Let's Go Fishin'

Nick Caught a Crab

My nephew is out fishing in Prince William Sound off Cordoba, Alaska. More photos here.

First Catch of the Season

Nephew Nick delivering his first catch to Cordova, Alaska

Real Life

Whittier to Cordova, Alaska

My nephew bought a 30 foot fishing boat in Whittier and sailed it 100 miles across Prince William Sound to the happy summer fishing grounds around Cordova. Meanwhile, I went to Costco.

Alaska Landslides

Aerial view of the August 2025 landslide and tsunami near South Sawyer Glacier in Alaska

Tam tells us that Second tallest megatsunami ever recorded happened in Alaska last year.

I posted something about a potential landslide in Alaska five years ago:

Nick informs me that Prince William Sound is under a kind of tsunami watch (pdf). They (the guys who watch these things) have latched onto Barry Arm as a potential disaster in the making. I am not quite sure what Barry Arm is, whether it is an arm of a glacier or a piece of land, but there is a glacier involved. The prediction is that sometime in the next 20 years, Barry Arm is going to collapse into Prince William Sound and that is going to trigger a tsunami 1600 feet high which will be like the biggest wave ever! It would cool to surf it, hey? 1600 feet. I can't even imagine. Of course it will dissipate very quickly, it's not like a major underwater fault shift. Still, it will probably be felt all over Prince William Sound, and since all the fishermen up there know about it, it is liable to influence the choice of fishing grounds.

Tam's link is talking about Tracy Arm. Is that in the same place as Barry Arm? No. They are 500 miles apart.

Alaska, Red placemarks: Barry Arm (left) & Tracy Arm (right)
South Sawyer Glacier is practically on top of Tracy Arm

Yeah, Alaska, land of treacherous rocks, ice & snow.

Nick's New Tool Set

Nick's New Tool Set

Apparently my nephew has signed up for diesel mechanics school. Fishing boats use diesel engines and you need to know something about them to get a captain's license, so maybe that's what led to this. Or maybe the erratic nature of the fishing business has caused it to lose its appeal. Last trip out they made more money in a few days catching herring than he made all summer.

I've never heard of Teng Tools before but they seem to a big deal in some parts of the world. The tools are designed in Sweden and made in Taiwan.

Do Fish Fart?

Wild Alaska Pollock

Picture of nephew Nick wearing this T-shirt proclaiming the wonders of Wild Alaska Pollock shows up on my screen and I'm wondering what is this nonsense? Search and I find this on the Port of Seattle website:

Separately, because consumers are starting to look at sustainability in more ways than fisheries management, the Wild Alaska Pollock industry funded a study to determine what the carbon footprint of Wild Alaska Pollock actually is when compared to other proteins. The study, conducted by the world-renowned consultancy Quantis International, looked at several key impact categories such as global warming potential, energy use, use of land and water resources, and waste outputs. When the results were released, it showed that Wild Alaska Pollock is not only good for you, but good for the planet too!

The findings concluded that Wild Alaska Pollock fillet has an impact of 3.77 kg CO2-eq per kg of protein, significantly lower than comparative statistics reported for other protein sources.

• Wild Alaska Pollock: 3.77
• Chicken: 12.50
• Pork: 19.65
• Plant-Based meat: 20.83
• Beef: 115.75

I'm suspicious of anyone making disparaging remarks about cows, so I'm going to call it bullshit. However, lets see what diesel produces, because diesel is what fishing boat use for fuel, and they burn it in thousand gallon lots. Burning one gallon of diesel will produce 10 kilograms of CO2. Burning three pints of diesel will produce 3.77 kilograms of CO2. So fishermen are burning three pints of diesel for every kilogram of fish fillets they produce.

As for fish farting, the answer is mostly no, but some, like herring, do.

 

Nick Goes Adventuring

Nick with today's bunch of rabbits

Nick has more fun than you and I and a dozen of our friends put together.

Fishing Boat

30-foot aluminum diesel powered waterjet bowpicker

Nephew Nick seems to be getting serious about fishing. He's been working on other people's boats for a few years and now he's thinking about buying his own. This boat is in Cordova, Alaska, home to a big fish processing plant. There are no roads to Cordova and this boat is not suitable for open water, so presumably he would stay in that area and fish the inlets and the Copper River (Wikipedia).

Copper River and Cordova, Alaska

Supposedly this boat can be operated by one man, though I think a two man team would be a better choice. It would cost roughly $100K. It might work out, but it is 30 years old, and there is a bunch of complicated equipment on board, so you might want to be at least somewhat competent mechanically.

Nick Goes Fishing

My nephew somewhere between Anchorage and Seattle

Nick Comes to Lunch

Dutch Harbor, Alaska

My nephew Nick came to lunch Tuesday. He's been up in Dutch Harbor for the last month on board the Fishing Vessel Nordic Fury. The Fury was operating as a tender, carrying fish from fishing vessels back to one of the three fish processing plants in Dutch Harbor. Something went wrong however, and there were three tenders and only one fishing boat, so Nordic wasn't seeing much action and eventually they sent the crew home.

F/V Nordic Fury

The Nordic Fury is 127 feet long and has three holds / fish tanks that can each hold 70 tons of fish. They fill the tanks with sea water which is about 40 degrees Fahrenheit and then chill it down to around 32 degrees. 

