Originally posted on SeafoodSource.com Monday,8 November, 2010 I have written previously about how online media, including websites and social media outlets like Facebook make excellent marketing tools. How these are being employed is really up to the marketer. A new up-and-coming salmon marketer, Kvichak Fish Company, uses their Facebook page to post photos, inform consumers, and talk about the upcoming Bristol Bay salmon season.
This type of interactive marketing allows customers to share their thoughts and impressions, often obviating the need for costly and involved market surveys. Another new marketing tool, Bristol Bay Wild, allows direct market fishermen access to an attractive logo, label and website for a nominal licensing fee. The quality guidelines associated with use of the brand name ensures that customers will get a consistently high quality product from the participating fishermen. This type of quality guarantee provides assurance that one fisherman’s fish branded under the Bristol Bay Wild brand will be as good as the next licensed product. Quality standards include icing of fish from harvest to delivery, timely processing, and cold chain of custody requirements.
Fishermen who are looking to get into the direct marketing game have a lot more options than several years ago. Several Bristol Bay companies will now provide custom processing services for fishermen. According to a recently published story in National Fisherman, Tony Woods’ company, Wild Alaska Salmon and Seafood, is making life easier for numerous Bristol Bay drift fishermen who are engaged in direct marketing. For a reasonable custom processing fee, they will help to transport and process a fisherman’s catch, and will even help them with their logistics. Another company, Naknek Family Fisheries, which I started in 2006 and jointly own with several family members, provides tendering, custom processing, and logistics assistance. Naknek Family Fisheries also owns the licensing entity Bristol Bay Wild.
For those interested in learning about the ins and outs of direct marketing of seafood products, National Fisherman will be hosting the Profitable Harvest Direct to Market Forum event next Wednesday, November 17, 2010 at Quest Field Event Center in Seattle, Washington. This event occurs one day prior to Pacific Marine Expo, the preeminent seafood trade show for the Pacific Northwest. If you would like to keep informed on Pacific Marine Expo events, you can follow them on Twitter.
Izetta Chambers is a Marine Advisory Program Agent for the Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program. She resides in Dillingham, Alaska. Izetta can be reached at izetta.chambers@alaska.edu.
BB Fish Talk by Izetta Chambers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at bbfishtalk.blogspot.com.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
National Fisherman - Commercial fishing news, marine directory and classifieds
National Fisherman - Commercial fishing news, marine directory and classifieds
Tony Woods - the story of a fisherman and how it is possible to do it all yourself.
Tony Woods - the story of a fisherman and how it is possible to do it all yourself.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
What to do with leftover salmon?
Fish cakes on top of gorditas
1. Take leftover salmon and mix in food processor (or by hand, if you are old-school) with some chopped onion and 1-2 eggs, depending on how much salmon you have;
2. Form fish cakes into little patties by hand;
3. Fry in pan or on skillet with a little bit of oil.
Gorditas:
1. Mix corn masa with one teaspoon salt and enough water to make a dough that is easy to handle;
2. Form little gorditas (like fat little tortillas) by hand, making sure not to make them too thick;
3. Cook on a comal or a skillet until they are light brown on both sides.
Assemble dish by first placing gordita on a plate, than placing the fish cake on top. Put some shredded cheese on top (preferably something that melts well), and garnish with any of the following: chipotle sour cream sauce, shredded cabbage, cilantro, lime juice, or fresh salsa.
1. Take leftover salmon and mix in food processor (or by hand, if you are old-school) with some chopped onion and 1-2 eggs, depending on how much salmon you have;
2. Form fish cakes into little patties by hand;
3. Fry in pan or on skillet with a little bit of oil.
Gorditas:
1. Mix corn masa with one teaspoon salt and enough water to make a dough that is easy to handle;
2. Form little gorditas (like fat little tortillas) by hand, making sure not to make them too thick;
3. Cook on a comal or a skillet until they are light brown on both sides.
Assemble dish by first placing gordita on a plate, than placing the fish cake on top. Put some shredded cheese on top (preferably something that melts well), and garnish with any of the following: chipotle sour cream sauce, shredded cabbage, cilantro, lime juice, or fresh salsa.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Have a great season!
Just wanted to let all of my readers know that I go off contract June 15th, and may or may not be writing the column for the next couple of months. I will be back on contract August 15th.
