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Coastal Community Culture
Last week, as I waved goodbye to friends from the deck of the Alaska Marine Highway's M/V Tustumena, I noted the history visible within the panoramic view in front of me and decided to produce this informal look into Kodiak's past.
This short video is far from an extensive exploration of Kodiak's history, but it provides a decent synopsis for visitors or locals interested in considering Kodiak's landscape in a different light. Enjoy!
Note: Initially published in Pacific Fishing.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” pondered Juliet as she swooned for Romeo. Fishermen, brokers, and the Bureau of Fisheries considered a less romantic, yet similar, question in 1916, “Would a black cod by any other name sell better?” And thus began the now 100 year old odyssey to call the black cod a sablefish.
Black cod- I mean sablefish- were first noted by white folks intent on naming and classifying the animal kingdom back in 1811. According to Dr. H.F. Moore in a 1917 publication, “the only name which it bore was the barbarous one used by the Indians,” a name which he regrettably does not mention. For the next century, black cod became the species’ moniker, even though fishermen knew that sablefish were clearly unrelated to the more commonly known cod.
Millions of pounds of sablefish were caught as bycatch by fishermen who were long lining for halibut. The fish were tossed back into the sea since they took up space in the dories which would otherwise be filled by much more valuable halibut. It wasn’t until 1912 that landings were reported in federal registers, even though savvy cooks knew it to be a superior fish. Black cod had an image problem, which generally was attributed to its name.
According to a December 1916 article published in Pacific Fisherman, “The general feeling [is] that the present name is a misnomer and a decided handicap in its marketing.” The article noted that, “a consumer who want a cod are always disappointed upon purchasing it, while the many consumers who want a rich fish, such as is the black cod, refuse to take it because of the fear that it would be what its common name implies- a dry-meated fish.”
But black cod are scrumptious. William Calvert of San Juan Fishing & Packing stated that, “It is recognized as one of the best fishes we have on the Pacific coast, and as I have repeatedly said in the past, the greatest drawback to the development of a market for it has been its name. As far as we know there are large quantities available, and what we need now is a fish that can be marketed at a low price as compared with halibut and salmon.”
It was delicious, affordable, and abundant. All black cod needed was a champion. So, John N. Cobb, then editor of Pacific Fisherman, worked to convince the Bureau of Fisheries to launch a marketing campaign in 1916. The first step was renaming black cod as sablefish. (I presume this name was selected because sable was a luxury fur and the most desirable pelts were black.)
Early advertisement for the newly-minted "sablefish." Courtesy NOAA.
Next, the Bureau of Fisheries created display cards for use in sales and published a bulletin, “The Sablefish: Alias Black Cod.” Within, the author lauded the attributes of sablefish and included 33 recipes. “Barbecued” sablefish was quite popular, which was akin to kippering. A home economics professor from the University of Washington is quoted as saying, “It is suitable for the humblest home on account of its price and for the millionaire’s table from its fineness of texture and delicious flavor.”
The next summer, the Secretary of Commerce presented President Woodrow Wilson and his D.C. cabinet with sablefish, shipped on ice from Puget Sound. The fish “were much appreciated and highly regarded.”
These branding efforts were rewarded. Several small boats geared up to go fishing specifically for sablefish. Larger halibut schooners also started bringing back what until just recently had been an incidentally-caught species. From 1916 to 1917, the landings of sablefish increased from 304,000 pounds to 1,020,000 pounds.
Sablefish were one of the cheapest fish on the market. A Seattle fish broker noted that, “it is a fish that will reach the poorer people, until the demand grows, as it no doubt will, to such an extent as to advance the price.” Between 1916 and 1917, the price increased only a smidgen, from 3.6 cents a pound to 3.7 cents a pound.
Now, one hundred years later, we still aren’t sure what to call the creature, but at well over $6 a pound, most of us are happy to just get a few collars thrown our way from fishermen friends.
ASMI, out-retro-ing the retro. Image courtesy Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.
Note: This was originally published in Pacific Fishing. The photographs come from NPS and from the University of Washington's Freshwater and Marine Image Bank.
The chef slid the lid off a small, wooden box and pulled out a plastic bag of stiff, milky-white cod. After soaking the fish, she boiled potatoes with fresh herbs and white wine. The mashed potatoes were pressed with the mashed cod into cakes, pan fried and served with a poached egg and hollandaise sauce. After that meal, salt cod benedict vies with shrimp and grits as one of my favorite breakfasts, ever.
To the disappointment of some gastronomes, the heyday of salted fish has long passed. Before the proliferation of refrigeration, salting was an expedient way to preserve fish while still on the fishing grounds. Moreover, most households didn’t have refrigerators or freezers either, so salting products was a safe way to store protein at home prior to consuming it. Popular salt cod dishes included bacalao, lutefisk, and serving the product with potatoes and a white sauce.
