North Pacific Focus 2017 Winter Edition by National Fisherman

WINTER EDITION 2017

Presented by

OUR TOWN: NAKNEK

Set to work

SET FOR LIFE

BOATBUILDING \ AQUABUS TAYLOR HAULS HEAVY LOADS GEAR SHIFTS \ BOOT CAMP GRUNDÃ&#x2030;NS GETS IN THE GAME

Charlie eSS

DEPARTMENTS 2 PILOTHOUSE LOG 4 TIDINGS 5 CALENDAR 6 INDUSTRY WAYPOINTS 7 FISHERPOETS 8 SEASON SUMMARY 10 OUR TOWN 12 ON THE MARKET

KoDiaK MaritiMe MuSeuM

taylor ShellfiSh

Doug Stewart

WINTER 2017

FEATURES COLUMNS

GEAR SHIFTS

ON THE HORIZON Review the regulations

Grundéns enters the boot market and hopes to set a new standard.

15 ON THE HOMEFRONT An injury inquiry

16 THE LONG HAUL When ice is the enemy

20 BOATBUILDING: THE AQUA BUS Washington’s Taylor Shellfish launches a new hull to carry crews and oysters.

24 ICYMI: PACIFIC MARINE EXPO

A recap of the best events and biggest news from our 2016 Seattle show.

YOUNGBLOODS Meeting the Jordans

30 THE EARTHQUAKE BOAT The Thelma C tells a story of the survival and resurgence of fishing in Kodiak.

WINTER EDITION 2017

ALSO

Presented by

OUR TOWN: NAKNEK

Set to work

SET FOR LIFE

35 36

AD INDEX BOATBUILDING \ AQUABUS TAYLOR HAULS HEAVY LOADS

IN FOCUS

GEAR SHIFTS \ BOOT CAMP GRUNDÉNS GETS IN THE GAME

Cover: Harry Moore and his daughter Hannah in Naknek, Alaska Charlie Ess photo

WINTER 2017 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS

PILOTHOUSE L LOG

RIPPLE EFFECT W

ith a new administration at the helm in Washington, the possibility of perching a metals mine over the headwaters of Bristol Bay is back on the table. In an op-ed for the Alaska Dispatch, Pebble CEO Tom Collier heralded the work the corporation has done to address the concerns of Alaska residents, the thousands of fishermen who make their living in the shadow of the potential mine and its caustic byproducts, and the millions of consumers who rely on Bristol Bay’s pristine rivers to welcome back the world’s largest wild salmon run year after year. Collier claims his corporation has “developed ways to substantially reduce the initial development footprint,” “advanced plans to provide a financial interest in the mine to residents of the region” and “meaningfully enhance[d] environmental safeguards” (which only leaves me asking, “How exactly?” We can only take the corporation’s word for it until they file a plan, but we’ve been waiting more than a decade for that so far). Footprint, safeguards and cash flow are all critical components to the mine’s producers, as they relate to their bottom line in the extraction of this resource. But the bottom line for the Bristol Bay salmon fleet and other local residents who rely on those salmon returns is not just what happens now but what happens 50 years from now when the mine is no longer operating, Pebble Corp. no longer exists, and there’s a problem with maintenance of one of the toxic byproduct ponds? The biggest disconnect between these two sides is not that Pebble hasn’t done enough to make the project appeal to the local community. Jobs and infrastructure are a fine lure. The problem is simply perspective. Are you in Alaska for a fling or to start a long-term relationship? An extractor who mines a finite resource looks at their job differently than someone who extracts a potentially infinite resource. Finite resources are found in many places in small amounts. This makes the harvesters somewhat nomadic.

PUBLISHER EDITOR IN CHIEF ASSOCIATE EDITOR BOATS & GEAR EDITOR ART DIRECTOR ONLINE EDITOR

PRODUCTION ASSOCIATE

Jerry Fraser Jessica Hathaway Samuel Hill Jean Paul Vellotti Doug Stewart Ashley Herriman

Dylan Andrews

They don’t need to put down roots where they work. In the same way, a one-off greenhorn fisherman is just there to survive the season and take home a check. The short-termer just needs to connect enough to get in and claim their share, knowing they JESSICA HATHAWAY will be gone when the Editor in chief season is over. What incentive do they have to build relationships and a good reputation with the rest of the crew if they know they never need to work with them again? The captain, on the other hand, has a bigger responsibility to manage the boat as a whole, the crew, the resource — they all contribute to the bottom line of his or her business and require constant consideration of the future and potential pitfalls. When your resource is bountiful and potentially infinite, relying almost entirely on the health of the environment in which it breeds, you have every incentive to ensure that environmental threats are managed with a view to the far-flung future. This is why critics of Pebble ask simply (and repeatedly), “What is the advantage of risking the infinite salmon resource for the short-term gain of the metals resource?” There will always be another greenhorn walking the docks. This is not the only pebble on the beach. Is it worth the risk of trading forever for now?

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www.divbusiness.com “Your Success is Our Business” Producer of Pacific Marine Expo and the International WorkBoat Show

NORTHWEST Susan Chesney / schesney@divcom.com Tel. (206) 463-4819 • Fax (206) 463-3342

Theodore Wirth, President & CEO Michael Lodato, Executive Vice President

GULF COAST Jeff Powell / jpowell@divcom.com Tel. (207) 842-5573 • Fax (207) 842-5611

Diversified Communications 121 Free St. • P.O. Box 7437 Portland, ME 04112-7437 (207) 842-5500 • Fax (207) 842-5503

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North Pacific Focus, Winter 2017, Vol. x, No. x, is published quarterly by Diversified Business Communications, 121 Free St., P.O. Box 7438, Portland, ME 04112-7438. READERS: All editorial correspondence should be mailed to: National Fisherman, P.O. Box 7438, Portland, ME 04112-7438.

NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / WINTER 2017

EYES ON THE HORIZON YOUR PASSION: harvesting Alaskaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wild seafood. OUR MISSION: making sure the world demands it.

While you spend time working on your boats and gear to prepare for the season ahead, we are also looking beyond the horizon, developing new markets and maintaining relationships with your customers in the U.S. and overseas. Building global demand for Alaska seafood sustains fishing families and communities for generations. The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute team is proud to be on deck with you. www.alaskaseafood.org

Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute

TIDINGS

Bristol Bay

Juneau

NEWS FROM THE WEST COAST & ALASKA

Columbia River Heceta Head Coos Bay

ungeness crab fishermen in Oregon had struck a deal with processors in early December, agreeing to a starting price of $3 per pound. But just before Christmas, processors reneged on the deal, dropping the price to $2.75 per pound for fishermen in southern Oregon and northern California. This didn’t sit well with crabbers, so they tied up in protest, triggering a coastwide strike of boats from Southern California to Washington. The whole strike lasted 11 days until fishermen and processors agreed to a price of $2.875 per pound at a meeting facilitated by the Oregon Department of Agriculture on Jan. 6. The original price agreement in Or-

egon came after the season was delayed in most of the state because of high levels of the neurotoxin domoic acid. This was the second year in a row domoic acid led to delays.The season opened officially on Jan 1. But domoic acid struck again during the first week of February. On Thursday, Feb 2., Oregon fisheries officials announced the closure of the commercial crab fishery from the north jetty of Coos Bay to Heceta Head as a result of elevated levels of domoic acid in one crab sample tested by the state. Restrictions on Dungeness crab harvesting in the closed area will be lifted when test results allow. — Samuel Hill

Pebble Mine angst renewed with Trump administration

tors eager for a stake in the project. Many believe Scott Pruitt, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, will reverse the agency’s 2014 veto of a mining permit under the Clean Water Act. Alaskan fishermen and residents were quick to reiterate their opposition to the mining project. “The Pebble Partnership has proven yet again the desperate measures they are willing to go to try and resuscitate the Pebble Mine. In the last decade, they’ve broken every promise, misrepresented, and harassed the people of Bristol Bay time and time again,” said Alannah Hurley, executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay. The Pebble mine project continues to face widespread opposition, including more than 65 percent of Alaskans and 80 percent of Bristol Bay region

environmental ProteCtion agenCy

nvestments in Northern Dynasty Minerals, the sole Canadian-owned investor of Pebble Limited Partnership, have more than tripled since the U.S. election amid speculation that the new administration will allow the stalled Pebble mine project to move ahead in Alaska’s Bristol Bay. In midJanuary, the Va n c o u ve r - b a s e d company drummed up $32.4 million in a secondary share offerAn aerial view of the ing to invesBristol Bay watershed.

NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / WINTER 2017

SuSan ChamberS

Dungie crabbers strike for better prices

Domoic acid continues to cause closures on the West Coast.

residents. “Opposing Pebble Mine is about protecting American jobs and a global supply of seafood,” said Melanie Brown, a member of Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay. “For years, commercial fishermen from Bristol Bay, Alaska, and the nation have spoken up, saying that they do not want the world’s greatest sockeye fishery harmed by Pebble.” — Samuel Hill

Oregon votes to break from Columbia River salmon pact

regon fish and wildlife officials split with their counterparts in Washington on a major salmon management decision for the Columbia River commercial fleet. For 99 years, the dual Fish and Wildlife commissions have co-managed their

SuSan ChamberS

shared territory. On Friday, Jan. 20, the Oregon Fish & Wildlife Commission opted out of a 2012 agreement to phase out gillnetting on the main stem of the river by 2017. The plan was to reserve fishing on the main stem for recreational fishermen and sequester commercial fishermen to fishing the side channels, ostensibly in an effort to preserve salmon stocks. The policy laid out a four-year transition period with full implementation by Jan. 1, 2017. But it left room for modifications. Under the Oregon commission’s new plan, 80 percent of spring and summer wild king salmon quota will be reserved for recreational fishermen, while the remaining 20 percent would be commercial quota. Only tangle nets will be allowed on the main stem in the spring, with large-mesh gillnets allowed in the summer. The commercial fleet will be allocated 34 percent of the fall king salmon quota, with the remaining 66 percent going to the recreational sector. Washington’s commission voted in mid-January to implement most of the key provisions of the dual-management policy but delayed the sport sector’s allocation of 80 percent of the fall king salmon quota. The original plan designated 80 percent to recreational interests in 2017. Washington’s new plan steps up the sport quota to 70, 75 and

Oregon’s Fish & Wildlife Commission voted not phase out gillnetting.

80 percent over the next three years. The updated policy also would allow mainstem commercial gillnetting for upstream fall king salmon, but calls for improved monitoring. The conflicting decisions will likely result in each side of the river being managed under different commercial fishing regulations, which hasn’t been the case since 1918’s Columbia River Compact was ratified. — Jessica Hathaway

Alaska Fish and Game hopeful about budget woes

s lawmakers convened in Juneau for a January meeting, Alaska’s fishing industry sees a glimmer of hope that its budget won’t be gutted again. Under Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget for FY18, the commercial fisheries division of the Alaska Department of

MARCH March 20-24 Alaska Board of Fisheries Meeting Coast International Inn 3450 Aviation Ave. Anchorage, AK www.adfg.alaska.gov

March 30-April 1 ComFish Alaska 2017 Kodiak Harbor Convention Center Best Western Kodiak Inn 211 Rezanof Drive W. Kodiak, AK (907) 486-5557 trevor@kodiak.org www.comfishalaska.com

To list your event in North Pacific Focus, contact Samuel Hill at shill@divcom.com or (207) 842-5622.

