Salmon Season

By Barth Anderson

Joel, the skipper, holding a twenty pound coho.


Tele, the crew, landing a coho. Note the care being taken to lift the fish aboard to minimize bruising.


Fishing off the Fairweather Range, Northern Southeastern, Alaska.


Nerka anchored off White Sulfur Hot Springs, Southeastern. Alaska.

(All captions provided by Donald Powers)

For the Nerka, a freezer-boat that trolls off the Southeast Alaska coast, the workday starts at 3:00 am. It's pitch dark in Minnesota at that hour, but that far north, the sky is faintly lit. It's July 1, just a week past the summer solstice, and it's the start of King salmon season. For this first of two king openings, the Nerka is nearly 40 miles offshore on the fabled Fairweather Gounds. At the end of each fishing day, the Nerka will drift through the night until resuming fishing the next morning.

The Nerka's skipper is Joel Power, who is buying the boat from his father, Donald, and the crew is a compliment of two: Joel's cousin, Damien, and his girlfriend, Tele. They'll work twenty-one hour days for the next two weeks, or until the fleet catches its quota of king salmon.

Meanwhile, Donald Power, Joel's father and the man who built the 43' Nerka, is back home in Anacortes, Washington. He markets the king and coho salmon that the Nerka hauls in and sells it to grocery stores and restaurants all over America. Donald was on the boat for 37 years before he quit fishing two years ago.

At the age of seventy-one, Donald is happy to hand the boat over to Joel and doesn't wax romantic about being on the Nerka. "Toward the end, I just steered the boat and cooked, but, even then, the hours were too much," Donald says about his last years of fishing.

The son, meanwhile, is twenty-four and seems to have been fated for the role of skipper: Joel was first on the boat when he was just two-weeks old. "The thing is, he wasn't worth a damn back then."

But the baby boy got his sea legs, apparently. Joel apprenticed with his father for twenty years and is now a licensed and inspected fish processor.

"I think he pulled his first fish at four and, by seven, he was running the lines himself. Now people say his eyes glaze over in concentration when he's fishing," Donald says. "Joel's a very good fisherman. He says when he's on his boat, he has the best office in the world.

"I used to say that, too."

Fresher than Fresh

It's a special operation, but in addition to passion, experience, and a legacy of devotion to fishing, the Nerka's frozen-at-sea processing insures a superior salmon.

"When very fresh fish are frozen at sea like ours are," Donald says, "the final product can be equal to the best on the market."

Fresh seafood is coveted in the Upper Midwest, but once a fish is caught, the clock starts ticking on its freshness. Fish can sit on ice in the boat for several days before it gets to port, and who knows how long it sits waiting before it actually gets jetted this far inland?

But the Nerka is a freezer-boat, so within two hours of being caught and having been cleaned thoroughly, the fish is placed in the fish hold refrigerated to -35 degrees Fahrenheit. "There's virtually no breakdown," says Donald. "Physiologically speaking, the fish doesn't even know it's dead yet."

This is because Joel gets the core temperature of the salmon down to well below -20 degrees Fahrenheit within four to six hours, and, at that temperature, key enzymatic processes that affect texture and taste are avoided. "By the time the core gets to -20, we've essentially stabilized the fish," says Donald, "and no fresh fish gets to market in that same amount of time."

Furthermore, because Nerka relies so heavily on the pristine quality of its salmon at the moment of freezing, the crew handles each fish with extreme care, using hooks and lines, not gill nets (gill nets bring in more fish but can cause bruising when fish are removed from the net and crushing when the fish are unloaded in large cargo nets).

"Because of that, in most cases," Donald says, "our fish will be superior to fresh fish."

When the boat's freezer has been filled with its quota of salmon, the season closes, or the weather turns, Joel and the crew sail back to Sitka, Alaska (Nerka's home base and "the trolling capital of world") and unload the catch into one-thousand pound totes. The totes are then fork lifted into freezer vans, which are barged to Seattle, and then trucked to cold storage in Bellingham, Washington. From there, the salmon are shipped to Co-op Partners Warehouse in St. Paul.