The earliest commercial fishery in Alaska was the salt cod industry. Shipwright extraordinaire Captain Matthew Turner of San Francisco is attributed with beginning the fishery within the Bering Sea in the 1860s. Later, Seattle, Poulsbo and Anacortes became the leading ports of Alaska salt cod landings because the retrofitted lumber transport schooners used in the fishery were ported in Washington State. Vessels like the Sophie Christenson, Wawona, John A. and others packed dories on deck and signed up a crew predominantly composed on Scandinavians. Dories were oar-powered until the 1920s, when 2 to 12 horsepower outboards were affixed to them.
Some hearty fishermen established shore stations in the Shumagin Islands and at Sanak Island. These on-shore processing facilities included warehouses for curing cod. There were 17 cod stations within the eastern Gulf of Alaska region by 1915. Fishermen lived in company bunkhouses and would row to the fishing grounds, twice a day. Ed Opheim, Sr. recalled that cod were so abundant around Unga that a red rag was all that was needed for bait. These shore-based fishermen also worked processing the catch at the end of the day.
As for those who operated from sailing vessels, cod fishermen brought their catch back to the ship for “splitters” to clean, head and gut. Experts could process as many as 6000 fish a day. Cod tongues were quite prized (creamed cod tongue was a particular favorite preparation); one person’s job was specifically to remove the tongues. After, the fish were thrown into a tank and retrieved by a “salter,” who laid the fish out and spread one pound of salt for every four pounds of fish. These stacks of fish were called kenches. The salt combined with the cod juices to create a brine, which cured the fish after two weeks.
The resulting product was often referred to as stock fish. Opheim describes how stock fish was converted into lutefisk, or so-called “Norwegian turkey, since it was eaten during the Christmas season. To prepare the fish for eating, one had to cut it into small portions and it was then soaked in a washtub of water. A spoonful of lye was added, which would make the cod soft, like jelly.” A hankering for lutefisk helped keep the salt cod industry afloat after refrigeration became common place. For example, the Pacific Coast Codfish Co of Poulsbo sold 100 tons of lutefisk each year. The company routinely delivered 600 to 1000 tons of salt cod each year.
By the 1930s cod had disappeared from the near-shore fishing grounds around the Shumagin Islands, necessitating the closure of many of the shore stations. Offshore vessels dominated the fishery henceforth. Sailing for cod persisted until 1950, when the C.A. Thayer made its last trip north. The captain, Ed Shields, claims that this fishing trip was also the last commercial fishing trip executed by an American sailing vessel on the Pacific Coast (though he must be excluding the double-ender salmon fishery in Bristol Bay).
The C.A. Thayer, photo from NPS.
Today, the C.A. Thayer is moored at the National Park Service’s San Francisco National Maritime Historical Park. In Alaska, remains of cod shore stations peek out of the sand. The cod fishery, of course, continues strong: in 2014, it accounted for 12% of the total harvest volume in Alaska. The market for salt cod in Brazil and Europe is substantial, yet according to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, “Alaska produces very little salted cod product.” That salt cod that I pine for on Sunday mornings comes from a processor based in Nova Scotia. Apparently, Alaska’s relationship to this tasty specialty product remains rooted in the past.
For more information on the history of the Pacific cod fishery, see Salt of the Sea: The Pacific Coast Cod Fishery and the Last Days of Sail by Captain Ed Shields. Or, wait until next year for the publication of James Mackovjak’s newest work, Alaska Codfish Chronicle: A History of the Pacific Cod Industry in Alaska.
Note: This was originally published in Pacific Fishing. All of the photographs were taken by me during the summer of 2013.
Good things usually don’t come with 4 AM phone calls, especially on the eve of an opener in an Alaska fishing town. Although barely awake, I was prepared for the worst as I answered the buzzing phone. “I just received a mayday call from the Parks Cannery,” a friend who skippers a tender on the west side of Kodiak Island said, “the cannery is on fire. I’m bringing paramedics out there now.”
Three were injured and one person died due to the fire that consumed a building used to house guests at this cannery, which now operates as a lodge. A bucket brigade saved the rest of the complex of warehouses, old bunkhouses, and other buildings from burning up, as well. It was a heartbreaking way to start the salmon season. It is also an appropriate moment to look back at the history of this old cannery and recount what it means to some of those connected to it.
Herb Dominici had his hand in several cannery operations over the decades. He initially built the cannery in 1934. The Great Northern Packing Co purchased the plant from Dominici; Alaska aviation and seafood industry extraordinaire Nick Bez was a part of the partnership. After a couple of years, the cannery had a new owner again, and henceforth it was referred to as Parks Cannery.