APRIL April 3-11 North Pacific Fishery Management Council Meeting Hilton Anchorage 500 West 3rd Ave. Anchorage, AK (907) 272-7411 www.npfmc.org

April 6-11 Pacific Fishery Management Council Meeting Hilton Vancouver Washington 301 W. 6th St., Vancouver, WA 98660 (360) 993-4500 www.pcouncil.org

April 8-9 Bodega Bay Fisherman’s Festival

Fish and Game reflects a 0.3 percent increase to $70.7 million. It’s a big relief for an industry whose oversight budget has been slashed by more than 30 percent over two years. “All regions show slight increases,” said Tom Gemmell, executive director of the Halibut Coalition in Juneau. “It was a nice surprise this year to get a little bit of a plus up.” Fishery management offices in the Central, Westward and Arctic-YukonKuskokwim regions show budget increases of less than 1 percent, and Southeast’s proposed budget boost is 1.7 percent. One component of the fish budget that could take a 0.7 percent hit is at statewide management headquarters in Juneau. “The budget over the years has gone back and forth between what’s run out of the central office in Juneau and by the regional supervisors. Most recently, they’ve tried to identify projects in the specific regions. However, there still are statewide things like the genetics laboratory that have to be funded,” Gemmell explained. The governor’s budget also proposes to cut back on so-called test fishing in which a portion of fishermen’s catches are used to fund critical management tools such as salmon counting towers and weirs. Those receipts totaled nearly $3 million in FY16. — Laine Welch

Bodega Bay, CA info@bbfishfest.org www.bbfishfest.org

MAY May 7 Seattle Fishermen’s Memorial Service Fishermen’s Terminal, Seattle (206) 782-6577 info@seattlefishermensmemorial.org www.seattlefishermensmemorial.org

May 7 Blessing of the Fleet Newport Historic Bayfront, Newport, Ore. Contact: Newport Fishermen’s Wives P.O. Box 971 Newport, OR 97365 (541) 574-5555 www.newportfishermenswives.com

Westside Park, Westshore Road WINTER 2017 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS

INDUSTRY WAYPOINTS The U.S. Secretary of Commerce declared nine West Coast fisheries official fisheries disasters in January and opened the doors for federal relief. Dungeness season was worth $37.6 million at the dock, far less than the average $60 million of recent years.

• The Alaska Seafood Marketing Instituted hired Jeremy Woodrow as the organization’s new communications director. Woodrow will oversee ASMI’s national communications program, which is run from ASMI headquarters in Juneau, Alaska. He previously worked as the communications officer for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, where he led all internal and external communications for the department. He also worked with ASMI as an intern in its communications program and with ASMI’s former Jeremy PR agency SchiederWoodrow mayer and Associates Alaska. Woodrow has a bachelor’s degree in public relations and advertising from Northern Arizona University.

throughout the state and beyond,” said UFA President Jerry McCune. According to the fact sheet, which is based on data from the fiscal year 2015, the industry provided more than 60,000 direct jobs, and thousands more indirectly; 6,924 Alaska residents fished a commercial permit; Alaska fisheries ex-vessel income is around $1.8 billion and the industry contributed more than $250 million in taxes and fees to the state, municipalities and state and federal agencies.

• The United Fishermen of Alaska released an updated set of fishing data sheets for Alaska communities with the aim of providing comprehensive information and statistics to help raise awareness of the importance of the commercial fishing and seafood processing industry in the state. “Due to the wide range of state and federal agencies involved in fisheries, it is challenging to understand the many different positive benefits that Alaska’s fisheries provide 6

NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / WINTER 2017

NOAA

The 2016 Gulf of Alaska pink salmon fishery was declared a disaster.

The 2016 Yurok Tribe Klamath River king salmon fishery was also declared a

• Icicle Seafoods CEO Chris Ruettgers resigned from his position to pursue other career opportunities on Jan. 30. Ruettgers was Icicle’s executive vice president of strategy and corporate development from 2011 until he was appointed to the CEO role in April 2015. Pal AngellHansen, a senior executive with Chris Ruettgers Icicle’s parent company, Cooke Aquaculture, will assume the interim leadership position of chairman. • Vigor and Maritime Works jointly announced plans for an innovative training program to increase the number of Alaskans employed in the maritime sector.

disaster in California. In Washington, fisheries disasters included the 2014 Fraser River Makah Tribe and Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe sockeye salmon fisheries, the 2015 Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay nontreaty silver salmon fishery, the 2015 Nisqually Indian Tribe, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe and Squaxin Island Tribe South Puget Sound salmon fisheries, the 2015 Quinault Indian Nation Grays Harbor and Queets River silver salmon fishery, the 2015-16 Quileute Tribe Dungeness crab fishery and the 2016 ocean salmon troll fishery.

The program, called Advancing Alaskan Workers, will offer structured on-the-job training, leading to industry-recognized credentials and family wage careers. “The maritime sector holds great promise for the future of our state,” said Doug Ward, director of Shipyard Development at Vigor. “To realize that promise, we must have a stable, best-inclass Alaska resident workforce, which will enable us to win more contracts and in turn provide a steady flow of work for our community.” • The 2017 Bering Sea bairdi tanner crab fishery was canceled after surveys indicated there were not enough females to risk even a reduced opener in the fishery.The fleet reported seeing plenty of crabs in the water, and that they were missed by summer trawl surveys. “There’s something of a disconnect between the scientists and fishermen,” said Tyson Fick, spokesman for the trade group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers. “We thought there were enough crab to warrant a small harvest of 4 million pounds, which would be about 4 percent of the mature male biomass. Others thought a more precautionary approach was warranted.”

ADF&G

Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker announced each of the fisheries included in the declaration had “experienced sudden and unexpected large decreases in fish stock biomass due to unusual ocean and climate conditions.” The 2016 Gulf of Alaska pink salmon fishery was declared a disaster after the expected salmon run failed to show up. In California, the 2015-16 Dungeness crab and rock crab fisheries were declared a disaster after the presence of high domoic acid levels delayed the season opener for months, foreshortening the season. The

FISHERPOETS The weight of scales SOPHIE ELAN Sophie Elan spent a couple seasons purse-seining for salmon in Southeast Alaska as a cook and deckhand. She lives in Port Townsend, Wash.

You saw her once. She flashed her back at the surface. A glimpse of scales churning the water. She climbed aboard and sat on the bulwarks with you and the boys. You handed her an almost-cold can of Rainer. Tiny golden bubbles tumbled down the side of her wide lips. Her tail, the colors of an oil-slick puddle. Pinks and greens and yellows cascading suddenly to a murky darkness when she moved. She told fantastic jokes and possessed a perkiness of parts one could only achieve from a lifetime spent in salt water. She left as quickly as she came. In port, people came by to congratulate you. They want…ed to hear how and where and why. Your captain retold her jokes to anyone who’d listen, but lacking the same ease and delivery, the laughter came on in sputters and starts. An old engine starting. Everyone just wanted her back. You scoured the boat for the dry scales she had left behind. You found some adhered to the hallway walls and a crispy one that snowflaked out of your boot. They sat weightless in your palm. Somewhere you read that the more you revisit a memory the less truthful it becomes. Maybe that’s where she was born. She hatched from an egg of hyperbole and glinting eyes. She nursed on the salt spray in unkempt beards and reached adolescence in the pubs where rum spilled dark and sticky on the counter. Her breasts emerged happily. They grew larger the farther ships were from port, from women, and wives. She was gratefully accepted among the non-fisherfolk. For only an enigmatic beauty like her could explain it all. Those far-away looks. That relentless nostalgia. And that deep, deep, deep, unknowable longing.

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WINTER 2017 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS

SEASON SUMMARY

Outlook

ALASKA FISHERIES

ALASKA BRUCE SCHACTLER USDA Food Aid Program director for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, running an Alaska herring project The herring market right now in Alaska and in the western United States is all about the roe, that’s the eggs. They’re harvested in the spring during spawning, and those fish are for the most part sent whole over to Japan where the roe is extracted and they’re sold in what 20 years ago was a luxury market. Very, very high priced product. Fishermen and processors in Alaska were making a lot of money, and it was a big deal. Since then the market has changed. Products have changed. Culture seems to have changed. The economy has changed. And because of that basically, at least to the fisherman, the price of the raw fish as it’s caught has dropped by 75 to 90 percent. There’s not very much

”

— Melanie Brown, BRISTOL BAY FISHERMAN

value left in that fishery. I’m a recovering herring fisherman myself. I did it for 30 years, and I can’t make any money at it anymore. And I thought that if we could figure out some other addition to the product forms that we use that maybe we could bring [the value of herring] up, which is, of course, going to create a lot more jobs. For example, all the fish that are processed in Alaska through San Francisco, those fish are sent overseas with the roe in them. Once the roe is extracted, those fish are used for a variety of things. A lot of them are used absolutely for food. We’re not getting the value out of that, and I thought that if there was some way for us to put it together there might be some way for us to add to the value of those fish by using the meat itself. We’ve basically figured out how, in Alaska, we could process this fish,

JONATHAN “JEB” D.X. TOWNE Chief Financial Officer for GlobalSeas’ pollock fleet We are excited to see how our newest vessel, the F/V Defender, will perform. She arrived on scene in the Bering Sea in B season 2016, but she still had teething issues to work through. We believe this newest vessel of its kind will perform efficiently and

Jonathan “Jeb” D.X. Towne

HERRING

POLLOCK

OPILIO CRAB

Chad Lowenberg

Jobs and way of life in Bristol Bay revolve around our wild salmon. This doesn’t change from one administration to the next and has nothing to do with copper or gold prices.

“

NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / WINTER 2017

Bruce Schactler

h we could ld process iit, h when how we could process it without having to recreate an entire industry around it. The next step is the marketing of the product now that the product is being produced. Last year for the first time North Pacific Seafoods up in Naknek actually commercially produced quite a bit of the fillets. It was sent off to a market they had. Now that we actually have the ability to do it, to produce a marketable product, I believe that we have to create the demand for that product, the awareness.

produce a great quality product. We will be keeping a close eye on her and the rest of our fleet. We are worried about the overall market. The strong dollar is depressing prices in foreign markets. There is also a lot of pollock from Alaska and Russia, along with excess inventories in Europe the market needs to absorb.

C CHAD LOWENBERG C Captain, F/V Arctic Lady, 133-foot Bender ccrabber out of Kodiak, Alaska “With a decline in the opilio quota and a cclosure in the bairdi season, there appeared to be p plenty of crab on the grounds. Although the crab w were tough for many to find, we had a safe and ssuccessful season. With the tragic loss of the F/V D Destination, our thoughts and prayers go out to tthe family and friends that the captain and crew lleft behind.”

SEASON SUMMARY WASHINGTON OREGON CALIFORNIA FISHERIES

Outlook

WEST COAST NICK JERKOVICH Owner and operator, 58-foot Pacific Raider, fishing for squid and sardines out of Ventura, Calif. The catching is not near anything that we would anticipate. We might have harvested 35,000 tons [out of 118,000 tons] since last April… That’s really low. W We’re going to attribute it to the El Niño. I would say if the catches are very poor, the price is the only thing that keeps the thing going, the fact that it’s $1,000 Nick a ton. Jerkovich I don’t think we’ve overfished this thing. I think it’s a function of the water temperatures, and we’ve dealt with some real unusual stuff. Like fish that should be way south are up here. Some red crab that you can see way down in Mexico has been up here. Even sports fish… black marlin that are never up here.

NICK MARENO General manager, Infinity Diving, a Bothell, Wash.-based geoduck harvesting company We’re diving up to 70 feet give or take with the tides. We’re a fully dive operation. We go out with a boat captain and a tender and two divers. We are one of the only year-round fisheries in Washington… So for our next year we feel comfortable. We have our purchaser and a good relationship

SALMON

SQUID

Everyone is standing down hoping they raise the [Dungeness crab] price back up to what they were paying.