I will be in Naknek, working at our family-owned fish processing company, Naknek Family Fisheries. For those of you who may be interested in seeing how a small fish processing company operates, I will be hosting a Seafood Processor Training on June 9th and 10th. The first day will be reviewing the really exciting stuff - processing regulations, seafood business licensing, etc. The second day will be in our fish plant, reviewing issues related to sanitation, HACCP, water supply systems, recordkeeping, and processing techniques. This will be a free workshop, open to the public. If you would like to sign up for this, send me an email with your name, contact information, and what day(s) you would like to participate.
We are so lucky to be blessed with such an amazing, renewable natural resource to harvest every season. I hope that all of the participants in the Bristol Bay salmon fishery recognize how precious our salmon and this lifestyle is.
I just wanted to wish all of you fishermen and fishing families out there a safe, profitable, and fun fishing season. Have a great fishing season!!
I will be in Naknek, working at our family-owned fish processing company, Naknek Family Fisheries. For those of you who may be interested in seeing how a small fish processing company operates, I will be hosting a Seafood Processor Training on June 9th and 10th. The first day will be reviewing the really exciting stuff - processing regulations, seafood business licensing, etc. The second day will be in our fish plant, reviewing issues related to sanitation, HACCP, water supply systems, recordkeeping, and processing techniques. This will be a free workshop, open to the public. If you would like to sign up for this, send me an email with your name, contact information, and what day(s) you would like to participate.
We are so lucky to be blessed with such an amazing, renewable natural resource to harvest every season. I hope that all of the participants in the Bristol Bay salmon fishery recognize how precious our salmon and this lifestyle is.
I just wanted to wish all of you fishermen and fishing families out there a safe, profitable, and fun fishing season. Have a great fishing season!!
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
What makes a fish organic?
A couple of years back, there was an effort by our State congressional delegation to secure “organic” classification for wild Alaskan salmon. This effort was unsuccessful, largely due to the argument that wild salmon feed out in the waters and their food cannot be controlled or monitored. However, during my trip to the Boston International Seafood Show in March, I had an interesting discussion with a representative from a company peddling “organic” farm-raised salmon from overseas. I asked him explicitly about the “organic” label, and pointedly inquired about the type of feed that they use. He indicated to me that some of their feed consists of organically grown vegetable sources, and some of it consists of wild-caught fish, such as sardines and other small fishes.
How is it that farm-raised salmon, who have been shown to have a detrimental environmental impact on the coastal environs where they live in large netpens, are able to be labeled as “organic” while our wild salmon from pristine Alaskan waters are denied this classification? Both consume wild feed, yet one has negative environmental consequences and the other actually contributes to a healthy ecosystem and upriver environment. The salmon, after they spawn and die, are consumed by small isopods and other carrion feeders who disperse these vital nutrients and essential minerals all throughout the upriver and downstream environment, their bodies further degraded by mycelium, and the nutrients released throughout the riverine ecosystem. All one needs to do is take a birds-eye look at Alaska’s river systems to see the impact that the protein-rich salmon have had on the coastal and upriver ecosystems to see that the salmon play a very important function in enriching our Alaskan environment.
There is a small movement currently to undermine the strength of the Alaska salmon brand by labeling salmon harvesting as “salmon ranching” and trying to portray all of Alaska’s salmon fisheries as hatchery-raised. The hatchery plays a limited role in Alaska’s wild salmon, and in some areas, it is completely absent. For instance, the Bristol Bay region is composed entirely of wild salmon that are born in Alaska’s rivers and streams, go out to the ocean to mature, and then make their return to the exact stream or creek where they were spawned. This is the rule, rather than the exception. Bristol Bay hosts the world’s largest natural wild sockeye salmon run and the second largest wild Chinook (King) salmon run. Neither of these Bristol Bay wild Alaskan salmon are augmented by hatchery-raised spawn.
Bottom line: although the internet maybe full of negative information on all sides of an issue, do your homework to find out all of the details that matter to you when making your seafood purchases. The “gold standard” for seafood guides remains the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Guide to Sustainable Seafood.
How is it that farm-raised salmon, who have been shown to have a detrimental environmental impact on the coastal environs where they live in large netpens, are able to be labeled as “organic” while our wild salmon from pristine Alaskan waters are denied this classification? Both consume wild feed, yet one has negative environmental consequences and the other actually contributes to a healthy ecosystem and upriver environment. The salmon, after they spawn and die, are consumed by small isopods and other carrion feeders who disperse these vital nutrients and essential minerals all throughout the upriver and downstream environment, their bodies further degraded by mycelium, and the nutrients released throughout the riverine ecosystem. All one needs to do is take a birds-eye look at Alaska’s river systems to see the impact that the protein-rich salmon have had on the coastal and upriver ecosystems to see that the salmon play a very important function in enriching our Alaskan environment.