The cannery mostly utilized salmon captured in fish traps and supplemented its supply with setnet-caught salmon. The fish traps were driven off Cape Uyak and Cape Ugat, also on Kodiak’s west side. Fish traps were the sworn enemy of many Alaskan fishermen. These devices built of pilings and fencing essentially eliminated the need for fishermen. They efficiently captured more fish than seines. For example, the two traps that supplied the Parks Cannery were recorded to catch twice the number of fish as the 65 fishermen working at Karluk. In 1959, fish traps were eliminated at the behest of the residents of the brand-new state of Alaska.
Hustle and then quiet: that’s the annual rhythm of remote canneries only used for fish processing in the summer. History often focuses on the moments of intense activity and extolls the big leaders. Yet, it was during those quiet months that the cannery served another function-that of home- and it is the individuals whose names aren’t on the articles of incorporation that most often have a deep connection to a place.
For example, Virginia Abston was born in the village of Karluk only because there wasn’t a midwife to help deliver her at Parks Cannery. Her parents lived at the cannery year-round. Her father was a Swedish immigrant and carpenter who kept the buildings standing in the winter. Her mother was an Alutiiq-Swede who did the laundry for the cannery crew in the summer.
As Abston says, “The old Johnson nine-horse didn’t go very fast.” The village of Larsen Bay was just far enough away so that Virginia and her siblings had to live there in order to attend school instead of staying with their parents at the cannery. They returned to Parks each summer so that Abston could setnet with her mother while her brothers, Tom and Jimmy Johnson, fished in the Parks’ seine fleet. “The Parks Number 7- Dad bought a boat and Jimmy started running it. And that is where and how I met Gary,” Abston says, referring to her future husband. “He came up fishing.”
This film includes the story of Virginia Abston, who grew up at Parks Cannery. It was produced as part of the West Side Stories project at the Baranov Museum.
After they married, the Abstons spent several winters working as watchmen themselves. “I don’t remember being bored. There was always people coming from Larsen Bay to visit and they would go seal hunting because they got three dollars a nose,” Abston says, recalling when there was a bounty on seals.
The cannery laid idle for several years in the early 1960s. The owners brought Frank McConaghy, a seasoned cannery superintendent, out of retirement when they decided to re-open the facility in time for the 1965 season. According to fisherman Weston Fields, McConaghy “was charismatic, friendly, he knew how to treat people. People who fished for him always got a turkey at Thanksgiving and a ham at Christmas. That sort of thing. Really small, but the right public relations. He treated everybody the same as everybody else. You were important to him. Even as a child I felt that I was important to him. That’s why he could start up Parks [after laying idle]. Just as simple as that: personality.” McConaghy died in 1966, but now, fifty years later, he continues to be respected by those who worked with him.
Whitney-Fidalgo purchased Parks Cannery in 1970 and closed the plant in 1983. Although it hasn’t processed fish for over thirty years, Parks Cannery persists as a place for which many hold an abiding affection.
Note: An edited version of the article below was published in the September issue of Pacific Fishing. The parade was highly controversial in Kodiak and inspired serious ire in many. The impressive participation on the part of local processing workers is what caused much of the anger. Some of the upset individuals felt that the processing workers were unwittingly being used for political purposes.
Local media barely reported on the event, even though over 1/3 of Kodiak city residents participated. The Kodiak Daily Mirror ran three photos without an article, and KMXT didn't report on it, at all. [When questioned about this, KDM said they didn't have a reporter assigned to the story and the news director at KMXT basically said he didn't want to attend the parade.]
As a historian, I spend considerable time looking for news stories that document the experiences of minorities both within the community and within the seafood industry. Let me tell you--- it's hard to find information on Kodiak's Asian community, even though the population of Asians and Whites has been close to on par since the 1990s. This is upsetting. But then an event like this Groundfish Parade occurs, one in which a significant number of Asians participate, and there is minimal media coverage. This is exactly why it's so hard to locate historical information on local Asians. In my mind, this lack of coverage is symptomatic of the racial segregation within Kodiak and, perhaps, anti-trawl bias within the local media.
Wearing a red baseball cap that read, “Make Trawling Great Again,” Trident CEO Joe Bundrant threw a chocolate pie in the face of North Pacific Fisheries Management Councilmember Duncan Fields at the end of the Groundfish Parade in Kodiak on June 11. In an effort to raise money for charity (and a harmless way to exact a bit of fun revenge on fisheries political opponents), others like Joe Plesha, General Council of Trident Seafoods, got a face full of whipped cream and graham cracker crust. The event was organized by the Alaska Whitefish Trawlers Association and Groundfish Data Bank.