“

”

— Dennis Gospodinovich OWNER AND OPERATOR OF THE F/V LAURIANNE

JAMIE WURTZ Operator, 58-foot Kona Rose, seining salmon in Southeast Alaska out of Seattle I know last year was for skinny for a lot of people, but we managed to make a pretty good season out of a skinny return. I see next year being an even better season. I’m pretty F/V Kona Rose optimistic. Last i a boat, b t so year was my first year running I think I’ve got a little bit of the nerves under wrap. Last year was actually good in a way because I didn’t feel like I was missing out on a huge load somewhere. I didn’t feel like I was in the wrong place too many times because there was no right place. We have to do a bit of net work. The boat is in pretty good shape. Last year we took the boat to Bellingham and went through it in early June and took off around mid-June. The net we’re going to do this winter at Dan Trawl. We’re going to get that done early.

Geoducks

i h them. h with Our operation is geoduck harvesting for the Washington state tracts. We work closely with the Department of Natural Resources and a purchaser from China.

DUNGENESS CRAB

GEODUCK

JOHN CORBIN Owner of the Dungeness crab boats F/V Southeast and F/V Buck and Ann out of Astoria, Ore. The strike has about 1,200 boats on the West Coast tied up. It’s unprecedented in its size. Every Dungeness crabber from Morro Bay, California through Westport, Oregon is tied up. At this point we even have the Quinault Indian Tribe coming in to tie up with us, which we’ve never had before. We’re united. All of the sources we have have indicated that the market for crab is good this year. The overall world market is good, and the F/V Southeast opilio quota is down, the king crab quota is down. We started at $3 a pound. That was a negotiated price and then all of a sudden the processors decided they wanted to drop it to $2.75, but we’d never gotten any justification as to why. We’re all looking forward to getting a fair price and going out and hitting the water, getting everyone back to work… We got about 1,200 boats on the West Coast. That equates to about 4,000 or 5,000 fishing families that are on standby right now. Then you’ve got all the processors in every port up and down the coast that have workers that aren’t processing crab. You have truck drivers that aren’t trucking crab and you’ve got so many people affected. There are probably 70,000 families on the West Coast here that are sitting idle and would like to get back to work.

WINTER 2017 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS

OUR TOWN

NAKNEK, ALASKA

QUICK LOOK at Naknek, Alaska

Doug Stewart

Bristol Bay gillnetters tied up as much as six deep on the docks waiting for the 2016 season to open.

POPULATION 544 year-round residents as of the 2010 census; the population can swell to more than 5,000 in salmon season.

Story and photos by Charlie Ess

here’s a rhythm to this Bristol Bay salmon town, a measured beat, that if you happen to catch it — or rather if it happens to catch you — you’re hooked. You can get to Naknek in the middle of June along with throngs of cannery workers and fishermen all crammed aboard small turboprops for a two-hour flight that lands in King Salmon. From there, it’s a 12-mile drive on a thin road that rises gently over the tundra and dips into creeks and small valleys. The sweet scent of alders graces the uplands, and as the miles tick down toward Naknek, you y

Hannah Moore picks subsistence catch before the commercial season opens.

NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / WINTER 2017

catch the first glints of sun reflecting off aluminum boats. And that’s when your heart starts beating. In the coming weeks, fortunes will be won and lost in these muddy waters. There won’t be much sleep when the run arrives — and when it peaks, there won’t be any sleep at all.The days and the nights will dissolve into one another, leaving the mind etched in waves, tides, mud, sandbars, salmon, more salmon, sore fingers, the money or not — and the memories. The year-round population of the town is 544, according to the census bureau, but in salmon season it swells by tenfold. One seafood processing company alone imports more than 700 seasonal employees. Everywhere there are hikers on the shoulders of the road heading to town. Some fishermen arrive early. They might be fierce competitors, cutting each other off to set their nets in the same vein of fish out in Naknek’s choppy waters. But in the preamble of the run, it is nothing short of a family reunion, when old friends find time for coffee and beer — and laughter. In the warmth of the sun they share the intricacies of favorite diesel additives, hydraulics, rigging, chillers and ice. They catch each other up on marriages, divorces, children, grandchildren, travel and investments. But you won’t hear of their favorite sets, on their favorite sandbars, on their favorite stages of the tide. There’s an unsaid rule about that.

YARDS There are dozens of boat storage yards around Naknek. Boats are trailered to the dock and launched and retrieved with a large dockside crane. PROCESSORS Alaska General Seafoods Copper River Seafoods Icicle Seafoods Nakeen Homepack North Pacific Seafoods Ocean Beauty Seafoods Peter Pan Seafoods Silver Lining Seafoods Trident Seafoods SHIPS SUPPLY & HARDWARE LFS Marine Supplies Naknek Trading Co. Ace Hardware Seamar Naknek FOR COFFEE D&D Restaurant Alaska General Seafoods has coffee and donuts for its cannery crew and fishermen at 10 a.m. and at 3 p.m. FOR BEER Fisherman’s Bar Red Dog Inn Hadfield’s Bar and Liquor Store

OUR TOWN The Fourth of July historically marks the peak of the sockeye sistence net (Alaska residents can set a short net to catch fish run out on the Naknek and Kvichak rivers. But when herring for the coming winter) near the Alaska General Seafoods dock arrived 10 days early last year, many fishermen surmised the has become a barometer of sorts. When the tides fall each day, sockeyes would follow suit; they booked their travel and ar- fishermen flock to the corner of the dock to watch him and ranged to have their boats ready to fish the last week in June. his daughter Hannah pick fish. Though catches hover around a The sockeyes had other plans, leaving fishermen with extra time couple dozen fish, a pick of more than 50 sockeyes the morning on their hands. of the 28th reverberates with optimism throughout the fleet. By day, the boatyards buzz with the cacophony of grinders, While newcomers express their elation to see the fresh fish, the jigsaws, worm-driven saws and power tools all of kinds, as crews old timers know subsistence nets sink when the run is on. use the time to make improvements to boats. “They’re not here yet,” says Moore. “When they arrive, you’ll In the final week of June fishermen listen with increasing in- smell the fish on the water.” tensity to their AM radios for the nightly Tides rise and tides fall in Naknek. announcements from ADF&G. With an They keep to a beat of their own and pay insufficient body of fish in the Naknekno mind to the plight of those attempting Kvichak District, fisheries biologists have to extract their fishy riches, for food or the fleet stand down tide after tide. As the for money. As the calendar flirts with June final days of June trickle by without an 30, those of us who’ve burned the brunt opener, old-timers and contemporaries of our vacation time in hopes of capitalshake their heads in disbelief. Greenhorns izing on an early run feel the sting. If the can only pick up on their vibes. fish are out there and the run is late, our Greg Anelon, a resident from the nearboats will be dry docked, and we’ll learn by village of Newhalen, has run his own about the high points of the season back boat out of Naknek since 1989 and rein the boredom of our offices or online. members a year when he’d put in 30,000 The update over the radio that night pounds of salmon before the first of July. sets up an air of immediacy among the Harry Moore, a drifter, who grew up fleet. For weeks some of us have waited; gillnetting the outer beaches of the Nanow the 2016 season stares us in the face. knek River since the ’60s can’t remember As the announcement trails off with news a year without fishing time in June. Ever. for other districts, captains begin firing No fish on the grounds can mean only up their engines. We’ve been rafted up, two things: The fish will arrive late, or six deep and tethered by thick lines to they won’t arrive at all. the dock. The boats on the outside In the aftermath of the deflating are the first to cast off the lines and news, deckhands pace the docks, cellhead out to anchor in speculation When they arrive, you’ll smell phones pressed to their ears, voices that the season will open the next rising and with their free hands ges- the fish on the water. morning. To stay the night would ticulating to an invisible audience. mean having the boat go dry in They’ve come north from the Pacific — Harry Moore, BRISTOL BAY FISHERMAN the mud on the low tide. Nobody Northwest, the Midwest, the East wants to chance that. So, we’re on Coast and all points between in hopes of getting a good hit and the move. Adrenaline surges as deckhands rush to the cleats, unpaying off bills. But they haven’t earned a single dime. There’s a wrap the lines and skippers chug away from the docks.The scent lot of explaining to do at home. of the mainland and its sweet alders dissolves to plumes of spent Seasoned fishermen, meanwhile, stand in tight knots down on diesel fuel as a hundred boats head out to wait for the word. the docks. They’ve seen seasons like this before — slow to start; Sure enough, ADF&G cracks the entire Naknek-Kvichak then the fish show up overnight. And they’ve survived seasons District open the next morning at 10. when runs have fallen flat. They’ve suffered through the poor Now it is upon us, the beat of the Naknek season. The mind prices and fishermen’s strikes of 1981, enjoyed the apex of the tries to tell the body to pace itself, but the body has a mind of Japanese demand and dockside prices of $2.75 a pound in 1988. its own when it’s time to fish. Gray waves smack the side of the They were here in 1995, when the fleet landed 20 million sock- hull.The net spools off the reel and into the rich gray water.The eyes in the Naknek-Kvichak District, and transient cash buyer- corkline bobs, and the net splashes with hits of fresh sockeyes. processors paid more than $1 per pound. They returned two In the end, the Naknek-Kvichak harvest will hit 13.5 million years later, in 1997, when poor ex-vessel prices and a weak run sockeyes — nearly double the 20-year average. But this is only the beginning. From up on the bridge of the Miss Gladys, Harry forever changed the demographics of the town. “Many of the permanent residents had to leave Naknek,” says Moore tilts his head to feign a coonhound on a fresh scent. “Do you smell that?” He yells to us with aplomb. “You can Anelon. “For the first time, fishing wouldn’t sustain them, and smell the fish on the water. They’re here!” they had to find other work.” But Naknek is nothing if not for its hope. Despite dismal reports from the test fishery outside of the district, Moore’s subCharlie Ess is the North Pacific Bureau chief for North Pacific Focus.

“

”

WINTER 2017 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS

ON THE MARKET The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute

at your service

Americans break 20-year streak ccording to NOAA’s Fisheries of the United States report, Americans increased seafood consumption by nearly 1 pound for a total of 15.5 pounds of fish and shellfish per person during 2015. This increase marks the largest jump in American seafood consumption in 20 years. ASMI-facilitated purchases of canned Alaska salmon by the U.S. Department of Agriculture are speculated to be responsible for more than a third of the increase. The United States is now the second-largest seafood consuming country after China.

iJustine features Alaska cod ouTube star iJustine released a recipe featuring Alaska seafood. The sponsored content is part of Alaska Seafood’s strategy to reach millennials with the message that Alaska seafood is healthy and easy to prepare. In just under one week, the Cook It Frozen! Alaska cod gremolata recipe featured on www.wildalaskaseafood.com has received more than 116,000 views.

Pacific Marine Expo hosts Town Hall n Friday, Nov. 18, ASMI Executive Director Alexa Tonkovich and McDowell Group Senior Seafood Analyst Andy Wink hosted a Town Hall meeting at the 2016 Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle. The presentation centered on the Alaska seafood market outlook and various ASMI marketing initiatives. A diverse audience of fishermen and industry members participated in the Q&A session. ASMI also distributed cookbooks and recipe leaflets, health and sustainability information, and Alaska seafood branded swag from its booth. The expo is an annual event that draws

NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / WINTER 2017

more than 400 exhibitors and is a great opportunity for ASMI to meet with Alaska fishermen and members of the seafood industry. Forks up in Grand Forks SMI Foodservice Manager Karl Johan Uri and Executive Chef Greg Gefroh from the University of North Dakota spoke to students in the newly remodeled Wilkerson Commons on Nov. 2 in Grand Forks, N.D. Students dined on Alaska snow crab, salmon, sole/flounder and surimi. During the dining period, Chef Gefroh gave a cooking demonstration while Uri spoke to the students about sustainable seafood, harvest methods and the benefits of a seafood-rich diet. Each year, this is one of the highest rated dining experiences on the campus of 14,000 students.

