How does commercial fishing work?

[huiray]

Aha, thanks.

[longroper]

Long roper,

Curious, I checked upthread but didn't see where you fish in AK. Bristol Bay?

I spend my time in the central and western Gulf of Alaska.

[longroper]

Longroper, just curious, are you familiar with this couple and their operations? https://www.wildalaskasalmonandseafood.com/

I still have some of their salmon in my freezer, and they just had their "last session" at the Bloomington (IN) Farmers' Market the past weekend.

Not them specifically, no. There are a small number of direct-marketing fishermen, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through to be able to do it, and it's quite an undertaking. We used to sell scallops right off the boat, but there isn't the same culture of direct boat sales here that there is in, say, the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, outside of a few places in Anchorage, the fish market situation in Alaska is a little grim. If you want the widest selection of fresh Alaskan seafood, your best bet is probably Seattle.

[johnnyd]

If I can't answer, I'll feed you a line of reasonable-sounding bullshit. Because I'm a fisherman. It's part of the job.

Yeah, baby !!!

This is easier to answer for Alaskan scallops than for east coast scallops. It would be extremely difficult and expensive to keep scallops alive on the boat, at the plant, on the airplane, and at the market. It's a very long chain. I don't know if any of the east coast boats do any live deliveries.

Here in Maine, it is illegal to dock at pier with whole scallops. A shame as that may be, it was established to avoid spoiling the meats (abductor muscle) with highly perishable roe/coral and other parts. Sometimes we had to drift off shore and shuck our catch before tying up at the buyer.

There are recently, however, efforts to address the demand of in-shell scallops. I've seen whole small bay scallops (ridged shell) for sale on Portland's waterfront for $3 each, and there is an outfit out of Gloucester Mass that will ship you 5 Atlantic scallops for, like, fourty bucks.

[longroper]

Here in Maine, it is illegal to dock at pier with whole scallops. A shame as that may be, it was established to avoid spoiling the meats (abductor muscle) with highly perishable roe/coral and other parts. Sometimes we had to drift off shore and shuck our catch before tying up at the buyer.

There are recently, however, efforts to address the demand of in-shell scallops. I've seen whole small bay scallops (ridged shell) for sale on Portland's waterfront for $3 each, and there is an outfit out of Gloucester Mass that will ship you 5 Atlantic scallops for, like, fourty bucks.

$8 a scallop!! I could retire in a season!

Perishability is definitely the reason for shucking the meats at sea. Bags of meats last a long time well-iced; the guts not so much. We did have one friend of ours with a restaurant who wanted live scallops, so one year we'd toss a couple of bushels from the last day's last tow into water and bring it to him. We did it for a few trips, but then there came some question as to whether or not it was really legal to do, so we mutually decided it was better to just stop.

He said people were a little bit sketched out by scallops on the half shell anyway. They're more anatomically complex than oysters.

[johnnyd]

$8 a scallop!! I could retire in a season!

Yeah, no kidding! But that price is all about the shipping, I'll wager. I am paying $15/lb for U10's from a local dragger this month, but our season is ending soon. The news here is about shrimp. It appears the biomass has headed north owing to warmer temps in the Gulf of Maine. Lowest harvest since 1978 has feds calling for a year off next year. People get 100lbs/ tow vs. 500 last year, and even though the price has tripled, it's still not worth going out. Canadian shrimpers are, I hear, doing fine.

[longroper]

$8 a scallop!! I could retire in a season!

Yeah, no kidding! But that price is all about the shipping, I'll wager.

No doubt. I could probably get $12 for a live Alaskan scallop in the lower 48. Of course, it would cost me $15 to get it there...

I am paying $15/lb for U10's from a local dragger this month, but our season is ending soon. The news here is about shrimp. It appears the biomass has headed north owing to warmer temps in the Gulf of Maine. Lowest harvest since 1978 has feds calling for a year off next year. People get 100lbs/ tow vs. 500 last year, and even though the price has tripled, it's still not worth going out. Canadian shrimpers are, I hear, doing fine.

This is the newest wrinkle in fish. Populations are being affected by warmer water temperatures and beginning to migrate north. While the selfish side of me thinks that it would be great to have whole new species to sell and eat, the pragmatic side realizes that the kinds and quantities of fish that are landed now in these and all other waters in the next thirty to fifty years are likely to be very different from what they are now, and not due merely to overfishing. Sustainability may very well take a backseat to climate change as a fish market buzzword. Already the Arctic nations have instituted a moratorium on potential Arctic Ocean commercial fishing until data can be collected on an ecosystem we know almost nothing about, since it has been nearly inaccessible until now.