Now, this alone made the parade worth attending. But it is what occurred beforehand that made it a day for the history books. Marching behind a sign that read, “Save Kodiak’s trawl fishery/ we are the working waterfront,” over one thousand processing workers, trawlers and their supporters paraded from Fishermen’s Terminal, passing the processing plants along Shelikof Street, and stopping in front of the Kodiak Island Convention Center, within which the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council was meeting.
Within, the Council deliberated the alternatives presented to reduce bycatch in the Gulf of Alaska. Outside, the typically invisible processing workers came out of the corrugated metal buildings in which they labor. Within, jargon proliferated (“how to address sideboards for non-exempt AFA CV’s?”). Outside, Tagalog and Spanish were as common as English. Within, a group of white middle-aged men and one woman heard testimony about observer coverage and the impact of monetizing groundfish quota in the Gulf. Outside, hundreds of Asian Americans and Latinos walked with their families, holding signs like “Governor Walker don’t take away my job.”
An economic report recently commissioned by the Kodiak Island Borough illustrated that in 2014, 1952 jobs in Kodiak were derived from groundfish, more than all other locally-executed fisheries combined. Yet economic prowess does not indicate that all trawlers boast of their occupation around town. During the Groundfish Parade, the town’s trawlers unabashedly displayed their affiliation. A makeshift float within the parade included an ATV with a handmade cardboard sign attached to it reading, “We are trawlers and proud of it.” Parade participants wore buttons that said “I Heart Trawlers.” This is an incongruous sight in Kodiak, where vocalized public support of the trawl industry happens as often as a stretch of sunny weather in February.
Rallying to maintain trawl-landings in Kodiak and the subsequent access to work and overtime pay brought some of the plant workers out to the parade. The door prizes and free meal enticed others to take part. Those who participated in the parade were given tickets for door prizes; Glenn Reed of the Pacific Seafood Processors Association called out the winning numbers. Kids prizes included new bikes; adults hoped to receive a big screen television or plane tickets. “We are in the community, we do what we can to make a living,” said a Latino processing plant worker named Roman as he awaited the next round of door prizes.
As bigwigs in the Alaska fishing industry tried to outbid one another to fling a pie in the face of Glenn Merrill of NMFS, I hoped that none of them would beat out the minimum wage earning processing workers for the good door prizes.
Looking ahead at the hundreds of people who stood between her and the Filipino pancit and pollock burgers, a woman said, “If there isn’t enough I’ll just go to McDonalds.” One of the signs in the parade read, “Trawlers feed the world.” Indeed, the Filet-o-Fish available up the road at McDonald’s could have been landed at Kodiak and processed by one of those in line.
Two thousand plates of food were served at the end of the parade. The organizers succeeded in demonstrating that trawlers do feed and fuel Kodiak’s working waterfront. Yet, the quality of that meal depends mightily on where one sits at the table. Moreover, until the NPFMC takes action, bycatch in the trawl sector will continue to impact the stability and growth of other fisheries, affecting others abilities to feed themselves.
This January, I had a vision.
My graphic designer friend Astrid was renting desk space at Print Masters on Shelikof St., right in the heart of cannery row in Kodiak. She was describing stepping out on the dock when taking a break, "And for a moment it's almost like I'm in Hamburg or some other industrial city."
"Yes," I think, "but Hamburg is hip."
And then it struck me: INDUSTRIAL ARTS DISTRICT. Our waterfront is an industrial arts district! It's a place of culinary artists, metal artists, fiber artists, and Renaissance men, but we call them cannery workers, welders, net hangers, and fishermen. It's a place of creation, but we always couch it in terms of economic production instead of craftsmanship. We are artists, we just don't see ourselves as such.
Research on the graying of the fleet is very important. But I can't help but note that issues of fisheries access and economics are always highlighted in these discussions, but something that many of us "young" folks constantly bemoan is neglected: this is honestly not a great place to live. It's a great place to make money, especially if you are a guy or a blue collar worker, but unless you are obsessed with hunting, fishing, and outdoor pursuits, it has little to offer. I think of returning to Kodiak on winter solstice (horrible decision, btw) after spending two weeks dancing salsa in Cuba and surveying the cultural landscape with a heavy heart. Who will dance with me here?
Yes, economics and access are key considerations for becoming a boat or permit owner, but you know what else is an issue? Living in a place with arts and cultural amenities and lifestyle incentives that extend beyond having free range protein in your freezer. So many people come to Kodiak for work but chose not to make it their home. The cost of living is a major reason, but so is the fact that we don't offer many reasons to stay beyond making money. I constantly struggle to justify to myself that this is a place that I want to live, and I was born here. I have a very strong spiritual and intellectual connection to this place. Give me salsa, give me art, give me mirth and unexpected arts encounters. Because if I don't get these things, I can't come up with good reasons to stay.
