Online seafood vendor lays off 20 employees

PORTLAND – Gofish.com, which operates an online seafood marketplace for businesses, has laid off about 20 employees, but its chief executive said the move was not a sign of financial problems.

Neal Workman said the layoffs were part of a plan to enter into a business-to-business partnership with SeafoodAlliance, a consortium of 12 seafood companies with annual sales totaling about $5 billion.

Workman said the job cuts reduced Gofish’s work force to about 130. He said the next phase of its business plan is to make the Gofish Web site a leading venue for companies to buy nonseafood items such as supplies, computers and vehicles.

Gofish has $20 million in capital in the bank and expects to benefit greatly from the SeafoodAlliance deal, Workman said.

“A lot of dot-coms would love to be in our position,” he said.