There is a small movement currently to undermine the strength of the Alaska salmon brand by labeling salmon harvesting as “salmon ranching” and trying to portray all of Alaska’s salmon fisheries as hatchery-raised. The hatchery plays a limited role in Alaska’s wild salmon, and in some areas, it is completely absent. For instance, the Bristol Bay region is composed entirely of wild salmon that are born in Alaska’s rivers and streams, go out to the ocean to mature, and then make their return to the exact stream or creek where they were spawned. This is the rule, rather than the exception. Bristol Bay hosts the world’s largest natural wild sockeye salmon run and the second largest wild Chinook (King) salmon run. Neither of these Bristol Bay wild Alaskan salmon are augmented by hatchery-raised spawn.
Bottom line: although the internet maybe full of negative information on all sides of an issue, do your homework to find out all of the details that matter to you when making your seafood purchases. The “gold standard” for seafood guides remains the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Guide to Sustainable Seafood.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Financing options for Bristol Bay permit retention and ownership
Bristol Bay residents have opportunity in fishery
This past fall’s Board of Fisheries agenda was full of a number of restructuring proposals, including proposals to allow permit stacking, larger vessels, and longer nets. While there may have been legitimate reasons for proposing any number of these restructuring ideas to the Board of Fisheries, the overall consensus, both here in the Bristol Bay, and at the State of Alaska Board of Fisheries level was that the residents of Bristol Bay would be even further disenfranchised from the fishery if these proposals were sanctioned by the Board.
So, how did we get to this point? How is it possible that since 1975, Bristol Bay watershed residents no longer hold the majority of the fishing permits?
The number of permits owned by residents has been steadily declining, while the number owned by non-residents has been steadily increasing. In the case of the drift fleet, the number of permits owned by non-residents is now greater than the number of permits owned by residents. Because these numbers were obtained from ADF&G, the numbers do not separate out Bristol Bay residents from Alaska residents. When you take those transfers into account the curve is even steeper.
How did we lose control over our resources so quickly? Well, without doing a massive study on each and every permit buyout from resident to non-resident, one can only surmise. One possibility is that the high cost of living forced residents to look at the short-term cash opportunity present with selling their fishing assets, including permits. Another possibility, often overlooked in this discussion, is that perhaps it isn’t so much that the permits were sold to non-residents, but that past residents purchased permits, but now reside elsewhere. Yet another reason is that extended family members could have purchased permits from their resident family members.
However, the real question we should be asking ourselves and our fishing families, is this: how can we reverse the trend of non-resident permit ownership in Bristol Bay? How can we encourage our younger generations of Bristol Bay watershed residents to engage in the fishery and assume ownership and control over the fishing rights (i.e. permits)?
The answer lies in financing. This is where BBEDC residents can really gain a lot. For those readers who haven’t heard about the BBEDC Permit Loan Program, it is a fantastic opportunity for BBEDC village residents to get involved in the fishery as permit owners. With a permit, a fisherman can earn a lot more than a deckhand, and have some control over their own destiny. BBEDC has partnered with the Commercial Fisheries and Agriculture Bank (CFAB), to guarantee loans to qualified residents, provide financial assistance through subsidies and “sweat equity,” and to help teach permit holders how to successfully manage their fishing business. For more information about BBEDC’s Permit Loan Program, call 1(800) 478-4370 or 842-4370.
For watershed residents who do not resident within one of the BBEDC villages, there are other options. If you would like to purchase a permit or a boat, the State of Alaska Division of Investments offers financing packages through their Commercial Fishing Revolving Loan Fund. More information on the State’s program is available at www.commerce.state.ak.us/investments/comfish.cfml. Additional opportunities exist if a person is willing to work directly with CFAB. Information can be found online at www.cfabalaska.com or by calling 1(800)544-2228.
This past fall’s Board of Fisheries agenda was full of a number of restructuring proposals, including proposals to allow permit stacking, larger vessels, and longer nets. While there may have been legitimate reasons for proposing any number of these restructuring ideas to the Board of Fisheries, the overall consensus, both here in the Bristol Bay, and at the State of Alaska Board of Fisheries level was that the residents of Bristol Bay would be even further disenfranchised from the fishery if these proposals were sanctioned by the Board.
So, how did we get to this point? How is it possible that since 1975, Bristol Bay watershed residents no longer hold the majority of the fishing permits?
The number of permits owned by residents has been steadily declining, while the number owned by non-residents has been steadily increasing. In the case of the drift fleet, the number of permits owned by non-residents is now greater than the number of permits owned by residents. Because these numbers were obtained from ADF&G, the numbers do not separate out Bristol Bay residents from Alaska residents. When you take those transfers into account the curve is even steeper.