The fabulous Kyla Villaroya edited this film for the ArtPlace proposal.
I don't like speaking highly of my gifts because it's embarrassing to do so. But, one of my greatest gifts is actually twofold. It is 1) receiving brilliant ideas from the universe and 2) finding the resources and building the network to make the ideas reality. So, this is what I've done since the spark hit me back in January. I found a potential funder (ArtPlace America's Creative Placemaking Fund), talked to the mayor and key collaborators, and articulated a vision for the project.
Vision: Convert our working waterfront into an industrial arts district, a place that honors and celebrates the contributions of all maritime workers and a place that people actually want to spend time. Bring arts and culture to where most Kodiak people work (38% of local jobs are in the seafood industry), create opportunities to form new relationships to combat the social segregation in Kodiak, and focus on seafood industry culture rather than seafood industry economics to build greater solidarity on the waterfront and create a more resilient and connected community.
I put together the letter of inquiry, pushed send, and waited. Then, one week before my last day at the Baranov Museum, I received a phone call from New York City. I was one of 80 finalists out of 1400 applicants--- I was invited to submit a full proposal!
Celebration quickly turned to SERIOUS work. Many applicants are organizations, not individuals, and most applicants likely had a real project with a plan in hand, not just a vision. I had two months to convert an idea into a project with partners, a timeline, a budget, an evaluation plan, and more. It wasn't like my vision was small, either. I requested $400,000 to work with local artists to enhance the workplace environment which is Kodiak's working waterfront. And we are talking about the seafood industry, which in Kodiak is highly political and very divisive. In my mind, this project is as much about bridging the divide that clearly exists between the Asian and White communities in Kodiak (which is also an occupational divide between processing workers and fishermen) and enhancing solidarity within the local seafood industry. The waterfront is our greatest asset and the nexus of our greatest challenges.
In the end, I found a statement with which all agree: "Let's use arts and culture to make the waterfront a better place to work." This is a politically neutral statement and all agree it can only help with recruitment and retention of maritime workers.
I felt like a politician for the first month of planning, as I routinely had two to six meetings a day to build partnerships and find supporters. Due to pounding the pavement and articulating a vision that many can get behind, I am collaborating with a cross-sector group of partners who really believe in the project and have offered true support. These include the City of Kodiak, Kodiak Arts Council, Discover Kodiak, Filipino-American Association of Kodiak, Sun'aq Tribe of Kodiak, Kodiak Maritime Museum, Kodiak Community Foundation, Trident Seafoods and APS (North Pacific Seafoods). The thing about these partnerships is that they are real. These aren't "letter of support" partners; many of them have ownership over important parts of the project.
So, what is this project? If funded, we will be doing the following:
Local artists will propose temporary or permanent "art interventions" on the waterfront with the intention of making it a better place to work and/or creating new relationships. These interventions can be one-time events (a salsa party in the Sutliff's parking lot, for example) or permanent installations (a snazzy covered bike shelter on Shelikof, for example). All art forms and all artists are encouraged to propose projects, and selected artists will receive money to execute their ideas. Kodiak Arts Council is leading Spawn and we hope to fund around 18 projects in total.
Three large-scale "murals" will be mounted on buildings along Shelikof. The subject matter: maritime trades and people. There will be no bears, eagles, or whales. The art needs to honor our seafood industrial workers and identity. There will be an open call for art for two of the murals. The third will be created through the Sea Lives process (see below). The murals don't have to be 2-D. I think it would be fabulous to use industrial detritus as a medium. Throughout the district I hope that we can use materials that are authentic to the waterfront, like line, nets, buoys, old processing equipment, to create artworks. (The values of the project are authenticity, diversity and inclusion, by the way.) Discover Kodiak is leading this portion of the project.
This will be a collaboration among a devised theater director (Naphtali Fields), photographer (Breanna Peterson), writer/ producer (me) and a visual artist (TBD). Together we are capturing and co-creating stories from the working waterfront. Naphtali will be leading story circles with processing workers, deck hands, and others whose voices are often not heard. Together they will turn their real stories into a theatrical performance which will be performed during Crab Fest. I will be interviewing maritime workers and producing radio stories from the interviews for KMXT and written stories for online and print publication. Breanna will be taking portraits of all of these participants and others. We will combine quotes from the interviews/ performances with the portraits to create social media posts and large format posters, which will be pasted to buildings along the waterfront. The visual artists will be utilizing this real content from real people to create one of the murals/ surface enhancements in the district. In the end, Sea Lives will highlight the diversity of Kodiak's waterfront and show that regardless of ethnicity, gear type, or profession, all are united through their connection to the working waterfront and their "sea lives"- livelihoods derived from the ocean. This is an internal branding effort, really, one that aims to build greater solidarity in the community.
