Stories from Alaska |
That Little Can of Salmon |
The other day I was thinking about those Kodiak, Alaska summers. The long hours of sunshine and bright blue skies that cause twelve intense weeks of rapid growth for hundreds of varieties of green plants. The beauty of the intense green color of the mountains with the snow still lingering on the highest peaks. The small colorful salmon fishing boats setting their seines in the sparkling blue bays around the island. The great Kodiak Bears fishing in the rivers, thick with spawning salmon. The pungent smells from the many fish canneries perched on the rocky shores of the bays, their large tenders bringing in the fish and quickly returning to their assigned bays to collect more fish from the seiners. Canneries running sixteen hours or even twenty-four hours a day depending on the intensity of the fish run. The small amphibian airplanes buzzing over the fishing fleets, landing and dropping off food and spare parts. The fast moving Aleutian storms which blew past our island, changing the greens and blues to soggy gray. These thoughts filled my mind the other day. For several years I was associated with the effort that puts small neat cans of salmon on the shelves of your favorite market. I am sure most people never consider the amount of organization needed so that your local grocery stock boy is able to place those little cans up on the shelf so they are sitting there when you need them. Now, I realize that not everybody in the world eats salmon. But enough folks like salmon to have interested a number of smart businessmen to invest large sums of dollars into putting those little cans up on your shelf. So, here is how it happens. First, one needs to travel to where the salmon are. Not just an area of one or two good spawning streams. These Salmon processing companies need to find areas where a great number of streams and rivers allow the salmon to run and complete their life cycle. Kodiak Island is one such area, located near the top of the curve of the Gulf of Alaska. |
Let me say, first off, that Kodiak Island can sometimes be a most beautiful area, with its high mountains that rise out of deep, fiord-like bays, dense spruce forests, and rocky shores. On the other hand, Kodiak Island can experience the most awful weather, with low clouds, fog and rain, which can last for up to a week at a time. And, lets not forget the wind! Gales with gusts over a hundred miles per hour can strike the island several times a year. Even a short stay, working in a cannery for the summer will reveal most of these extremes of beauty and foul weather. Overall, the island is about one hundred miles long by fifty miles wide. Its many bays offer more that fifty spawning streams and rivers for salmon to complete their life cycle. Steep mountains and deep bays are the island's main features. So, let me tell you about the growth of the commercial fishing industry on Kodiak Island. As far back as 1785 the Russian settlers found that the large numbers of salmon available during the summer could provide a winter food supply. Until the late 1870's, salmon fishing was just a local industry to provide food for the island inhabitants. But all that changed as soon as the world was introduced to the delicacy called North Pacific Salmon. |
Things changed quickly after the world acquired the taste of Alaskan salmon. By 1890 the world's largest salmon cannery was located in Karluk, on Kodiak Island. The Karluk River was once known as the greatest salmon stream in the world. A million salmon were processed at Karluk in 1890. During the summer season of 1900, two canneries located on Karluk Bay processed two million salmon. Around this time, the ten canneries on Kodiak Island furnished two-thirds of the entire Alaska salmon pack, with most of those fish coming from the Karluk area. Over two hundred seventeen million fish were taken out during the 1908 season. By 1909 13,337 men were employed in the Alaska fishing industry. The two principle methods of catching salmon commercially are by gillnetting and seining. In gillnetting, a web (net) is suspended in the water, straight out from the beach. This set net catches the fish by entanglement. The fish can only get part way through the net and then cannot back up. He is a caught fish. The other method is seining. Purse seines are long, deep nets which catch the fish by encirclement. When a school of salmon is detected near the surface, the fishermen set the net around them. The bottom of the net is closed by a power winch on the boat pulling on a line running through rings along the bottom of the net. Floats hold the top of the net on the surface. Thus, when the bottom is closed it forms a 'purse,' which holds the fish. Well, now you know how they catch the fish. What happens next? A much larger fishing boat than the small purse seiner, which catches the fish, visits each bay on a regular basis. The fish are counted, for pay purposes, as they are off loaded from the smaller seiners onto the bigger tender ship. When the tender is full of fish, all in ice to keep them fresh, it heads for the cannery at full speed. It is the fleet boss's job to see that those full tenders are arriving at the cannery at regular intervals in order to keep the cannery processing salmon on a regular one; two or three shift a day basis. Cannery superintendents do not like their plants shut down and not producing, even for as short as one day. The cannery itself is like a small city. It houses, feeds and provides the work for all its inhabitants. It is self contained having its own water and power supply and even has a company store. |