Frozen demos heat up sales fter a successful spring and summer 2016 series of Cook It Frozen! demos, National Seafood Month in October continued promoting Alaska cod and salmon in 12 retail chains throughout the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Rockies and Northwest states. The in-store demos and promotional materials generated an average sales increase of 40 percent in featured frozen Alaska seafood products in all retail locations.

Top chefs sample Alaska seafood SMI sponsored the third annual Global Culinary Innovators Association’s Culinary Combine in Atlanta from Nov. 13-16, 2016. This organization focuses on research and development for chefs at the top 200-400 ranked (by sales) foodservice chains, providing

an educational opportunity to learn, taste, create and form new networks. Chefs tried Alaska salmon poke, smothered crab garlic fries, Southern hot pollock sandwiches, cold and hot smoked salmon, cod plancha and pummelo, and spot prawn salad. Healthy kids seafood initiative he Culinary Institute of America’s Healthy Kids Initiative focuses on culinary insights and training for K-12 school foodservice operations. At the 2016 Healthy Kids Collaborative, 28 school foodservice leaders from across the country assembled in Napa, Calif., to discuss best practices for serving flavorful and quality food and beverages in our nation’s schools. Alaska seafood products and materials were showcased throughout the conference, at which ASMI was a participating sponsor. Pat Shanahan from the Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers also participated.

Nutritionists eat up Alaska salmon SMI’s domestic retail team attended the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo in Boston in October. The event attracts more than 10,000 food and nutrition professionals from around the country and is a perfect platform for sharing the benefits of wild Alaska seafood, as featured in our Feed Your Fitness and Swap Meat initiatives. Working from a corner booth, the ASMI team sampled 1,890 Alaska salmon salad sandwiches, a recipe from the new Feed Your Fitness brochure, featuring Olympians Ryan and Sara Hall. That piece plus Swap Meat recipe cards and nutritional information were distributed to attendees, including nutritionists and health and fitness writers and bloggers. While at the expo, the ASMI team connected with representatives from the Hello Fresh meal delivery service to discuss future partnership opportunities.

New Salmon Buyer’s Guide SMI produced a new Salmon Buyer’s Guide about Alaska salmon harvesting, processing, quality, and the commitment to sustainable seafood in Alaska. Members from the ASMI salmon and technical committees contributed to the revisions. The 20-page guide is available as a PDF on the ASMI website, it can be ordered from the online catalog.

Taking RFM into the future The Responsible Fisheries Management program continues to develop and receive positive recognition. Notably, High Liner recently announced that it will add the Alaska RFM to its toolkit of credible certification programs for wild seafood. Several major international retailers recognize Alaska RFM and other certification schemes that have benchmarked successfully to the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative. The RFM committee will continue working on a transition plan that includes an industry survey related to participation in a long-term funding strategy. The RFM committee is exploring the possibility of transitioning the program to an independent foundation with the goal of strengthening the program while still providing close collaboration between ASMI and RFM. Seminars promote Alaska in China his year, ASMI China hosted chef seminars in Qingdao and Hangzhou on Dec. 7 and Dec. 12 in collaboration with Sunkist Growers. Approximately 50 chefs and purchasing staff from highend hotels and restaurants were invited to each seminar. The seminars featured Alaska sablefish, cod, yellowfin sole, perch, sockeye salmon, herring roe and pollock roe. Seven dishes prepared during a cooking demo highlighted the exceptional quality of Alaska seafood. Participants dined on the seven courses and took home recipe booklets.

Japan gets lucky eggs SMI Japan promoted New Year herring roe through retailers Ito-Yokado, which operates 181 stores in Japan and 11 stores in China, and Aeon retail

group, which runs 625 stores throughout Japan. ASMI Japan provided demos for 38 Ito-Yokado stores and 50 Aeon stores to promote Alaska-origin herring roe during the year-end sales period. Teaching classes in Tokyo SMI Japan conducted a lesson on Alaska seafood at Akemi Elementary School (in the Tokyo area) for the annual handson class for parents and students. The seminar hosted 62 students, 53 parents and six PTA members.

UK launches We are Wild ith a focus on the wildness, nutritional value and versatility of Alaska seafood, the ASMI UK We are Wild campaign features a mobileoptimized salmon nutrition microsite. The team also held a session at London’s Ice Tank and created a digital recipe book.

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Spain seafood show spikes sales onxemar, Spain’s leading seafood trade show, took place Oct. 4–6, 2016, in Vigo. Seven U.S. exporters and two local distributors exhibited Alaska seafood products alongside ASMI staff from the Alaska seafood booth. The three-day event generated an estimated $20.93 million in on-site sales.

TRAINING THAT WORKS FOR YOU!

China seafood expo leads the way he China Fisheries and Seafood Expo is the largest seafood expo in Asia. This marked ASMI’s 20th year of exhibiting, offering a place for Alaska industry members to conduct meetings and sales. The ASMI China team led productive discussion and trade lead facilitation, while distributing samples of Alaska pollock roe and snow crab to the 25,000 attendees.

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ON THE HORIZON

Know before you go Markos Scheer practices commercial and admiralty law in Washington and Alaska with Williams Kastner & Gibbs, a full-service firm. He’s the president of the Northwest Fisheries Association, serves on the board of the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation and has worked in the seafood industry for more than 30 years.

BY MARKOS SCHEER

he drive for vessel upgrades and replacement is one of the foremost issues facing the Pacific and North Pacific fishing fleet today. The Vessel Safety Act of 2010 and the Coast Guard Reauthorization Act of 2012 changed the landscape in many ways. Foremost among them is a new series of regulations regarding vessel construction and safety for fishing boats operating in federal waters — outside 3 miles. New construction and major modifications occurring after July 1, 2013, on vessels over 79 feet are required to meet class and loadline standards. Some estimates have the cost of replacement of the aging fleet at 15 billion dollars, an extraordinary sum by any standards. Purpose-built vessels are often too expensive for up-and-coming fishermen. Many search from coast to coast to find the right boat at the right price, even if that means converting the boat for a new fishery. Many larger vessels were repurposed from a different trade,

“When considering a

Canadian hull for use a U.S. fishery, it is important to recognize the risks.

”

like OSVs from the Gulf of Mexico or retired U.S. Navy vessels. Another, though less common, source of U.S. fishing boats is surplus and purpose-built Canadian boats. These used vessels are typically far less expensive than U.S.-built hulls. In many cases, the cost differential for a Canadian hull is half or less that of a comparable U.S.-built boat. This transfer of Canadian vessels is not without restriction. Under U.S. federal law, only hulls built in the Unit14

NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / WINTER 2017

ed States are entitled to receive a coastwise or fishery endorsement from the U.S. Coast Guard. A fishery endorsement is required to engage in the trade of fishing. Coastwise endorsements are required to engage in the transport of goods between U.S. ports. For example, to tender fish in a U.S. fishery, the Coast Guard will expect the vessel documentation to hold both a fishery and a coastwise endorsement. However, there is a common workaround. Only vessels that are more than 5 net tons are required to be documented with the National Documentation Center and only the center issues endorsements authorizing vessels to participate in any particular trade. Using this exception, some owners will import a Canadian vessel that has a tonnage certificate that indicates the vessel is less than 5 net tons and then register the vessel with the state department of motor vehicles in the state where the vessel primarily operates. When considering a transaction that would result in the deployment of a Canadian-built hull in a U.S. fishery, it is important to recognize the attendant risks before making such an investment. Foremost among the risks is if the Coast Guard decides to review and do their own assessment of the tonnage. If the vessel is determined to be more than 5 net tons, the Coast Guard could require it to be documented. If it is required to be documented, it would be ineligible for a fishery endorsement, and without that endorsement could not be used for commercial fishing in any U.S. waters, effectively turning it into a yacht. This becomes a particularly relevant risk if the vessel is modified after the tonnage certificate is issued and the modifications result in a tonnage calculation more than 5 net tons. The second significant risk is more for the financier than the vessel owner. Because the Canadian-built vessel is

undocumented, it is also not eligible to be secured by a preferred marine ship mortgage. Federal statutory law provides protections for holders of preferred marine mortgages and their position relative to certain maritime liens that may subsequently arise against the vessel. The fact that the vessel is undocumented also means lenders on these vessels perfect their security interest in the collateral (the vessel, its equipment and appurtenances) through a UCC-1 filing, the same way interest is secured in other personal property. While this works with other personal property, where first in time for filing provides a first position on the collateral and all subsequently filed liens will be junior to that first filed position, maritime law turns this on its head. Maritime law is unique, because maritime liens “last in time, first in right” and can prime the lender UCC filing. These secret maritime liens can arise for necessaries. The 46 U.S.C. § 31301(4) defines “necessaries” as “includ[ing] repairs, supplies, towage, and the use of a dry dock or marine railway.” Courts have interpreted these provisions very broadly and can include everything from crew claims, moorage, fuel, food, and repairs to the vessel. Essentially, any service that is not paid in full at the time the service is provided to the vessel and aids in the furtherance of its voyage can give rise to maritime lien. Because the priority for these maritime liens is “last in time, first in right” they will likely prime the lender’s UCC-1 security interest and every dollar of a subsequent maritime lien will reduce the equity in the vessel available to satisfy the lender’s loan to the vessel. A large enough maritime lien, say for a serious crew injury or death for which there is no or inadequate insurance coverage can wipe out a lender’s interest in the vessel and leave them partially or entirely unsecured. For many it is a good investment. However, it is also vital that any lender or potential buyer of a vessel like those described above understand the limitations and risks involved before investing your livelihood into that operation. As humorist Sam Levenson said, “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.”

ON THE HOMEFRONT

Not flipping out Lori French is the founder of Faces of California Fishing in Morro Bay.

BY LORI FRENCH

he last time we chatted about crab boat safety, I told you about the FLIPP (Fishermen Led Injury Prevention Program) and why some of us were collecting the information on injuries. On our boat I had nothing to report, but then it seemed my Old Man of the Sea is trying to make a liar out of me. Last June he gave himself a hernia in

“There were 65 injuries reported in our survey

in 2014-15; of those, 36 limited fishing time.

”

one of those “I probably shouldn’t do it this way, because I could hurt myself ” moments. He pulled one way, and the boat rolled, and pop. So that put him out of commission for the summer. (And around home all long summer.) And then a month or so ago he smashed

his pinky finger. His brother was tossing a box of bait down to him, and when he caught it, his hands moved, and the bait box smashed his finger on the bait chopper. When he showed me his smashed finger, I gave him the proper amount of sympathy and then showed him my broken toe from my own “I probably shouldn’t do this but damn it was fun” moment. A couple of days later, he was playing basketball and sprained his thumb on the same hand — his left hand, his gaff hand, his shooting hand. He was actually more concerned about his basketball shot than fishing for a few days. Priorities, folks. And now you know what has happened on our boat, and I thought you might like to know the results of the survey many of you participated in. There were 65 injuries reported in our survey in 2014-15; of those, 36 limited fishing time. The main culprit was sprains and strains. I read that to mean: lift carefully. Something that I myself finally learned after a third back surgery. But there were other injuries, and not surprisingly 57 of the 65 total were on the back deck. Now I’m not going to preach to you — I have a husband for that — but the entire point of this survey is not to rework how we fish or create new regulations. The point is to look at how we fish, and figure out how we can

improve things, then fix them ourselves. We do not need any government interference, a.k.a. a desk jockey in a cubicle somewhere deciding that because he’s watched “Deadliest Catch” he knows how to make our world safer, when in reality he’s effectively never been out of Kansas (no offense, D.C. guys). Changes or ideas can be small stuff, like a knife in your pocket. I found the Old Man of the Sea lost his, and our youngest son didn’t like that a bit, so guess what Dad got for Christmas? How about your medical kits? I’ve mentioned before, ours was prehistoric. Something as simple as keeping a fresh tube of Neosporin on the boat can bring you out of the dark ages. Someone suggested a survival first aid class. I like that idea. Why not incorporate it into our safety classes? You know where you create a bandage out of the leaves of a sycamore tree? I may be exposed to too many reality TV shows. I get it, there are a few things we can’t change — weather, stupidity and the crabs crawling, but we can change how safe we make our world. So take a look at the results: blogs. oregonstate.edu/flipp and give us your feedback. Email Laurel Kincl at laurel. kincl@oregonstate.edu. Thanks for reading. Now get out there and make some money.