Less sexy, but seriously needed. Essentially the leadership team and I will be pestering the City, business owners, and others to integrate art and worker accommodations into their capital and infrastructure plans. I keep returning to bike racks. There is no covered place to lock a bike on Shelikof, even though plenty of folks ride their bikes to work. These small improvements will make the area a better place to work.
So, there you have it. I submitted the proposal yesterday (coincidentally my birthday). In December we will learn if the project is funded. Regardless of the outcome, thanks goes to my friends, collaborators, partners, and the many who were recently strangers but are now colleagues who offered me advice, expertise, and time through this process. What started out as a personal vision in January is now a community-wide dream.
Here's to giving teeth to dreams!
Update: ArtPlace America notified me that I was not awarded the grant. It is very disappointing for Kodiak, as so many people believed in the project and were very excited for its potential. Nonetheless, the conversations and ideas shared and the relationships that were forged through planning for the District have taken root. A business owner on Shelikof St. is adding "gallery" to her store name. The City is financing the creation of interpretive panels highlighting salmon cannery history for downtown. The Kodiak Arts Council started using Fishermen's Hall as a gathering and art space. With diligence, openness, and tenacity, Kodiak will embrace the working waterfront in a new way and see it not just as a place of production, but also as a place of creation.
The NOAA ship Miller Freeman is at the end of her line, as she is being scrapped in Washington State. This research vessel sailed from the Bering Sea to Southern California collecting fisheries data for decades, creating a voluminous record of fish population statistics and other oceanographic information, and even testing out trawl gear. But she isn’t just noteworthy due to her contributions to fisheries science. She frequented several Alaskan ports of call (she brought several of my friends and acquaintances to Kodiak for the first time) and at different points in her career was home ported in Seattle and Newport. The Miller Freeman was a ship that many people and many ports claimed as their own.
Miller Freeman, image courtesy NOAA.
The vessel was named for an influential and controversial figure in fisheries history. Miller Freeman (1875-1955) was editor and publisher of Pacific Fisherman. Pacific Fisherman was a monthly news magazine that served as the preeminent voice of the Pacific seafood industry from 1903 until 1966, when National Fisherman purchased the publication. Freeman was never a fisherman himself, but from his Seattle headquarters he became a key player in the formulation of fisheries policy and principal advocate for a range of seafood industry issues. He is often credited for pressuring the University of Washington to found a fisheries program of study, which is now known as the John Cobb School of Fisheries, perhaps not coincidentally named for another editor of Pacific Fisherman. Freeman served on the International Halibut Commission (the precursor to the IPHC) and was very active in international negotiations, always eager to strengthen the position of the US in regards to Pacific fishing rights. His passion for expanding US hegemony in the Pacific fisheries had a decisively racist tenor, evident not only in his editorials, but in the fact he was a founder of the Anti-Japanese League in Washington State.
Yet it was for his advocacy of scientific research and science-driven management that NOAA determined to name their newest research vessel in memory of the editor. The Miller Freeman was designed by Philip F. Spaulding, constructed by the American Shipbuilding Co., and launched in 1967. This 215 ft Pacific trawler had a fuel capacity of over 150,000 gallons, meaning her cruise range was 13,000 miles. And cruise she did. With up to eleven scientists, a crew of up to 27, and 7 members of the NOAA Commissioned Officers Corps, the Miller Freeman towed trawl gear along an extensive grid around the Gulf of Alaska and each year did a similar groundfish trawl survey along the upper continental shelf of California, Oregon, and Washington. The ship also conducted hydroacoustic surveys through the Shelikof Strait, around the Alaska Peninsula and into the Bering Sea. It was due to the retractable centerboard of the ship that she was able to conduct high quality acoustical surveys, since the equipment could be moved away from the hull and the reverberated noise that emanated from it.
Perhaps to the postmortem chagrin of the ship’s namesake, the ship also cooperated with scientists from Russia, China, Poland, South Korea and yes, Japan, in multi-lateral research programs to support international management of Bering Sea fisheries.
She was also one of the largest research trawlers in the nation. In short, she was a mean, multi-disciplinary machine, capable of conducting oceanographic and fisheries research in some of the roughest waters on the planet. The Miller Freeman was decommissioned in 2013 and sold later that year. Just as Miller Freeman lives on in old copies of Pacific Fisherman (the earliest of which are digitized and available through the University of Washington’s Special Collection website) the Miller Freeman’s legacy is assured in the quality and quantity of groundfish data gathered over the years and the cadre of crew, scientists, and NOAA officers who called her home. Thanks for your service, old friend.