Where do I fit into this complex scheme? Do you remember the small amphibians, which land in the bays bringing food and spare parts to the fishing boats? Well, that's what I do. I fly those small seaplanes each day, helping to keep all those fishing boat crews happily fed and their boats running well. The number two most important man at the cannery, after the cannery boss, is called the 'fleet boss.' Joe Marinkavitch is the fleet boss in this story and he and I spent many hours each day flying and checking on his fishing fleet. Joe is in his early fifties and is a native of Washington State. He comes from a fishing family and fishing has been his occupation all of his life. As the fleet boss he is responsible for finding out and keeping a total of the amount of fish his fleet is catching each day. His second job, based on the amount of fish his fleet is catching, is to schedule the cannery tenders to the various bays to collect the fish from the small seine boats. This is a real balancing act, because he needs to have one or more full tenders arriving at the cannery each day in order to keep the cannery processing fish on a day-to-day basis. This is where Joe earns his money. The amount of Salmon varies from bay to bay. His boats might be catching a large number of fish in bay #3 while bay #2 has just a light number caught. Then he finds that bay #1, which was a light catch yesterday, has come upon a heavy run this morning. Now, he needs to send a second tender quickly to bay #1. Adding to this scheduling problem is that the various bays are all of different distances from the cannery and the travel times of his tenders varies depending on which bay they are servicing. So, Joe uses my airplane to try to keep an overall picture of his fleet's daily catch and location in his head. Not an easy task! |
You would think that in this day of rapid communication he could just have each seiner radio in his catch each morning and afternoon. If only it could be that simple. Lets not forget the competition. Those other canneries around the island, who are just as intent on catching more than their share of the fish run, are all listening in for any sign of a heavy fish run starting in one of the bays. If Joe had his boats giving him fish catch totals, via the radio, and they were doing well in bay #3, the boats of the competition would be coming full speed towards bay #3 as fast as they could get there. So, Joe and I get into my Grumman amphibian about 3:30 in the morning, take off and head for the closest fishing area. Yes, it's daylight. In fact the sun is up above the mountaintops. Kodiak Island is 58degrees north, so during the summer months it never really gets dark. The sun dips below the horizon just before 11 PM and comes back up around 2 AM. So, here we are about 300 feet above the water in our Widgeon headed for our first fishing area. The deep blue of the ocean extends out into the Shelifof Strait as I bank sharply around the steep headland and head into the first bay. We both look for our distinctive boats with their black hulls and bright orange cabins. Each cannery has its own identification color on their cannery boats. We spot only three of ours along with five or six other boats from our competitors. I position myself so to be able to fly past our three boats while Joe checks where the waterline is. We fly past alongside, keeping about fifty feet above the water and, passing each boat, Joe makes a notation on his clipboard. Remember, Joe knows these boats and, believe me when I say it, he can estimate to within 50 fish or so how many fish are lying inside each boat's hole, all while flying past them! We continue to visit each bay, with Joe checking on our own boats as to how deep they are laying in the water. Two to three hours later we have worked our way around to the other side of Kodiak Island and land beside a large tender, one of ours, of course. I pull the amphibian up on the beach, secure it, and soon we are picked up in a skiff and ride out to the tender for breakfast. After breakfast Joe uses the radio on the tender to run the 6 AM radio schedule. The boats all check in as they are called and give Joe their needs for the day. It might be certain food items; something might have broken on the boat so they need a new part. Whatever they desire, I will be bringing it around to them during this afternoon and evening. Where am I after breakfast? In a bunk, sleeping! Between eight and nine in the morning we take off again after I have fueled my plane. I only take enough fuel to continue the balance of our flight requirements back to our cannery. Usually, we are back at the cannery no later than eleven o' clock in the morning. Sometimes, as early as ten AM. I say goodbye to Joe who will now see that his people collect the various items for each boat and label the boxes with the boat name and the bay. He will spend time during the afternoon and evening balancing his tenders (based on his flight that morning, their location, and travel time from the cannery) with his goal of keeping the fish flowing into the cannery on a regular basis. Meanwhile, I service my Widgeon. Full fuel and oil, drain the water from the hull and then try to get another couple of hours sleep before a late lunch at 2 PM. At 3 PM my freight load arrives at the plane. Now, here is where I really need to be careful. Knowing my route, I place the boxes, which are going to the last bay, into the plane first. Boxes for each bay follow in the reverse order of flight. First in, last out. Last in, first out. There is nothing more frustrating than to be searching for a box, among many, while bobbing in the middle of a bay with a seine skiff trying to knock holes in the side your plane. After two or three of these experiences, I became very adept at loading my plane for these afternoon runs. Sometimes I would take a mechanic and drop him off at a boat to work. If a crewman got sick I would pick him up so he could get treatment at the cannery health clinic. A few times I picked up crewmembers that had been injured on the job and took them direct to the hospital in Kodiak. There was never a dull day! This second afternoon flight covered the same bays as our morning flight but took much longer because of landing in each bay and dropping off supplies. Usually I was back to the cannery by 10 PM. After servicing my plane I would catch another block of sleep, maybe three hours or more. Then, awake again. Cold water splashes my face. It's a new day. Soon my Widgeon and I would be again flying the fleet boss, Joe. This was my daily schedule during the hectic salmon season, and this was my part in getting those little salmon cans onto your grocery shelves! The End |