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THE LONG HAUL

Not all trips were easy Konrad Uri is one of the pioneers of the Bering Sea crab fishery and a 1981 National Fisherman Highliner.

By KONRAD URI

Bill Jensen

Editor’s note:This piece was written and submitted in the weeks before the loss of the F/V Destination. Our hearts go out to the families of those lost at sea.

t was the late 1970s, and I was running the F/V Pengwin, an ex-U.S. Navy ship — YO43 — converted to a crab fishing vessel by Flohr Metal Fabricators of Seattle. The vessel was stout (built to World War II military standards) and an excellent seafaring ship. We left Seattle with 200 crab pots aboard and headed for Dutch Harbor in early November. The weather was nice for the first three days and then turned cold, and the wind was blowing about 40-45 north-northwest

“Not all fishing trips were easy. But we

were fishing together as a family and in a fleet that treated each other like family.

”

as we crossed the Gulf of Alaska.There was no storm forecasted when we left Seattle, and this was in the days of single sideband radios, radar, VHF and a loran. We headed on toward Dutch Harbor, and it wasn’t long before we were jogging slow against the seas and starting to make ice.

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The Pengwin, an ex-Navy ship turned crabber, after avoiding a storm on the way to Dutch Harbor in the 1970s.

I went to lay down for a few hours and told the chief engineer to keep jogging slow ahead to keep the ice accumulation to a minimum. It wasn’t long after I hit the bunk that I woke up. I could feel the vessel banging hard against the swells. When I came to the pilothouse, the entire crew was there taking pictures — “Beautiful ice,” they said. I took the controls and immediately slowed the vessel and told the crew it wasn’t beautiful but deadly.There may have been some foul language. We jogged slow into it, but when daylight came, we were so heavy with ice that I decided it was too dangerous to keep jogging ahead. I turned her south-southeast and headed toward Hawaii to escape the storm. Another vessel running for Dutch Harbor was 40 miles ahead of me. He was in trouble with his stack of crab pots shifting, so he was going to turn before it and tighten the chains. I told him I was changing course and heading for Hawaii and that he should do the same. He said he thought if he tightened the stack he could make it to Dutch Harbor. That was the last I heard of him — a tragedy that I wasn’t fully aware of until we reached port. Antennas were iced up, and there were no reliable forms of communication between boats in such conditions. I had to go slow before it to the south for three days before the ice started to melt. We then turned north and headed for the Aleutian Islands. We followed them on the south side in the Gulf of Alaska until we came to Unalga Pass and then went into the Bering Sea. When we came around Priest Rock, my friend Bill “Hardtack” Jensen, running the F/V U.S. Dominator took a picture of the Pengwin as we passed each other. When we finally arrived in Dutch Harbor, it took us a week of hard labor and a steam cleaner to get the frozen crab pots off the deck. Once they were free of the deck, we hung them over the side in the seawater to melt the frozen block of ice out of the pots. Not all fishing trips were easy. But we were fishing together as a family and in a fleet that treated each other like family. I am thankful that this trip — on the fine vessel Pengwin — worked out for us and that our diversion to Hawaii saved the day.

YOUNGBLOODS

Heir Jordan Brendan Jones is the author of “The Alaskan Laundry.” He lives and fishes in Sitka, Alaska.

BY BRENDAN JONES

first ran across Karl Jordan courtesy of Half Price, a fellow sleeping on the settee in front of the woodstove on the Adak, my tugboat, which at that time was tied up at the north end of the transient float at Sitka’s Eliason Harbor. Half Price, an earnest friend of mine in threadbare Carhartts, was in the market for a wooden troller. His nickname was a result of his penchant for collecting packages of ground chuck with the glaring orange half-price sticker from the AC Lakeside store at the top of the harbor. Burger stacked like cordwood in our fridge and freezer. In the summer of 2012, he was kicking tires on boats. If I recall right, he had a bead on a troller abandoned by an outlaw known for tattoos on either side of his scalp — red to signal port, green for starboard. Except the colors were reversed. I had been working in the fall deckhanding for a sea cucumber diver, drywalling, roofing, using the money to fix my tug, a 100-foot World War II boat in need of TLC. I think of that summer as the summer of tar, much of it spent weedburner-in-hand, friends and I heeling down torch-down roofing to the deck like we were stomping wine grapes. I was sure someone could use a deckhand for the lucrative July 1 king salmon opener, the big moneymaker for trollers and deckhands alike in Sitka. And I could afford more torch-down. I had heard a guy was looking on the Sachem, a low-slung black and blue double-ender. When I walked down, the boat was running, but no skipper aboard — fellow in the slip beside him said he was at the store. A few minutes later I got a text from Half Price: “Met a guy in Crescent Harbor who’s looking for a deckhand. He’s got Easthope gurdies.” This reference to bronze Mercedes gurdies meant nothing to

me at the time, but Half Price knew a deal when he saw it. I diverted and went down to Crescent. And there on a wooden troller was a club-wristed fisherman with wire cutters in one hand as he stripped those fine gurdies of his. We sat in the galley, him on the edge of his seat as I told him about fishing with Spencer Severson on the Dryas, Grant Miller on the Heron, deckhanding for cukes. He nodded, anxious, I think, to return to his yellow legal pad filled with Things to Do. “Sorry to be in such a rush,” he said, “but I flew in from Bellingham last night on the late flight, and I’m trying to get the boat ready. Be down here at 4, and we’ll untie, and sleep on the water to be in good position for the opener the following day.” As I came to learn that opener and openers after, Karl’s operational speed is flurry. He has a Zen beginner’s mind, and is, by nature, unafraid. Thin-lipped, quick-eyed, a chest that reminds you of barrels sailors used to ship rum; he appears in a constant state of friendly desire. He once referred to himself as a Labrador, but I’d argue he underestimates his canniness. I’d say pit-collie mix. He is a very, very good man, one you won’t debunk on the water, or really anywhere. As I learned on that first trip, he began fishing at 4. His father, Eric Jordan, a living legend in the troll fleet who lately has taken to wearing glasses with frames thick enough to gaff a rockfish, whose name will be familiar to many as a trailblazer in the chum fishery and others, simultaneously responsible for protecting and killing many salmon over the course of his lifetime, grew up on a troller. Eric’s mother, Karl’s grandmother, was Marilyn Jordan George, author of “Following the Alaskan Dream: My Salmon Trolling Adventures in the Last Frontier.” She tells a story in that book of dragging her Iowa farmer father behind her in the troll boat so she can say she’s a second-generation troller. Which makes Eric a third and Karl a fourth. Thinking of Eric now (who is something of a foster father here in Sitka; he married my wife and I), I

remember the following troll season, summer of 2013. Pig-sticking pinks off the back of the Saturday with Karl. A sunny day, rainbows. Whales like popcorn on Chatham Strait, just outside Security Bay. It was on this day when I drank too much coffee and somehow matched Karl for speed pulling gear. And like that, he squinted into the sunlight and said, “Well, I guess you get 20 percent deckshare now, since you can keep up.” That trip we had put in a food request with our tender. The list of food (I swear I could taste the Chips Ahoy! Chewies with each fish I pulled) had gone missing. We ran lines deep and picked up halibut and ate them with cans of mandarin oranges. Karl messed up filleting a halibut, and that gave me no small pleasure. Our general rocket fuel of burrito wraps smeared with peanut butter and jelly that dripped out the end was used up; peanut butter and jelly scraped clean from the jars. Lopping tails off errant king salmon (probably some Columbia River hatchery fish) and sticking them in the Dickinson dusted with crumbled bouillon cubes, swirling mayonnaise and ketchup for sauce, making dumb jokes about “Rushin’ dressing.” Through that summer of starvation down there in Security Bay, I was trying to sell my first novel. Karl had a booster, and I set my phone on it. I was out pulling fish, keeping an eye peeled for sea lions, fish on every hook, troll poles prattling like dinner bells. Shade 45, the XM hip-hop channel on the deck speakers, and I was reciting over and over engine engine number nine, on the New York transit line, if my train gets off the track, pick it up pick it up pick it up, when Karl peeked out of the cabin and said, “Call for you from New York City.” He took over pulling lines, constant drumbeat of thumps in the landing bins as my agent told me that the book — about a woman coming to Alaska to fish — had sold to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for a goodly amount of money. “Does that mean you get to have action figures?” Karl said when I came back out on deck. Somehow, it was the perfect question, though I still don’t know why. WINTER 2017 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS

With a nonskid sole, one-piece design, and integrated rubber band, new technology is afoot at Grundéns.

Developed and tested on the open waters, a new standard in fishing boots is ready to hit the deck BY JEAN PAUL VELLOTTI

oel Woods is a fisherman’s fisherman. Speaking by phone just as he was pushing off for a 12-day offshore lobster trip on an 82-footer out of Portsmouth, N.H., he recounted some of the other fisheries he’s been working lately. “I’ve been scalloping and heavy trawling in New England, gillnetting in Virginia, caught salmon in Bristol Bay, and I was just up in Alaska,” says Woods. “So when they send me stuff, I beat it up and send my feedback. I fish hard.” The company Woods is referring to is Grundéns, and the current product he and his crew had an opportunity to evaluate is their new Deck Boss fishing boot. It’s a product that has been a long time coming, and hearing from a fisherman as versatile as Woods makes for honest, real-world feedback. It also helps that he was able to test the same pair of boots in the Bering Sea and now in the Gulf of Maine. The Deck Boss boot has the potential to be a game changer for the industry — it’s the

NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / WINTER 2017

very first time Grundéns has offered footwear — and the design and manufacturing process used is different than other fishing boots on the market. In the age of high-tech everything, it’s somewhat surprising the evolution of deck boots has been a slow march. Long gone are the nostalgic days of leather-heeled boots and sheepskin linings or Goodyear vulcanized rubber offerings for dorymen. The next industry bygone may very well be the traditional rubber boots that are commonplace among vessels today. That’s not a brand statement, but reflects a shift in gear manufacturing and durability. Traditional deck boots are manufactured by building up the lowers with layers upon layers of material that is baked in an oven to harden. That assembly is then attached to the upper with a band called foxing that seams the two together. It’s the foxing that most often fails, which causes a tear, allowing your feet to get wet.

Grundéns

GEAR SHIFTS

GEAR SHIFTS The Deck Boss boot introduces the Herkules Grip bottom and an insole that diverts moisture into a cavity in the heel called a bilge.