This article was originally published in Pacific Fishing.
President Obama was not the first American president to hold an Alaskan salmon on Alaskan soil when he visited last summer. Warren G. Harding was the first president to venture to the Last Frontier, back in 1923. Just as Obama was presented with a salmon at Dillingham, Harding was gifted salmon at Metlakatla. Obama prohibited off-shore oil and gas leasing in Bristol Bay during his visit, but his trip was more about curbing climate change than delving into fish policy. Conversely, while Harding is best remembered for driving the golden spike and completing the Alaska Railroad in Nenana during his jaunt, the deeper reason for his visit was to ascertain the nature of the supposed “Alaska Problem” and to determine the reception and implementation of his Executive Orders that created fishing reserves in Alaska.
President Harding eyes salmon in Metlakatla during his visit. Image courtesy NARA.
The so-called “Alaska Problem” was the stilted development of the territory. Following WWI, the population declined and industry stagnated. In 1919, Alaska’s salmon harvest fell by 1/3, from 6.6 million cases to 4.6 million (this was back when output was measured in cans, not pounds). Canners and fishermen clamored for the Bureau of Fisheries to do more to conserve the depleted salmon runs. Recall that prior to statehood, the federal government was responsible for the management of all Alaska fisheries, including salmon. Secretary of Commerce (and future president) Herbert Hoover accompanied the president on the trip, arranging public hearings in Juneau, Cordova, Seward, Nenana, Anchorage and Fairbanks to receive testimony on how the Bureau of Fisheries (part of the Department of Commerce) could improve its management of Alaska’s fisheries resources and to gauge the perception and implementation of fishing reserves in Alaska
The year before, in February of 1922, President Harding first created the Alaska Peninsula Fishery Reserve. Later that year, he created the Southwest Alaska Fishery Reserve, which encompassed both Bristol Bay and the Kodiak archipelago. These two reservations included 40% of Alaska’s primary salmon fishing areas. The reserves limited the number of canneries in any particular fishing area and the amount of gear and boats that could be utilized to harvest salmon. A finite number of fishing and processing permits were issued, rather than the free-for-all access that preceded the system. The permits specified the size of a cannery’s salmon pack. The expansion of fishing and canning operations was only permitted after the Bureau of Fisheries provided evidence that a given run had recovered or expanded.
The reception was mixed. Canners and the Bureau of Fisheries hailed this as a major step forward in management. For the canners, limiting the amount of fish that could be processed led to an enhanced pack value. For the Bureau of Fisheries, it advanced controlling fishing effort, a key strategy in improving conservation. However, Alaska’s territorial delegate to Congress, Dan Sutherland, lambasted the reserve system, asserting that it provided a monopoly to large canneries, that it limited access to a public resource, and that it gutted independent fishermen. Rationalization eliminates labor; unions were also very opposed to the fishing reserves. As an example, they cited what was transpiring at Karluk, where the two canneries licensed to operate in the area merely put in a weir to harvest salmon, slashing their need for fishermen. (They were subsequently reminded that it was illegal to place barricades in the river.)
Arriving in Seattle after his Alaska trip, President Harding spoke at the stadium at the University of Washington, addressing his time in the “empire of scenic wonders.” Harding insisted on maintaining the long view in regards to Alaska’s salmon, stating, “It is better to destroy the defiant investor than to demolish a national resource, which needs only guarding against greed to remain a permanent asset of incalculable value.” Yet we will never know how the president’s trip to Alaska might have impacted the territory or its fisheries, since he died shortly after giving this speech. In 1924, Congress crafted the White Act, which eliminated Harding’s reserves and disallowed controlling the amount of gear used in a fishery. The White Act became the primary means by which Alaska’s fisheries were managed until statehood was achieved in 1959.
Now, nearly 100 years later, as the state faces another Alaska Problem in terms of its fiscal stability, Harding’s comments continue to resonate:
“It is vastly more easy to declare for protection and conservation of such a resource, than to formulate a practical and equitable program. Fish hatcheries have been established to restock streams, but the results are still conjectural and controversial. Argument is advanced for the abolition of one method of fishing in one spot, the condemnation of another type in another, and so on, until there is a confusion of local controversies which no specific and exclusive prohibition will solve.”
Apparently he did learn something during his time in the north- simple solutions to Alaska’s problems are certainly elusive.
Note: This was initially published in Pacific Fishing.
This article was originally published in the June 2016 issue of Pacific Fishing.
Looking out towards the treacherous mouth of the Columbia River, I noted broken pilings as numerous as porcupine quills along the Astoria shoreline. “Did Mont work in one of the canneries these pilings once supported?” I wondered.
