Brothers market Alaska seafood to Boulder

CINDY SUTTER

April 18, 2008 at 10:10AM AKST

For The Bristol BayTimes

Ben and Daniel Blakey started their fish business in this year in Colorado.

They’re going door to door in their Heatherwood neighborhood in Boulder, selling flash-frozen salmon, king crab and halibut they caught in Alaska.

But their business has its origins 20 Alaska summers ago, when the Blakeys’ father bought his first fishing boat.

"We’ve been going up to Alaska every summer since Daniel was 3 and I was 5," says Ben Blakey, now 25, whose family lived the rest of the year in Bainbridge Island, Wash.

The brothers grew up working on fishing boats and in processing plants. They mended fishing nets at ages 9 and 11, and a couple of years later worked on the "slime line" on a fishing boat, cleaning salmon. They saved their money, and each was able to buy his own fishing boat.

When Daniel moved to Boulder to attend the University of Colorado, he noticed that no one in Boulder was directly marketing salmon and other Alaska seafood such as crab and halibut.

He began giving samples to some of his neighbors to gauge their interest, which was enthusiastic. He convinced his brother to move to Boulder, and the two went about securing a cold-storage facility and getting their various licenses in order. The work was complete by January, and Eco-Alaska Seafoods was born.

Gina Finney heard about the company when her neighbor brought over a sample of grilled salmon.

"He was raving about the salmon. He brought some over right after he had cooked it," Finney says. "We tasted the salmon, and the kids loved it."

Shortly thereafter, she served Eco-Alaska salmon at a dinner for supper club, preparing it using a Thai-inspired epicurious.com recipe.

"Every single person at the table wanted the recipe. My mother thought it was the best salmon she’d ever had," Finney says.

She has ordered the salmon several times since, and since she lives nearby, it has been delivered by bicycle. The company also has a delivery truck for orders farther afield.

The company has no minimum order, although it sells by the fillet, so the smallest order is about 1-1/2 pounds. The price varies by the market, but the sockeye salmon typically sells for about $9 a pound.

Chef Eric Skokan uses the salmon in his Boulder restaurant, the Black Cat. Like many chefs, he likes having a personal relationship with the people who supply the food for the restaurant.

While such arrangements were already in place for producers of vegetables, meat and poultry, Skokan had to order all his fish through larger companies.

Then Ben Blakey visited the restaurant with a sample.

When salmon is in season, Skokan buys it fresh from a large supplier. It works out, since those early summer months are when the Blakeys are in Alaska catching the fish they will sell for the rest of the year.

Once the season is over, Skokan uses their frozen fish. He likes it better than commonly available farmed salmon.

"It’s much more dense, steak-y and meaty. You can tell it’s wild," he says. "The farm-raised salmon tends to be kind of flabby and rich and fatty. I tend to like the meatier style."

For those concerned about the environmental impact of fishing, the Monterrey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch rates Alaskan wild salmon best for sustainability, because the catch is strictly regulated. Farmed salmon is in the "avoid" category, since some salmon farms pollute and escaped salmon from the farms sometimes mate with wild species.

Ben Blakey explains how the fish is caught and processed.

He and his brother and about 30 other boats fish Bristol Bay. They fish for about five hours and put the fish in a water- and ice-filled hold. They and other fishermen then transfer the fish to a tender boat, which takes the fish to the processor, where it is graded for quality and flash-frozen.

The fish Eco-Alaska sells comes from its own catch and those of boats fishing the same area. The company sells only top-grade fish.

Blakey says fishing is both exhilarating and grueling. When the salmon first begin to appear, usually in early June, the brothers and their small crews fish about eight to 12 hours a day. As the number of fish peaks, they stay in the 32-foot boat, working 24-7 in the perpetual daylight of the north, sleeping only a couple of hours a day, if that.

"We won’t sleep on dry land for at least 30 days," he says.

The constant fishing puts major wear and tear on the boat. Daniel is a mechanic, and Ben knows how to fix the hydraulics.

One year, they ran aground and spent four days patching the boat. Last year, there was a small electrical fire.

"If it’s on a boat, it will eventually break," Blakey says.

After the season wanes in August, they will have the catch shipped to Boulder and begin deliveries of the 2008 season’s fish.

Blakey says they love the work. "Just being out on the ocean is great, working outdoors," he says.

Then there’s the beauty of Alaska. Once they were fishing close to shore and had a chance to throw some fish to a grizzly.

"We tossed him a couple," Blakey says. "He ran off scared at first, but then he came back and chowed down."

He also likes the tangible result of his labors.

"As you bring in the fish, (you) see the reward you’re reaping," he says. "It’s a satisfying day to finish a day and drop off 10,000 pounds of fish, something you know people will enjoy some day."

Cindy Sutter is the food editor at the Boulder Daily Camera in Boulder, Colo. She can be reached by phone at (303) 473-1335 or by e-mail at sutterc@dailycamera.com.