Grundéns

Grundéns President Mike Jackson oversaw the project, soliciting input from commercial fishermen.

concer ns about their catching in the gillnets and was looking for a toecap for extra protection. That toecap worked well in Alaska and New England for Woods, who doesn’t want to worry about kicking ice around as needed. But he, too, stressed the importance of grip. “Traction is so key; it can be life or death here.You have to be able to pivot and stop quickly,” he explains. To get it right, Woods tested at least four variants of the boots in different design phases. Getting into boots was a long process that took nearly seven years from design to retail channel distribution, recounts Grundéns President Mike Jackson, no stranger to wearing other brands of boots from his days as an Alaska crabber. With his personal knowledge, plus hearing from countless other fishermen with thousands of combined years of experience, Jackson knew Grundéns should be making a boot. But the final decision to proceed came from the most unlikely of places: the U.S.-Canadian border. “About eight years ago, my brother, who works for the company and also fishes, was coming back from Canada on vacation with his family. Coming into the U.S., the customs agent asked what he did for a living. When it was revealed that he worked for Grundéns, the disgruntled agent asked,‘How come you don’t make boots?’ “I thought it was a sign,” jokes Jackson, who oversaw the project personally. He wanted the boots to be manufactured in the United States, but admits finding the right manufacturer took

longer than expected. “When we do something, the expectation is that it has to be good,” he said. “The first process was to identify what we wanted to accomplish, and that was stability on a moving surface that is wet and has a lot of other gross things on it. We worked with four variations until we felt we had a superior traction design. Then there’s the functionality of the boot. You want it to fold down when you don’t need the whole upper. Lastly, when decks are awash, you want to prevent water from getting into the boot,” explains Jackson. This is accomplished using a 2-mm silicone band built into the upper, replacing bags of rubber bands or electrical tape commonly used by fishermen today. Andy Weise, an oysterman at Hama Hama Oysters in Lilliwaup, Wash., also was a product tester. Although working in 40-degree weather on the Hood Canal might not be the stuff of legends up north, Weise wisely states, “There’s no such thing as having a boot too warm during the winter.” To that end, the next variation of the Deck Boss boot will be insulated, but the design and manufacturing process should only take months, not years, because of the technology being used at the factory. “You can accomplish this with the same boot mold but by using a different scrim and by pumping it up with 3 or 4 millimeters of neoprene instead of just one-half millimeter of fabric. All the tooling is there in place,” says Jackson. Development of the insulated boots is, “going to be faster this time around, and we might actually have them for PME 2017, in time for the winter fishing season,” said a hopeful Jackson. Grundéns

Using a new process called injection molding, these boots have no glue to fail or foxing to fall off. Synthetic compounds in three harnesses are poured into the form, starting from the bottom up. Once the outsole is poured, five minutes or so later the midsole is poured with the second compound of a different hardness, and minutes again, an upper sole is poured. As the synthetics are extremely hot while this injection takes place, the boot needs to cool for a while afterward. Inside the boots, the company uses terms more familiar in naval architecture to describe a system of trapping moisture to help your feet stay dry. Two deck levels — an upper deck and a lower deck — work in concert to accomplish this. The lower deck sits on “pilings,” and “scuppers” drain water into a “bilge.” Above, the drier upper deck handles foot contours. And while it has its own foam insert, it also accepts any other insert of a fisherman’s choice, including orthotics. “It’s nice to see a fresh take on a historically low-tech item. I have flat feet, so I dropped in a pair of Superfeet inside my boots,” said Matt Aboussie, who promotes Grundéns and has also setnetted on Bristol Bay for 10 years. He also tested the product. While appreciating comfort, his biggest concern was how they might grip. “In this fishery, you have a lot of uneven surfaces, from aluminum on decks to going on the beach a lot, which is all gravel.” Part of Aboussie’s feedback while wearing them for the summer fishing season was to make sure gravel didn’t get caught in the treads. He also had

Jean Paul Vellotti is the Boats & Gear editor for North Pacific Focus. WINTER 2017 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS

BOATBUILDING

AQUA BUS

Jean Paul Vellotti

Freshly launched and ready for delivery at Taylor’s Oakland Bay oyster upweller facility in Shelton, Wash.

Designed and built in-house by Taylor Shellfish, this crew transport hull moves quickly, handles chop and sheds water like a fish

hough the company keeps a relatively low national profile, Taylor Shellfish is the largest producer of oysters, clams, mussels and geoducks in the country. With well over 600 employees and shellfish beds spread out in multiple locations throughout the West Coast and Canada, this low-key, high-production organization puts an emphasis on a quality product and delivers year-round. And with so many species to harvest — all grown in different environmental conditions — the company has amassed 20

NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / WINTER 2017

BY JEAN PAUL VELLOTTI

something of the biggest little fleet in the West, numbering around 85 boats at press time (with more on the way). Each one has a specific role and a specialized design.The company makes this work by designing and fabricating in-house, everything from oysters cages to skiffs. The largest boats pick up cages of hand-harvested Pacific oysters with their deck cranes, using bridles attached to eyelets and a flotation ball that facilitates finding the bounty in the sweeping tides.

Smaller skiffs are loaded up with bags of Manila clams until the gunwales are nearly submerged. Various other boats deliver oyster seed from their upweller facility to the planting grounds. It’s a business that requires lots of manual labor, and that means transporting lots of crew members. It’s almost like a game of checkers — when a crew is finished harvesting one square, they move on to another, which may or may not be near where they just worked. In British Columbia at Fanny Bay Oysters, a company that Taylor owns and

INSIDE

TAYLOR'S AQUA BUS DESIGNER Chris Barker, P.E. OWNERS Taylor Shellfish BOATBUILDER Taylor Shellfish Fabrication, Brian Ohmdahl, manager Mostly cabin, the Aqua Bus keeps crews dry. The weight-forward design was balanced with big outboards.

DIMENSIONS 24' 9" X 8' 6" HULL MATERIAL 5086-H116 aluminum WHEELHOUSE MATERIAL 5052-H32 aluminum HULL THICKNESS 0.25" CABIN THICKNESS 0.125" DECK THICKNESS 0.1875" POWER TRAIN Twin Yamaha F-150-hp four-stroke outboards FUEL CAPACITY 110 gallons

Built for crew transport and up to 14 passengers.

NAVIGATION ELECTRONICS Full suite of Garmin GPS MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE 42 knots

Taylor ShellfiSh

AVERAGE CRUISING SPEED 30 knots

Taylor ShellfiSh

operates, two new aluminum boats were recently put into service specifically to transport the crew safely over long distances and in rough water to the oyster grow-out areas.

“The Government Wharf in Okeover Inlet is our central muster point,” explains Alex Munro, plant manager at Fanny Bay. “From there, it’s a little bit of a loop run. There are various sites, and the crew is spread out a little bit. But the boat makes moving crew more efficient. “It’s quite an improvement over our old open boats,” adds Munro, who said that each new so-called Aqua Bus replaces two to three older skiffs, which not only were a wet ride for the crew, but not as safe either, given the open design. Even still, transporting the crew in the new boats is based on weather conditions, and “always at the discretion of the captain,” says Munro. In-house welding teams worked in tandem, building both boats in unison.

Capable of holding 14 people, it’s a good thing the Aqua Buses offer a comfortable ride, as some of the oyster harvest locations, including those in Desolation Sound, are located an hour or more away from the wharf. Denman Island has a ferry, but it doesn’t run at night. So when the crew is working sites off those shores, the new boats can now bring the crew home, instead of being stuck out there overnight, sleeping in their cars. Although the Aqua Buses are working out nicely in western Canada, their design DNA comes from the most unlikely of places: Chesapeake Bay. “The basic hull started out as an open, wide skiff designed for intertidal use,” explains Taylor’s Chris Barker, a senior WINTER 2017 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS

BOATBUILDING Victoria. “I grew up on boats all my life, and I know what hull shapes will work for certain situations,” says Barker, who previously worked as an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Southern California. Adding to his instinct, the design also has a secret weapon. “The sharp bow entry divides energy at the waves and tucks it below the boat instead of on the side.” When the call from Fanny Bay came

Jean Paul Vellotti

mechanical engineer who is also their in-house designer. “I grew up in the Chesapeake and was influenced by boats with a shallow deadrise that can get into skinny water.” The first hull of this series of 24-footers was indeed built open for oystering at Taylor’s in-house fabrication shop. Somewhat similar to a boat you might find in a Mid-Atlantic aquaculture operation, it might seem odd that this design would work in the deep fjords north of

Garmin GPS and electronics aid the skippers at the helm.

Foss Maritime’s two full-service shipyards are equipped to take on any project from cost-effective repairs and maintenance to major conversions and new construction. With multiple dry docks and marine railways, cranes up to 90-tons, experienced teams of ABS- and DNV-certified engineers and highly skilled craftspeople, we keep your fleet moving forward.

Jean Paul Vellotti

the dock will see you now

in requesting a small crew boat, and with a hull design in-hand, Taylor’s fabrication shop went to work. Brian Omdahl, director of maintenance and fabrication at Taylor, was in charge of the project, which happened to be the first two boats built at their new boatbuilding facility, a massive structure in Shelton, Wash., that is currently housing a 50-foot deck boat under construction with inboard diesel power. Next to that, a smaller building serves as a covered space to complete the rigging, including engine installs, electronics and hydraulics. Omdahl’s team of welders went to work, laying out the boats side by side and building them next to each other as sister ships. Omdahl grew up in Shelton and is a longtime employee of the company, having worked in many different areas, including harvesting. With that broad base of knowledge, he was able to work some little details in the designs to improve the boat’s durability. Little things like welding a piece of pipe inside the bow eyelet and adding a secondary

always safe. always ready. www.foss.com/shipyards 800.426.2885 Details like nonskid tape on deck, a spotlight near water level and cabin venting go a long way.

NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / WINTER 2017

JeaN Paul VelloTTi

Taylor’s fabrication team uses their CNC machine to add a custom touch to the new crew boats.

Passing Seattle at daybreak on the maiden delivery from Shelton, Wash., to Victoria, British Columbia.

the Aqua Buses on the second leg of the journey, a course around 120 miles that took five hours complete.With full electronics, GPS and a spotlight, the boats made the journey safely. Because the boats were intended for being loaded with oysters, “The capacity was there; we just had to reconfigure it because of the added weight of the house forward,” says Barker, who also designed the huge, single-wall aluminum cabin on the Aqua Bus. One adjustment was to spec a pair of 150-hp Yamaha outboards that counterbalanced the weight forward. And as Fanny Bay’s team operates remotely and in cold water, the pair of motors provides redundancy versus a single, large outboard. The hull design is surprisingly slick, and the Aqua Buses can carry a load and cruise at 30 mph, pushing 3,500 rpm, thanks to some reworking of the fuel systems and prop adjustments. But when not loaded down, the boats can, “haul ass,” according to Omdahl who said during sea trials in Oakland Bay, Wash., they hit 42 mph. Although Barker admits, “any boat hull is a compromise,” his design has been met with great

Nyle Taylor

piece of aluminum under the deck cleat for strength should make a difference over the life of the vessel. “Now that I work in the maintenance side, I can put those needs into the new designs,” says Omdahl. With a crew notorious for being tough on equipment, Barker notes that he designs the “T-factor.” “I design for normal use and then double that,” he says, jokingly. That goes for not only boats, but for harvesting and processing equipment, too, which Barker designs and Omdahl oversees through construction and repairs. The sheer amount of external design consulting and modifications necessary for the fleet and crews was the ultimate reason for creating a division within Taylor for all new boatbuilding projects. “We came to the conclusion that we should do in-house design and fabrication because in this area, nothing is built specifically for the oyster industry,” explains Nyle Taylor, a fifth-generation member of the family business and farm coordinator. “The boats Fanny Bay were using weren’t built to withstand the amount of weather that we put on them,” says Taylor, who piloted one of the Aqua Buses from Shelton to Victoria, which was the first leg of their delivery. “We wanted to build boats that can withstand a beating.” The trip north put the design to a test. “We left at 5 a.m. and passed Seattle just at daylight. When we got into the Straits (of Juan de Fuca) it became a bit rougher.” The trip from Victoria to Fanny Bay was even rougher than that, according to Munro, who delivered one of

acceptance. acceptance So much in fact, fact that during Taylor Shellfish’s recent manager’s meeting, there were seven requests for variants of the little 24-footer, not including one with an aft pilothouse currently under construction. That acceptance is good news, as Omdahl says he is, “trying to upgrade the old boats and expand at the same time.” By all accounts, he’s in the right business to meet those goals. Jean Paul Vellotti is the Boats & Gear editor for North Pacific Focus.