How did we lose control over our resources so quickly? Well, without doing a massive study on each and every permit buyout from resident to non-resident, one can only surmise. One possibility is that the high cost of living forced residents to look at the short-term cash opportunity present with selling their fishing assets, including permits. Another possibility, often overlooked in this discussion, is that perhaps it isn’t so much that the permits were sold to non-residents, but that past residents purchased permits, but now reside elsewhere. Yet another reason is that extended family members could have purchased permits from their resident family members.
However, the real question we should be asking ourselves and our fishing families, is this: how can we reverse the trend of non-resident permit ownership in Bristol Bay? How can we encourage our younger generations of Bristol Bay watershed residents to engage in the fishery and assume ownership and control over the fishing rights (i.e. permits)?
The answer lies in financing. This is where BBEDC residents can really gain a lot. For those readers who haven’t heard about the BBEDC Permit Loan Program, it is a fantastic opportunity for BBEDC village residents to get involved in the fishery as permit owners. With a permit, a fisherman can earn a lot more than a deckhand, and have some control over their own destiny. BBEDC has partnered with the Commercial Fisheries and Agriculture Bank (CFAB), to guarantee loans to qualified residents, provide financial assistance through subsidies and “sweat equity,” and to help teach permit holders how to successfully manage their fishing business. For more information about BBEDC’s Permit Loan Program, call 1(800) 478-4370 or 842-4370.
For watershed residents who do not resident within one of the BBEDC villages, there are other options. If you would like to purchase a permit or a boat, the State of Alaska Division of Investments offers financing packages through their Commercial Fishing Revolving Loan Fund. More information on the State’s program is available at www.commerce.state.ak.us/investments/comfish.cfml. Additional opportunities exist if a person is willing to work directly with CFAB. Information can be found online at www.cfabalaska.com or by calling 1(800)544-2228.
Bristol Bay Salmon Trampoline
Check this youtube video on a mechanism to improve quality in Bristol Bay:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Bs2DRet08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Bs2DRet08
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Waste Not Want Not
Waste Not, Want Not
By Izetta Chambers
The seafood industry in Alaska is ripe to start embracing some of the changes that are rapidly materializing in the rest of the world. I have been preparing an abstract on a workshop presentation that I am proposing to offer at the upcoming Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference in Unalaska on March 24-27th, (information online at http://www.uaf.edu/waisc/index.html) and I got to thinking about marketing. Yes, marketing is everything when you are selling something, but also when you are trying to get rid of something as well. How can the Alaska seafood industry make the shift away from thinking of seafood “waste” as a “resource?”
This past summer I was involved in an endeavor called Alaska Bounty – a company I created to handle some of our waste stream generated at Naknek Family Fisheries. Because our small fish plant was not on the river system, and therefore it was not feasible to simply grind up the waste and dump it back into the river, we had to think up alternatives to the grind-and-dump scenario that is the industry norm in the Bristol Bay region. We were told that the Bristol Bay Borough fish grinder hadn’t been lawfully permitted by EPA since 1994, and therefore, we were legally precluded from using the grinder by DEC as our approved disposal site. Therefore, I was forced to come up with an alternative solution, or risk having our small, family-owned seasonal business shut down. The solution that I presented at the Alaska Marketplace was to utilize the resource in compost, and also to produce a liquid fish fertilizer. We employed our plant workers to think about the resource differently. This is because we couldn’t just think of the leftovers as “stinky fish guts” or some other such negative label, because this was another resource that we had to take care of. In order to make the best possible fertilizer, we needed to process the material fresh, not after it had been sitting around. A big part of the re-thinking came in the form of reframing or rephrasing. I discouraged the term “guts” and “waste,” instead encouraging use of the term “protein” or “material.” Although some might argue that this makes no difference, I beg to argue that it does.
In many parts of Asia, the seafood industry is actively involved in the processing and reprocessing of parts of fish that we in the Western worlds would not think twice about. Take fish sauce, for example. It is essentially fermented fish parts, liquefied and stabilized. However, one cannot think of certain ethnic cuisines, such as Thai food, without that particular flavor.