Further inland, letters fading on the front of a nondescript warehouse spell out American Can Company. My imagination produced the glint of flat brights (unlabeled cans) and lids that were once held within. “And to think cans were each hand-soldered in his time…”
Cannery ephemera and a stereoscopic view of the inside of an Astoria cannery, all on display within a bank in Astoria.
Mont Hawthorne is the affable protagonist within the folksy and informative series of books about the early years of the Pacific coast salmon industry, The Trail Led North and Alaska Silver. Mont arrived in Astoria in 1883 on a sailboat from San Francisco, because “there wasn’t no railroad” to get there. He intended to learn the canning business. I arrived via airplane and rental car, with the intention of learning some fish history and relishing in some fishing literary arts at the FisherPoets Gathering. It ends up that this hardworking cannery man is useful as a long-dead tour guide and as a cannery superintendent.
Mont was but two degrees of separation from the original Hume brothers, who founded the Pacific canned salmon industry. He apprenticed with John A. Devlin, who learned the art of canning directly from the Humes. After five years of making cans, negotiating fish prices, and fashioning cannery equipment under Devlin, Mont became a savvy cannery foreman in his own right who went on to construct and work at canneries along the Columbia River, in Chignik, Kodiak Island, Cook Inlet, and Southeast Alaska. Each winter he returned to Astoria to work with John Fox at the Astoria Iron Works, a business that created prototypes of equipment that revolutionized the packing of salmon over the duration of Mont’s career.
Historic buidings associated with the seafood industry abound in Astoria--- aka Anjuli's nerdy paradise.
It’s an understatement to call the Astoria that Mont sailed into in 1883 a rough town. Vessels engaged in trade and pelagic sealing stopped at Astoria, desperate for new crew. Mont writes that shanghaiing was so rampant that he knew a woman who sold her husband for $100. Walking home at night was always a risk. He remarked,
“ I never went no place without a loaded revolver. No one else did neither. When I’d meet a fellow on that stretch I knowed he could be a shanghaier with a boat tied down below. I’d walk careful-like with my hand on my revolver. And, do you know, every fellow that I met on that stretch done the same thing. We’d pass with our hands on our hips, turned sideways, keeping our eyes on each other, and sometimes backing up as we walked away.”
Mont’s description of the red light district is equally evocative:
“Why, there was one girl show down by the docks where, if you didn’t have the money, you could throw a big fresh salmon into a sort of pen they had beside the ticket-taker and get in that way.”
You can't buy these ladies for a salmon. But maybe for a limit seiner...
Astoria has cleaned up a bit since then, and in the last several years it has started to resemble a mini-Portland. However, stickers in the women’s bathrooms in bars still alert the victims of sex trafficking that they are people, not property, in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
Astoria in the 1880s was a stinky place in the summer. Mont recalls that it was typical for him to push five hundred Chinook salmon off the dock at the end of the canning day, each of them at least 40 pounds, due to oversupply. The locals complained; the local wildlife prospered: “With all of them fish on the beach it was hard to keep the bears out of town. It made the womenfolk pretty nervous. They acted like the bears was coming after them instead of the dead salmon.”
Today, the most odiferous offenders in Astoria are fishermen’s most tenured or enemies: sea lions. Forgive me as I take up the parlance of Mont, but to underscore the point: I thought I’d seen sea lions at Cape Ugat, but I ain’t never seen no sea lions like I’ve seen in Astoria. The river boils with them. Boils!
At least a handful of Astoria residents won’t be too offended by how their forefathers dealt with a similar issue. Mont writes,
“One good thing the fisherman’s union did was to hire Clark Lowry to hunt seals and sea lions there at the mouth of the Columbia. They had been making a blamed nuisance of themselves coming in there and eating the fish and tearing up the nets… That man could shoot.”
Mont’s niece, Martha Ferguson McKeown, wrote Mont’s stories. The books are out of print but available at used book stores. I highly recommend picking one up to learn about the heyday of the salmon industry from a man who spoke Chinook Jargon, got an insider view of the Chinese tong wars in San Francisco, prospected during the Klondike Gold Rush, and “got in on most everything up North except the profits.”
Panel in the West Side Stories exhibition
I am so very happy to announce the opening of West Side Stories at the Baranov Museum! Within, visitors are immersed in a re-created fish camp and learn about the characters and community of the west side of Kodiak through the voices of west side residents.
Baranov Museum intern Alexandra Painter combined Breanna Peterson's photographs, photographs from the Kodiak Historical Society's collection, and the radio pieces I produced to direct short films that are available for viewing in the exhibit and at the museum's Youtube channel.
I was the curator and project director and conceived of this project just over a year ago. To learn more about West Side Stories, check out this post I wrote for The Salmon Project or venture over to the "Work" section of this website.
The exhibition will be available for viewing through December.