An ASRC Company

WINTER 2017 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS

2016 PME ROUND UP

EXPO IN ACTION A look back at old home week — Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle

acific Marine Expo started with a bang this year and never slowed down. Clockwise from top left a bird’s-eye view of the busy floor; “Deadliest Catch” Captain Wild Bill Wichroski showing off the new Grundéns boot (see more on page 18); fisherman Sierra Anderson’s salmon collage; Patrick Dixon, one of the organizers of the annual FisherPoets Gathering as well as the minislam at the Expo; keynote speaker Bob Desautel; Chef Tom Douglas interviewing NF and NPF Editor in Chief Jessica Hathaway for Seattle Kitchen Radio; and last but never least, the blindfolded knot tying heat of the Fisherman of the Year Contest.

Fisherman of the Year title is yours to catch

Bob Desautel, president and CEO of Global Seas and Nina Fisheries, gives an animated keynote to a full house.

BY SAMUEL HILL

he Fisherman of the Year competition has become one of the longest running traditions of Pacific Marine Expo. The 2016 contest was no exception. The main stage was crowded with participants and onlookers, all entertained by co-hosts Sean Dwyer of “Deadliest Catch” fame and Jerry Fraser, National Fisherman publisher. The contest pits attendees against each other in the ultimate battle of fishing skills: mending a rim-racked net, accurately tying a set of knots (to simulate a 24

NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / WINTER 2017

Fisherman of the year Minh Pham with “Deadliest Catch” captain Sean Dwyer.

moonless night on the high seas, contestants are blindfolded) and splicing a line. Anyone can enter the competition, but only three fishermen can make it to the final round to demonstrate a skill that could save their lives one day. Experts say fishermen need to be able to

get into an immersion suit in a minute; some contestants have halved that time. The winner of each heat takes away $100 and the chance to compete in the survival suit contest for the title and a National Fisherman fleece vest. This year’s winner of the net-mending and rope splicing contest was Minh Pham of Seattle, and Brent Thompson of Seattle won the knot tying heat. Pham went on to take the survival suit race in 59.57 seconds to take the last Benjamin and the title of Fisherman of the Year.

2016 PME ROUND UP How is your crew using your data? BY KIRK MOORE

odern satellite communications make it possible to download in 1 minute a 30-megabyte video file at sea that once would have tied up the line for 15 minutes or more. But still there is the complaint: “It’s not fast enough.” When satcom providers at KVH Industries hear that from a customer, they analyze data usage. It’s not unusual to find fully half a vessel’s data demand is for non-operation use, said Steve Griffin, commerSteve Griffin of KVH cial sales manadvises on bandwidth ager for KVH. at sea.

In selecting a satellite service, “at the end of the day you’re signing up for a pipe, and how much you can put through that pipe,” Griffin said in a presentation Seattle’s Pacific Marine Expo. Flows through those pipes have grown exponentially. Growth in mobile data is projected to increase by a factor of 13 between 2013 and 2019. In the maritime sector, satellite data transmission has gone from a typical 3 megabytes to 5 megabytes per vessel in 2005 to 25 MB to 30 MB today, Griffin said. “Capacity does not necessarily equal speed,” Griffin said, because that is essentially determined by bandwidth divided by the number of active devices on board. It’s likely satcom technology will not keep pace with that demand indefinitely, and vessel operators need to have strategies for managing their maritime connectivity ad onboard networks. For fishing operators, that means using the technology on the operation side to maximum efficiency in a highly com-

petitive, highly regulated industry, Griffin said. “It’s all about efficiency… because that’s what’s going to make your company profitable,” he said. Part of that equation is crew who are “digital natives,” able to use the technology, and calling on it for their own needs — family calls, downloads of video and television broadcast programming for down time at sea. So operators need to identify their must-have data needs and use best management to keep within budget.They can work with service providers to find alternative ways to handle data, like cloud storage on vessels to carry video and prepaid calling for crew members, Griffin suggested. “Challenge your service provider,” Griffin suggested. Options are expanding with technology; KVH ships a standard 500-GB storage as part of its basic package for new customers. That’s enough to store two full days of television news broadcasts, he said.

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WINTER 2017 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS

2016 PME ROUND UP Climate change will make fisheries winners, losers BY CLIFF WHITE

laska’s major commercial fisheries will likely face significant challenges as a result of climate change, with some species facing bleak futures and others poised to thrive in warming water temperatures and rising ocean acidity, according to Terry Johnson, a professor of fisheries with the University of Alaska’s Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program. Speaking at Pacific Marine Expo, Johnson said the biggest losers will be the crab and pollock fisheries, while

“Things do not look

good for the future of the crab industry.

”

— Terry Johnson, UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA

flounder and halibut face a brighter future, and the fate of salmon is mixed based on spawning and migration habits. “Pollock are confronting a grim future,” Johnson said.“If you comb through the literature, you’ll see a lot of things that indicate that if temperatures continue to increase, that will have downward effect on pollock in the Bering Sea.” The king, Tanner and snow crab fisheries are also in for a “major hit,” he said. “Things do not look good for future of crab industry,” he said. “In general, they all respond to the same triggers and are probably in for a decline.” The full impact of warming waters on

Terry Johnson addresses potential effects of climate change in Alaska’s fisheries.

NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / WINTER 2017

fisheries in Alaska and the Bering Sea won’t be felt for another 30 to 40 years, Johnson said. But with average annual temperatures trending consistently up, and last year ranking as the warmest ever on record in the Bering Sea, wide-scale biological changes are likely, if not inevitable, Johnson said. Overall, that news is not necessarily bad from a purely commercial perspective, Johnson said. “Projections that have been done suggest that in high latitudes including Alaska, biological production is going to increase dramatically. If that’s the case, that’s probably going to be a good thing for fishermen,” he said. Halibut seem to respond well to higher temperatures and may be entering a period of higher production, and salmon might be able to move into new grounds in the Arctic that “may eventually be large enough to support a commercial fishery,” Johnson said. However, existing populations of sockeye, king and silver salmon may be disturbed, and could decline. So far, according to Johnson, there haven’t yet been significant consequences from long-term climate change documented in Alaskan fisheries. And Johnson told his audience shouldn’t take his predictions as gospel. “Making predictions is difficult when so many variables remain unknown,” Johnson said.

Alaska AIS services grow BY KIRK MOORE

he automatic identification system has built up safety and security for oceangoing U.S. vessels. Now new applications are building onto AIS in Alaska with services like local weather and port conditions. AIS came about because in the maritime business, “99.99 percent success is not good enough” for the American public, said Ed Page of the non-profit Marine Exchange of Alaska. Page, whose 30 years in the Coast Guard included duty as captain of the port of Los Angeles, said the final kicker was the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the need to secure and protect shipping. The result, Page told an audience at

Pacific Marine Expo, was more lemons for the maritime industry, in the mandated costs of equipping and maintaining vessels with AIS systems — around $7,500 for the class-A systems and $500 for smaller fishing boats. But with that came the lemonade of benefits to the industry, such as greatly improved search and rescue response that makes it easier to contact other vessels nearby and enlist them in the rescue, Page said. With AIS, the Coast Guard Ed Page, Marine can call and ask, Exchange of Alaska “Would you like to save a couple lives today?” he said. The Marine Exchange of Alaska is building on AIS in the region, using the system to broadcast other information, like weather data that appears in pop-up boxes for some locations. The system can be used to monitor whale movements near shipping routes and vessel speeds in restricted areas, like Glacier Bay where cruise ships must coexist with marine mammals. “We like to think of this as aiding compliance,” Page said. AIS can function as a distress beacon channel with additional devices linked to a vessel’s system. Another impending use could be buoys for fishermen to use for marking their net sets and pot deployments on AIS overlays. At 8 watts power and a 12-mile range, the buoys could reduce gear entanglements, and the Coast Guard seems receptive to the concept, Page said. “We’re finding more and more ways to make this into lemonade,” he said. Members can join the exchange for $500 to access its AIS database with coverage from Portland, Ore., to Adak, Alaska. But in congested places, AIS is not without frustrations. One captain described the Seattle screen display being cluttered with signals from boats tied up at Fishermen’s Terminal. “You’re not required to leave it on if you’re not underway. Anchoring is a different story,” Page replied. “If you’re in a berth, no.”

2016 PME ROUND UP Do you have survival muscles? BY JEAN PAUL VELLOTTI

“

here will be bad days at sea,” informs Rick Petersen, training coordinator for the Alaska Marine Safety Education Association. “But the difference between those that survive and those that will die comes down to being prepared and having a muscle memory of what to do in an emergency.” Petersen’s expanded on his message with real-world stories of survival in his seminar, Crew Duties for At-Sea Emergencies at Pacific Marine Expo. But more importantly, he took participants through survival skills and crew responsibilities that can help build that

critical muscle memory for survival. After an overview of the most common emergencies at sea (and some uncommon ones, like what to do when finding Arctic researchers in Zodiacs with stalled outboards or sailboats with snapped masts), the course focused on commercial fishing vessels. After drafting a station bill, seminar members were assigned station duties. Drills included fire, man-overboard and abandon ship. Although the information was geared for fishermen with some hours at sea, Petersen welcomed those with no experience. “Some day they may have an emergency, but it can be survivable if they have the tools needed to know what to do in that situation.” AMSEA is a nonprofit organization with a nationwide network of safety

“Some day they may have an emergency,

but it can be survivable if they have the tools needed to know what to do in that situation.

”

— Rick Petersen, ALASKA MARINE SAFETY EDUCATION ASSOCIATION instructors, including Petersen, who has actual commercial fishing knowledge having worked as a purse seiner and salmon troller.

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WINTER 2017 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS

2016 PME ROUND UP Three new boat designs BY JEAN PAUL VELLOTTI

he boatbuilding sector is singing an especially positive note. Pacific Marine Expo was upbeat for all facets of the industry, thanks to busy yards and new orders. On the new construction front, three very different boats for three very different fisheries have emerged. In fact, each design marks a first for its fishery. Vigor’s new 144-foot freezer longliner marks a new class of “affordable” production boats. Developed around the idea of using an assembly line to shift away from one-off construction, the company hopes these North Pacific workhorses will evolve into a fleet that not only simplifies construction, but minimizes downtime by popularizing common parts and spares. “A new class of longliners is a central need for the recapitalization of the North Pacific fishing fleet. Fishermen need to know they can depend on the design, and it better be affordable,” explains Keith Whittemore, executive VP of business development at Vigor. Down the coast in Charleston,

79-foot Loadline Limit Trawler

Builder: Giddings Boatworks Designer: Coastwise Corporation Loadline Length: 78' 10" LOA: 87' 6" Beam: 36 feet Depth: 13' 8" Main: 1,300 hp Fish Hold: 7,400 cubic feet Fuel Tank: 42,400 gallons

NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / WINTER 2017

Ore., the crew at Giddings Boatworks is getting ready to cut the steel for a new 79-foot loadline limit trawler. Designed by Coastwise Corp. with a 36-foot beam and draft of 13’ 7”, the boat has a bulbous bow and is a replacement vessel for the Kodiak fishery.

