Salmon Season Week 5
Week five of salmon season is coming to a close. That means: we are almost halfway through our salmon season. Whew! The Southeast Alaska power troll coho salmon season is a marathon.
In Alaska, many fisheries operate on "openers". 24 hours on, then 24 hours off; or 72 hours on, 48 hours off. Or in the case of, say, spot prawns: 14 days on, and then that's it! That's not the case for our coho salmon fishery. The fishery is wide open on July 1st, and remains open through September 20th; aside from a short (two to five day) closure that may take place in August.
It's really a mental game to stay engaged, excited, and awake all summer long. We spend a LOT of time on the water; days and weeks melt into each other, and although we'll often say "wow, that was a long day" we're also always saying "holy smokes, that month went fast!"
As August's days tick away, you can feel that fall is around the corner. The sun dipped behind the mountains at 9 p.m. last night, and the cohos are really starting to be bigger + brighter. The bushes are chock full of blueberries, and rivers are beginning to fill with early spawning salmon: sockeye, pink, and some chum.
Since we last touched based with you all, we finished off our first coho trip of the season, offloaded those cohos in Sitka (they'll be bound for Bellingham Cold Storage this week!), and spent a few days in Sitka working on our blast freezer.
I know, the blast freezer. The blasted blast freezer! It's the most important tool we have, and has been a thorn in our side since the beginning. If you'll recall: after running on our back-up freezer all last season, we finally got our shiny, new blast freezer up and running this spring. She ran great all May, June, and early July... But mid-way though our last coho trip, had a malfunction.
Luckily, our backup was on board, and ready to roll; so we could stay on the fishing grounds (about 13 hours from town) and not halt production.
Unluckily, our fish hold is really not set up for this backup freezer anymore. Due to the poor configuration, a handful of our fish were ruined from the heat of defrosting the backup evaporator fan, and the placement of the back-up fan doesn't circulate airflow in the way we need. It was such a bummer for our spectacular crew to see some of their hard work ruined by inadequate machinery on our part.
Long story short: though the backup freezer got us through the last week of fishing, it was NOT a sustainable way to work the rest of our season. We needed to lose a few days of fishing in exchange for a fully operating blast freezer system for the remainder of the season.
Thankfully, we have an awesome refrigeration tech in Sitka, who was able to fit us into his (already overflowing) schedule, and get us up and running in just two days. The source of the problem was a bad seal in the system; unbeknownst to us, we had been slowly losing refrigerant all season. He installed a new seal, topped us off with refrigerant (you don't want know what that stuff costs per gallon 🤯) and now we're "back in business!"
Freshly unloaded, re-provisioned, and re-freezing, we are two days into this fishing trip, and so happy to be here. Calm waters, blue skies, and fresh fruit + veggies from town. Coho fishing is a little slower, but that's normal for early August. It'll pick up -- or it won't, and that's okay too. For team Fairweather, life is good! ❤️
With gratitude,
Jess, Caleb, & Monti
