Bristol Bay seafood processors pay millions of dollars to fishermen for premium sockeye.
Companies make sure they’re getting their money’s worth by using college students to keep fishermen honest.
Maddie Vancuren practically dives halfway into a bag filled with hundreds of sockeye. to find the coldest ones in the batch.
“I will literally have blood in my hair after the end of this, (which) really doesn’t gross me out at all,” after she said.
She’s one of the many quality control technicians — mostly college students or in their early 20’s — hired for the summer to assess the salmon being sold to seafood processors in Bristol Bay.
Vancuren checks the sockeye as boats drop them off after a day of fishing near the Naknek River. Whenever a boat pulled up, she greets them with a standard list of questions: “Bled? RSW? Floating?”
She then examines a sample of the boat’s catch to sees whether the fish were stored in water or whether they were bled.
She also checked the salmon’s temperature.
Going through a batch she called out the temps,“39. 38. 37.” Then admired the fishermen’s work, “they are doing a really good job.”
Fishermen can get quality bonuses from the companies they’re selling to if sockeye meet certain standards assessed by the technicians.
“They (fishermen) kinda look at us like the cops a little bit,” she said. “Some of them, you know, these people are getting so much money or not by what I’m writing on this piece of paper.”
The company Digital Observer employs the majority of the QC’s in the region.
A lot of money is spent on getting the highest quality of salmon in Bristol Bay, founder and owner Mark Buckley said.
“This industry is paying fishermen tens of millions of dollars a year in quality bonuses.”
Historically, Buckley said Bristol Bay processors and fishermen didn’t make it a priority to keep the fish they caught “fresh.”
He can attest to that from his own personal experience as a fisherman.
“When I was on the boat and I wanted a fish for dinner I would pull a fish off the top of the brailer,” he said. “I wouldn’t even reach down a few inches. We’d sell them to the companies but not eat them ourselves.”
For decades, fishermen crammed sockeye they caught into unrefrigerated spaces for hours.
Then they’d head to the canneries where the salmon would be stuffed and cooked in cans.
Around the early 2000’s things started to change.
The Bristol Bay salmon market began transitioning from canning sockeye to selling fillets, which meant processors needed better meat.
“You can’t sell a badly beat up fish as a fillet. It just doesn’t work,” Buckley said.
Companies started paying fishermen to chill their fish, in ice or cold water, and bleed them to prevent bruising.
These improvements dramatically raised the quality of the fish coming out of Bristol Bay.
To ensure processors get their money’s worth, they use quality control technicians on their tenders to keep fishermen honest, which sometimes can be a bit of a challenge.
“I’m a longtime Alaska Fishermen myself,” Buckley said. “I fished here in the bay for 22 years. I can say this with a fair bit of authority — fishermen lie. We all will stretch the truth on occasion.”
Buckley said most fishermen have adapted well to the changes for the most part.
“No one is holding a gun to their head to do these things,” he said. “It’s all because they want the extra money.”
Back on the boat, Vancuren finishes up her shift. It looks like the fishermen had a good day, she said.
“They had a lot of fish today. People were coming in with 18-20 brailers. So popping day.”
With that, she’s done with work until more boats begin to line up with their hulls hopefully packed with pristine Bristol Bay sockeye.