New boats at 79 feet and under are no longer required to be designed and built using classification standards. That adds time and money to a project, as well as limiting gear options. This hull will also use a Tier 3 engine so long as the keel is laid down in December this year, as projected. “This is going to be the first trawler

built for the Kodiak in a long time,” notes Mike Lee, general manager at Giddings, withholding the name of the owners with a chuckle. Lastly, here in Seattle, Snow & Co. sent a new flat-bottom aluminum shellfish tender to Rockpoint Oyster Co. in Dabob Bay at the top of the Hood Canal. The low-freeboard design will operate in extremely shallow waters, enough to warrant a jet-drive instead of the outboard used in a similar boat built last year that was sent to California. “It’s pretty much a scow with a dory bow,” said Brett Snow, owner of the company. “But the biggest challenge with the flat bottom is that it’s very hard to keep the jet from cavitating. So we built a little air dam in front of the jet to stop bubbles and force them outboard.” With a Cummins 425-hp driving a Almarin Jet 340, this new model not only can move out to the grounds quickly, but once the crates of oysters are loaded on deck with the Maximum Performance crane, it has plenty of torque to drive in a full load in shallow water, which solves an issue for operating in shallow water. Expo coverage continues on page 35

39-foot Shellfish Tender

144-foot Freezer Longliner

“This is going to be the first trawler built for Kodiak in a long time.

”

— Mike Lee, GIDDINGS BOATWORKS

Builder: Snow & Co. Length: 39 feet Hull Length: 35 feet Beam: 10' 6" Main: Cummins QSB 425 hp Jetdrive: Almarin 340 Deck Crane: Maximum Performance

Builder: Vigor Designer: Vigor/Marco Marine Length: 143' 9" Beam: 33' 6" Draft: 17' Fuel Capacity: 49,276 gallons Main: Caterpillar 3512E 1,341 hp @1,600 rpm, Tier 4 Fish Hold: 13,593 cubic feet

Sometimes, even the rescuers need to be rescued. HHH

Because they watch over us. Because they give so much. Give to the Coast Guard Foundation

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LOCAL LORE

Valdez and Afognak fisherman Ken Christoffersen takes delivery of the Thelma C on Lake Union in Seattle, spring 1965.

NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS / WINTER 2017

LOCAL LORE

Kodiak honors the Earthquake Boat Thelma C in tribute to the deadly tsunami that spawned the city’s fishing future BY MICHAEL DOBRIN

a half-century’s work chasing salmon, halibut and crab in unforgiving Alaskan waters, the Thelma C represents the Earthquake Boats, those craft rapidly built in 1964-65 to replace scores of fishing boats lost throughout southern Alaska and on Kodiak Island in the devastating earthquake and tsunami surges of March 27-28, 1964. Museum Executive Director Toby Sullivan says it’s likely the last surviving of the class. Restoration of the Kodiak fleet and fisheries was facilitated by Fishing boats take shape in swift government acthe Commercial Marine tion (a week after the shed on Seattle’s Lake Union. disaster, the Lyndon Johnson administration and they were taking on water; there had designated $5 million to earthquake were confused seas all about. Radio relief in Alaska), private insurance carricontact ended. Spruce Cape sank with ers and probably most importantly, the five hands and Captain Larsen’s body Small Business Administration, which eventually washed ashore on Spruce made $7 million in low-interest loans in the Kodiak area, mostly to fisherCape, his boat’s namesake. This spring, members of the Kodiak Maritime Museum will gently nudge the well-traveled 34-foot seiner Thelma C into her display cradle on the Kodiak Harbor docks. Still showing the dings and scars of a load of fuel at 5 p.m. aboard his Spruce Cape and was headed back to Ouzinkie when the first surge rumbled through the channel between Kodiak and Near Island. He radioed Ouzinkie that a log had crashed through the wheelhouse

Suzanne DillS

helma C arrived in Kodiak in the wake of the second largest recorded earthquake in history — 9.2 on the Richter — at 5:37 p.m. on March 27, 1964. Centered deep in Prince William Sound, the quake was a megathrust plate boundary displacement, a titanic subduction clash that shook for nearly 5 minutes in one of the most seismically active zones in the world. Seafloor displacement generated a series of tsunami surges, five of them boring in on Kodiak until early the next day. Some crested at 30 feet above mean water. While the shaking damaged some frame buildings, it was the tsunamis that wreaked havoc in the community of 2,700 people and throughout small fishing villages in the archipelago. Captain John Larsen had just taken on

Suzanne DillS

Dave LeClercq lays out full size fishing vessel dimension on plywood panels tacked to yard flooring in 1955. Shipwrights John Fromm (on boat) and Dick Plancich affix steamed oak ribs over stringers on fishing craft at Commercial Marine. WINTER 2017 / NORTH PACIFIC FOCUS

LOCAL LORE

A DEADLY DAY

Michael dobrin

Kodiak Harbor today

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men. Recipients paid no interest the first year and could get 20-year loans at 3 percent interest. About $10 million in Urban Renewal funds were allocated in Kodiak for cleanup, as well as fisheries, harbor and city dock restoration. Although some old-timers grumbled about urban renewal projects in Kodiak, others were more sanguine about government rebuilding projects. “They just cut the red tape,” noted retired Alaska Superior Court Judge Roy Madsen, 94, and last surviving child of legendary Kodiak bear hunterguide Charlie Madsen. Then Kodiak’s city attorney, he added, “I’ve never seen a government organization operate the way they did; they just stripped everything down to the bare essentials.” Valdez and Afognak fisherman Ken Christoffersen took advantage of the program after his original boat was destroyed by tsunamis in Valdez. He used the Thelma C until retiring in the 1980s. It was owned by Brian Johnson and rebuilt twice at Fuller’s boatyard in Kodiak. “My kids grew up on that boat,”

Shipwright-fisherman Brian Johnson fitting a plank to the Thelma C in 2012 at the Kodiak Maritime Museum.

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says Johnson, now a contract shipwright at Jensen Motor Boat in Seattle. The Thelma C exhibit will represent the channels dredged by the Earthquake Boats to bring historic Kodiak fisheries back to the fore. “In addition to the earthquake story,” says Sullivan, “there will be interpretive panels about, among other topics, the technology of salmon fishing in Kodiak and the history of commercial fishing operations here, beginning with beach seining in the 1880s.” Sullivan, 62, is himself an experienced fisherman who came north from his native Connecticut in ’74 to work the pipeline, went bust, worked in a crab cannery and signed on a crab boat working out of Kodiak and Dutch Harbor until 1998. He’s also fished herring as well as halibut on his own 36-foot drift boat gillnetter and operates a commercial salmon gillnet operation from June through September in Kodiak’s Uganik Bay. He was an embedded journalist with the U.S. Marines in Iraq and wrote for an Anchorage weekly. He signed on as executive director of the Kodiak Maritime Museum in 2008. The museum was founded in 1992 by a small group of Kodiak fishing women driven to preserve Kodiak’s maritime history. Origins of the Thelma C project began in 2002 when the museum mounted a series of bright, weatherproof interpretive panels on the northern — Shelikov Strait — side of the harbor describing the fishing life in Kodiak, everything from a cutaway look inside a working trawler to the rich marine bounty of Kodiak waters. In 2005, Thelma C’s last owner, Mark Thomas, donated the vessel to the museum, and in 2010 the organization moved ahead

uch has been written about southwest Alaska’s earthquake and tsunami on March 27, 1964, but it is worth remembering what happened then to the boats, their skippers and crews, fish processing operations and remote communities in the archipelago. Fifteen lives were lost in the Kodiak area, most of them fishermen. Initial property losses topped $3 million (1964 dollars), and the cumulative losses to the industry — in which crab fishing was then in its ascendancy — were estimated at $10 million. A tally in “The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964,” compiled by the National Research Council, listed 35 boats sunk or aground, 17 missing, 25 with major damage. Thirty salmon boats were lost when the Kadiak Fisheries cannery at Shearwater Bay was swept away. Sturdy craft like the Yukon and the 195ton king crabber F/V Selief (with a load of crab aboard) were driven ashore like beached driftwood past the damaged Kraft’s general store in downtown Kodiak. The 90-foot Jaguar was last seen tumbling bow to stern down the channel. Alaska Packers and Alaska King Crab plants were destroyed, as were the Standard Oil docks in Kodiak (the tanks on a bluff above survived, so fuel was available). Luckily, the city’s Griffin Hospital on the same bluff survived. King Crab Inc. and Alaska Ice and Cold Storage were damaged. Grimes Packing at Ouzinkie was destroyed. Kaguyak on the southeastern end of the archipelago was completely obliterated, all 60 residents left homeless and village chief Simmy Alexandroff lost his life in the surge. Old Harbor, Kodiak’s original Russian settlement of Three Saints Bay, was wiped out. A similar earthquake and tsunami here in 1788, and that event, combined with the colonizer’s need for timber, prompted the Baranov empire set up headquarters in the renamed Saint Paul harbor, now Kodiak. — M.D.

on this harborside display with a nearly $300,000 grant from the Alaska state Legislature. Thelma C was built at Dave LeClercq’s Commercial Marine Construction Co., founded in 1950 on Seattle’s Lake Union. It was ready for spring 1965 delivery in Seattle to Christoffersen. Cost for the basic boat then was $13,800, less engine — which, with installation, would run $2,000 to $5,000. A contemporary news feature in the Seattle Times about the commercial marine operation noted installation of 110-hp Caterpillar diesel engines. Construction materials included 1-1/8-inch Alaska cedar planking, 1-3/8 x 2-inch oak ribs on 8-inch centers, stem-tostern stringers, Ironbark guards and rail caps, 4 x 10-inch sistered keelsons, 1-1/4-inch caulked fir decking, two station controls, 250 gallons of fuel, 75 gallons of water, and a whole list of extras from a power block ($1,350) to stabilizers ($408 installed). LeClercq (pronounced LeClair), who died at age 92 in 2009, was a powerhouse boatbuilder for the Alaska fishing trade. Born in Seattle, he was selftaught (he designed a build-it-yourself skiff for Sears catalogs) who worked for Seattle Vic Franck boat works, built mine sweepers and landing craft during World War II, and engendered loyalty among hundreds of Alaska fishermen by flying north each summer, making repairs on his boats and garnering firsthand information on how to make his seiners and gillnetters operate more efficiently in Alaska waters. “He was a good leader of men,” says

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his daughter, Suzanne Dills, who operates the Commercial Marine complex today primarily as a boat and houseboat berthing facility on west Lake Union. “Thelma C is an important vessel for many reasons,” says Sullivan. “Seattle has built just about everything for Alaska fisheries for 150 years and literally hundreds of working fish boats have come out of Commercial Marine — including dozens of these Earthquake Boats.” The seiner was designed by noted Seattle marine architect Bill Garden, who was a lifelong friend of LeClercq’s. Now she will be the centerpiece in an expansive installation that tells the story of the earthquake and tsunamis that roared through the Kodiak archipelago in five destructive surges — and how Kodiak rebuilt its critical fishing industry and its working fleets. “Thelma C tells us about the survival and commercial resurgence of Kodiak as one of the most important fisheries in the world and one the three most important operations in the U.S.,” says Sullivan. “While Dutch Harbor remains the crab leader, Kodiak fishermen have shifted to other species, bringing in 3.5 million pounds of codfish and a pollock catch now topping $1 billion. Crab, salmon and halibut will continue to play an import role in the fisheries mix here. But if Kodiak had foundered after the earthquake and tsunami and boats like the Thelma C had not quickly replaced those lost, the 150-year history of fishing in Kodiak would have been lost forever.” Michael Dobrin is a California-based freelance writer who was born in Seattle and raised in Alaska.

2016 PME ROUND UP Expo coverage continued from page 28

Q&A Ray Hilborn is an internationally recognized marine biologist and fishery scientist. He is a professor of aquatic and fishery science at the University of Washington and runs www.cfooduw.org.

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