Underutilized seafood materials are currently finding uses in agriculture, food sciences, biomedicine, pet food, fish farming, and cosmetics. Some other little-used parts are being bought and sold as delicacies in the trendy restaurant and exotic food markets. Mainstream outlets, such as the Travel Channel’s show “Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods” has brought strange and exotic delicacies to the living rooms of people that may have never considered eating such things as grasshoppers, worms, snakes, bird’s nest soup, or live octopus. In fact, this summer, we provided 100 fish heads to a chef in Seattle for the annual Burning Beast event. The fish heads were a big hit and we had numerous bloggers writing about the delicate flavor of something most Bristol Bay Natives have enjoyed for centuries as a way to commemorate the beginning of the salmon season.
100% seafood utilization can be a tremendous marketing tool as well. Here is what one of our company’s customers writes on their website about where they source their salmon:
Whether we like how these things smell or look, we all here in coastal Alaska need to consider the intrinsic qualities of the materials that the seafood industry currently considers “waste.” The only waste is that what we make of it.
If you would like more information on how to compost using seafood carcasses or other seafood proteins, please call (907) 842-8323 or contact me via email at izetta.chambers@alaska.edu. I can help direct you to the best scientific research on the topic, and help to provide resources on doing it safely – including bear fence installation and Alaska statutes on the subject.
By Izetta Chambers
The seafood industry in Alaska is ripe to start embracing some of the changes that are rapidly materializing in the rest of the world. I have been preparing an abstract on a workshop presentation that I am proposing to offer at the upcoming Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference in Unalaska on March 24-27th, (information online at http://www.uaf.edu/waisc/index.html) and I got to thinking about marketing. Yes, marketing is everything when you are selling something, but also when you are trying to get rid of something as well. How can the Alaska seafood industry make the shift away from thinking of seafood “waste” as a “resource?”
This past summer I was involved in an endeavor called Alaska Bounty – a company I created to handle some of our waste stream generated at Naknek Family Fisheries. Because our small fish plant was not on the river system, and therefore it was not feasible to simply grind up the waste and dump it back into the river, we had to think up alternatives to the grind-and-dump scenario that is the industry norm in the Bristol Bay region. We were told that the Bristol Bay Borough fish grinder hadn’t been lawfully permitted by EPA since 1994, and therefore, we were legally precluded from using the grinder by DEC as our approved disposal site. Therefore, I was forced to come up with an alternative solution, or risk having our small, family-owned seasonal business shut down. The solution that I presented at the Alaska Marketplace was to utilize the resource in compost, and also to produce a liquid fish fertilizer. We employed our plant workers to think about the resource differently. This is because we couldn’t just think of the leftovers as “stinky fish guts” or some other such negative label, because this was another resource that we had to take care of. In order to make the best possible fertilizer, we needed to process the material fresh, not after it had been sitting around. A big part of the re-thinking came in the form of reframing or rephrasing. I discouraged the term “guts” and “waste,” instead encouraging use of the term “protein” or “material.” Although some might argue that this makes no difference, I beg to argue that it does.
In many parts of Asia, the seafood industry is actively involved in the processing and reprocessing of parts of fish that we in the Western worlds would not think twice about. Take fish sauce, for example. It is essentially fermented fish parts, liquefied and stabilized. However, one cannot think of certain ethnic cuisines, such as Thai food, without that particular flavor.
Underutilized seafood materials are currently finding uses in agriculture, food sciences, biomedicine, pet food, fish farming, and cosmetics. Some other little-used parts are being bought and sold as delicacies in the trendy restaurant and exotic food markets. Mainstream outlets, such as the Travel Channel’s show “Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods” has brought strange and exotic delicacies to the living rooms of people that may have never considered eating such things as grasshoppers, worms, snakes, bird’s nest soup, or live octopus. In fact, this summer, we provided 100 fish heads to a chef in Seattle for the annual Burning Beast event. The fish heads were a big hit and we had numerous bloggers writing about the delicate flavor of something most Bristol Bay Natives have enjoyed for centuries as a way to commemorate the beginning of the salmon season.
100% seafood utilization can be a tremendous marketing tool as well. Here is what one of our company’s customers writes on their website about where they source their salmon:
Our fish is currently a part of a local venture to compost fish carcasses, rather than throwing them away. This reduces pollution [sic] in Bristol Bay, and instead goes to growing food. Read more about it on our site, here, or at the company, Alaska Bounty’s website, here (www.alaskabounty.com).
Whether we like how these things smell or look, we all here in coastal Alaska need to consider the intrinsic qualities of the materials that the seafood industry currently considers “waste.” The only waste is that what we make of it.
If you would like more information on how to compost using seafood carcasses or other seafood proteins, please call (907) 842-8323 or contact me via email at izetta.chambers@alaska.edu. I can help direct you to the best scientific research on the topic, and help to provide resources on doing it safely – including bear fence installation and Alaska statutes on the subject.
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