At-Sea Processing: Catching, preparing, and selling fish at sea.

AuthorBohi, Heidi
PositionSPECIAL SECTION Resource Development

Alaskans can see every day evidence of the hard work performed by Alaska's fishing industry at McDonalds, featured in the franchise's Filet-O-Fish sandwich; look inside the small cardboard box and there is a small piece of Alaska's $1 billion Pollock fishery--half of which is processed at sea--that stokes one of the largest economic engines in the state.

Alaska Pollock Processed At-Sea

Alaska Pollock are a white-fleshed fish that congregate in huge schools along the continental shelf of the Bering Sea. Half the Bering Sea Pollock is caught and processed by catcher-processors, or catcher vessels delivering at sea to processing-only vessels. The other half is caught by trawl catcher vessels that more conventionally deliver their hauls to shore-side or land-based plants. Pollock is the number one species landed in the United States annually by tonnage and it accounts for about 30 percent of all fish landed every year. American fishermen typically haul in more than 3 billion pounds of Alaska Pollock annually, almost all of it from the Eastern Bering Sea. About 75 percent of the total Pollock catch is exported to Europe, Japan, Korea, and (increasingly) China, and it tops the list for German consumers, with more than 20 percent of their national average annual fish consumption.

At-sea processors in the Alaska Pollock fishery work like this: Each vessel, the largest of which is 387 feet in length, is a full-blown processing plant or floating factory ship. A single haul by a catcher-processor may bring 100 tons of fish onboard where six processing lines can each filet 150 fish per minute. Filets are laid onto large, metal trays, flash frozen into block form, then boxed and stored onboard in cold storage. About every ten days, the vessel returns to Dutch Harbor where the boxes are transferred to a cargo ship headed to Asia, Europe, or the Lower 48. The fish are delivered to various plants around the globe for battering, breading, and boxing to be used in products such as filets, frozen fish sticks and dinners, ready-made school lunch meals, fish roe, and imitation crab meat known as "surimi," which is made from minced Pollock. The non-flesh parts are processed into fish meal, used as fertilizer, and fed to farmed fish, pigs, and poultry. Fish oil is used to make dietary supplements and is burned in boilers onboard ships to provide a clean alternative energy source. Every pound of this fish undergoes primary processing at sea or onshore in Alaska.

While some consumers may believe they would never eat fish that is used in mass-produced food, Pollock is one of the five most consumed species of fish in the United States. The truth is that even fish-particular Alaskans likely eat fresh-frozen Pollock in products all the time without ever knowing it.

"'I want fresh fish, I want fresh fish,' is a common mantra of seafood lovers. What they really want, though, is fish that is frozen and preserved right after it is caught," says Jim Gilmore, At-Sea Processors Association public affairs director. This requires the harvesting, processing, and flash freezing to happen at the fishing grounds on-board a 300-plus-foot catcher-processor vessel that is a floating city, where not much of the boat is dedicated to actually catching fish. Handled well and frozen immediately, the freshness is literally frozen into the fish and nutritionally nothing is lost.

'Follow the Fish'

The At-Sea Processors Association represents six companies that own and operate sixteen US flag-bearing, catcher-processor vessels--also known as at-sea processors--that participate...

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