Once the salmon is filleted, more meat is removed to be made later into salmonburgers. - Margaret Bauman/Alaska Newspapers / for Alaska Newspapers
Togiak sockeyes become Anchorage fillets
July 15th 8:36 pm | Margaret Bauman
Wild Alaska sockeye salmon fresh from the waters of Togiak in Bristol Bay, flowed off of conveyor belts at Copper River Seafoods in Anchorage this week, as several dozen workers moved quickly to fillet the fish, weigh and package them for shipping.
Most of the fillets would be vacuum packed in 1.5 pound packages, one of a growing number of products produced by the popular seafood processor, which also has facilities at Cordova and Togiak.
The individual packages, hundreds of them, were then loaded onto large trays to be flash frozen before shipping to points around the Lower 48 states.
And the sockeyes just kept on coming, transported from Togiak Seafoods, a joint venture of the Togiak Traditional Council in the Southwest Alaska village, and Copper River Seafoods.
It's been a good year for sockeyes, with the cumulative catch for Bristol Bay reaching in excess of 18 million fish by July 7, on a total run of 219,278 reds, with much of that harvest going to Togiak Seafoods.
Overall in 2010, Togiak Seafoods headed and gutted production totaled 805,657 pounds of sockeyes, 173,619 pounds of chum, 102,121 pounds of silvers, 24,712 pounds of Chinooks and 237 pounds of pinks. On the fillet line, 202,890 pounds of reds were processed in Togiak, plus 15,528 pounds of silvers.
Copper River Seafoods gained international fame over the last decade and a half for its marketing campaign for the Copper River salmon, renown for its omega-3 oils, harvested from sustainable fisheries and processed under the highest quality controls. Their sales pitch, in a nutshell, "we fish, we process, and we deliver it fresh."
Since 1996, the company has slowly expanded and expanded, to where it now brings in wild Alaska seafood for processing not only from the Copper River and Bristol Bay, but from points of origin in Prince William Sounds, the Yukon River, Norton Sound, Cook Inlet/Kenai River, Dutch Harbor, Kodiak, the Gulf of Alaska.
Sockeye salmon, Bristol Bay's red gold, is the lifeblood of Southwest Alaska's economy, a versatile fish which has sustained the region's subsistence economy, culture and lifestyle for thousands of years, nourishing people and wildlife alike.
Beyond its nutritional value, salmon, herring and herring roe-on-kelp fisheries are the core of the economy of Togiak, population about 820.
By partnering with the Traditional Council of Togiak, Copper River Seafoods not only gained access to more very healthy fish, but chose to provide many employment opportunities for residents, plus job training in many areas of seafood processing. Workers in Togiak are offered classes in fish handling, icing and bleeding and chilling, also with a number of other skills, all part of an effort to strengthen the local economy.
In 2010, the Togiak facilities employed 39 people and paid gross wages of over $400,000, compared with 2009, when a minimal number of employees earned about $35,000. Employment and wage figures for the current year were not yet available.
Margaret Bauman can be reached at mbauman@alaskanewspapers.com, or by phone at 907-348-2438