"Once frozen," Donald says, "they remain frozen until the Wedge thaws them. There's virtually no breakdown, and our frozen-at-sea salmon are virtually impossible to tell apart from fresh."

FAO, the United Nations food and agriculture organization agrees. "Sea-frozen fish, properly handled between landing on deck and loading into the freezer, when thawed are undistinguishable from fresh fish kept in ice for a few days."

"We're providing a premiere health food rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which research has shown to have many significant health benefits," Donald says. "It makes our work very satisfying."

Fish Forever

Healthy, yes. Tasty and "fresher than fresh," sure. But is wild-caught fish a sustainable food? Top chefs swear by wild fish, since its flesh is leaner and doesn't taste of artificial feed and chemicals. But as the last truly wild food in the world, can the earth afford to develop a taste for sea-caught fish?

These questions were driven home on the day this article was written, when a chilling study was released in the journal Science, one that looked at 1000-year trends in ocean diversity and the sustainability of fisheries worldwide. According to Dr. Boris Worm, lead author of the paper, "Twenty-nine percent of fish and seafood species have collapsed, that is, their catch has declined by ninety percent." The paper concludes, "If the long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse... by 2048."

Donald Powers mentioned the study in our conversation and noted that, after a two-year study of its own, London's independent Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified the Alaskan salmon fisheries as sustainable. Donald says this is due to careful restocking, strict quotas, and Japanese fishing boats retreating to their side of the north Pacific. His own experience confirms the MSC's findings.

"It used to be, early on in my fishing career, there were days I'd catch nothing," he says. "That's inconceivable now. You can't not catch fish." The first 34 years, I was not a great king [salmon] fisherman. I don't think I had over 50 in a single day, but, in my last year, we averaged 66 Kings a day. 1976 was the first year I caught 100 cohos in a day. Now, if you don't do at least that well almost every day you're in the wrong spot. It's been an amazing thing to watch over the years."

For the Salmon Lovers

This year, Nerka will market about 47,000 pounds of fish (they buy from two other freezer-boats to meet market demand). Donald says, "This was our biggest year yet."

A good year, indeed, to have their biggest year. California's King salmon was virtually non-existent this summer, leaving Alaska to dominate the market in 2006. "There was great competition for product," Donald says, "so that drove the price of Kings significantly higher than it's ever been before. Cohoes went up, too, but not nearly as much. I think the prices are as high now as they've ever been." What's more, prices might stay high until next year, depending on supply.

But Nerka Frozen-at-Sea's prices aren't following the meteoric rise. Donald Power is selling his salmon to the Wedge at as low a price as he can in order to keep his clients loyalty. He believes that a long-term relationship with his customers is more important than short-term gain. With the Wedge buying such a large volume at one time he felt able to offer the fish at a small discount as well.

"Don has chosen to base his prices on what he needs, not what happens on the open market," says Aaron Nytroe, the Wedge's Meat and Seafood Manager. "His pricing is great for us. A great price for salmon lovers. Plus, you can taste that high quality. It's like buying it off the dock."

Because the co-op bought so much Nerka Frozen-at-Sea salmon - over 11,000 pounds - this affordable, sustainable fish should be available at the Wedge, well into 2007.

Season's End

Meanwhile, back on the Nerka, it's Kings and cohoes, practically 'round the clock.

"It essentially never gets dark in the summer and stays light until 11 pm up there. Fortunately fish don't bite in dark," Donald says, "so you do get a few hours sleep."

Joel will be in his "office" for 21 hours a day, from July 1 until his King salmon quota is caught, then a second King salmon season opens for 5 days in August. He finishes the year on cohoes, which he catches all summer long, and puts the boat away for the winter.

"In mid-November," Donald says, "he'll fly to California where he'll be catching Dungeness crab, and working crew on another boat. Then in the spring, he'll fly back up to Sitka, Alaska, and work on the Nerka, getting it ready for the next season, and participating in the end of the winter fishery. He'll go up in March probably, and then in July, King season starts all over again."

It's probably a strange rhythm to most Wedge shoppers; we're more familiar with farms and orchards than freezer boats and midnight suns. But it's a rhythm that salmon lovers will appreciate joining - sustaining the Nerka's seasons, in our distant but important way.