a no-contact pickup model with limited hours.

Cotte said Bornstein came in nine days before the closure to give him the news. “He came to the shop and told me that the company was getting out of the retail business, and the last day of business was going to be the 19th,” Cotte said. “And that was it. Then he left.”

The surprise was as big to him as it was to customers.

“I couldn’t give them any consolation of why, because I didn’t know either,” Cotte said.

Bud Charlton, a late commercial fisherman, set up Warrenton Deep Sea Co. in the 1960s and acquired a former clam company for his market, according to his son, Mark Charlton.

Charlton said the market moved around from Cannon Beach to near the Rite Aid in Warrenton before locating along the Skipanon in the 1970s, where it processed, canned, wholesaled and retailed seafood.

“We processed thousands and thousands and thousands of cans of salmon, tuna, sturgeon,” Charlton said. “We smoked all those fish and sold them through the market. In fact, at Christmastime, we’d have a UPS truck full of our fish, the Stormy Brand.”

Mark Kujala, a Clatsop County commissioner who represents Warrenton, called Bud Charlton a fixture in the community and Warrenton Deep Sea one of the premier fish markets in the region.

“I remember as a young kid going to Warrenton Deep Sea,” he said. “And we certainly did a lot of business with them for Skipanon Brand Seafoods.”

Skipanon Brand closed in 2018 after working through a voluntary recall of canned products in 2015. Kujala said he has no plans to reopen the market, both because of the difficulty in recovering from the recall and because of increased challenges, such as fluctuating seafood costs, higher labor costs and more regulations.

“The industry changed, and it was very hard to make it pencil out for a lot of people,” Kujala said. “That’s why you don’t see many fish markets around anymore. You see a lot of them start up and then they don’t last.”

Astoria, once home to only Northwest Wild Products, has seen several more hybrid seafood markets and restaurants open up, including Hanthorn Crab Co. on Pier 39, Hurricane Ron’s on Marine Drive, South Bay Wild Fish House on 10th Street and Astoria Marina Seafoods at the West Mooring Basin.

Bell Buoy of Seaside still operates a restaurant and market along U.S. Highway 101. Ecola Seafoods in Cannon Beach reopened in 2018 after being heavily damaged by an electrical fire.

Kujala said he’d gladly patronize another shop in Warrenton.

“We need to have this fresh fish available locally, since we’re located in such a wonderful place on the Columbia River and on the Pacific Ocean,” he said. “We should have access to this great product.”

Cotte said he is in the beginning stages of planning his own operation.

“It’s not starting from scratch, but kind of working backwards a little bit,” he said. “The absence of a retail market in the area … is huge, and it’s a big opportunity, too.”