Fish Pump Diagram

The fish are transferred from the fishing vessel to the tender using a vacuum system with a ten inch diameter pipe. When they get back to port, the fish are transferred from the tender to the processing plant using a similar system that uses a 14 inch diameter pipe. The system at the fish plant can empty a hold in 30 minutes. Here's some photos of a fish pump installed on a fishing boat:

F/V Perfect C's with Fish Pump

Close up of fish pump

Fish Pump in Action

Near as I can tell, fish pumps work by alternately apply vacuum and pressure. They apply vacuum and atmospheric pressure pushes the fish and the water up the hose, past the check valve and into the tank. When the tank is full, they close off the vacuum and apply some pressure and the fish and the water flows out through another check valve and the exit pipe.

Nordic Fury Haulback
mel defaoite

Nick's crew were fishing for Pollock, most of which is turned into surimi, a seafood protean paste, and sent to Japan. Some of it is used to make artificial crab meat. 

Commercial Crab Species Spreadsheet

There are other boats up there that are crabbing (fishing for crab). A typical rig for a crabber will have a three inch diameter cable a couple of thousand feet long with a hundred crab pots attached to it. The pots are like seven feet in diameter and weigh a hundred pounds. They will lay the line along the top of an undersea ridge and the pots will lay on either side of the ridge. They were catching golden brown spider crabs, giant spindly things.

Fish processing plants in Dutch Harbor in the summer

Dutch Harbor is full of bald eagles, seals and eels. There are literally hundreds of bald eagles in the area. Walking on shore, heading into a strong wind, head down, he looks up and sees a bald eagle heading right for him. The seals swim in packs around the harbor hunting small fish. The water in the harbor freeze over and the seals would poke air holes in the thin ice. Nick caught a 30 pound fish while they were at anchor in the harbor by simply dropping a baited hook on a line into the water. He lowered the hook a hundred feet of so into the water and hooked a fish.

Iron Dog Alaska Snow Machine Race

"The Frozen Race" - Iron Dog Alaska
Groove Life

The Iron Dog is an annual, 2,500 mile, snow machine race across Alaska. This year's race will he held in a couple of weeks. Another motor sport event I had never heard of before.

Iron Dog Race Map

My nephew Nick came to lunch on Tuesday. He's been up in Dutch Harbor for the last month, but their fishing season got cut short. IAman wanted to hear a snow machine story so Nick obliged us with a tale from a year ago. There is a snow mobile race called the Iron Dog that covers like 800 miles of tundra. The ground is dead flat and the guys run their hopped up snow machines a hundred miles an hour over the frozen tundra. He was hanging out with some friends who had some of these hopped up snow machines (Ferrari's he calls them). They are out riding around and one of the machines develops a problem with the throttle. Intermittently the throttle would stick wide open. The driver got it under control and brought it back. The day goes on, some girls come over and they all start drinking and everyone forgets about the problem with the throttle. Well, nothing is more fun than hopping onto a hot rod snow mobile after you've had a couple of beers, and that's just what a couple of the girls did. Unfortunately, they got on the one with the throttle problem. The took off and Nick took off in hot pursuit because you never go out in the wilderness alone. You can go ten miles in a heartbeat and if something goes wrong you might never be found. Nick has the good sense to go after them and sees their lights head across a frozen lake. They're going lickety split and then the sound suddenly goes up, the snow machine rockets ahead and into the trees on the far side of the lake and then suddenly goes vertical. Nick follows up and when he gets there he finds the snow machine upside down, ten feet up in a tree, engine still running with the throttle wide open, screaming like a banshee. He shuts off the motor but when he does that, the lights go out. So now he's looking around in the dark for bits and pieces of the girls (arms? legs? heads?) but he's not finding anything. The girls show up laughing and giggling a couple of minutes later. They jumped off the machine when they realized the throttle was stuck while it was still out on the lake.

Here's a couple of videos that might give you some idea of what the Iron Dog race is like. This one is a little long and repetitive, but notice that the snow machines are keeping pace with an airplane.

Iron Dog Team 8 Aklestad/Johnson 2019
Tyson Johnson

This one gives you a different perspective on cross country traveling.


Iron Dog 2021 Poorman Fuel Haul (Remote Checkpoint)
Josh Norum

Prince William Sound & Barry Arm

Prince William Sound & Barry Arm

Nick and Lola have been working on commercial fishing boats the last two summers, or would have but Nick broke his foot and he's been on the sidelines this season. Lola worked though, and this was a very good year for the fishermen, so she made pile of money, enough to buy a used car anyway. Nick, the poor schmuck, is stuck at home taking care of his ailing father. That's what you get ya big dummy, trying to save that stupid jet-ski from that vicious, foot-eating dock.

The boats they work on operate in Prince William Sound which is this weird area southeast of Anchorage. Notably, Anchorage isn't on Prince William Sound, it's on Cook Inlet. To get from one to other you have to sail south to the Gulf of Alaska, which basically puts you out in the open ocean, as if you weren't already. Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound are both large bodies of water, Prince William Sound is roughly 75 miles across and maybe 50 miles north to south. What makes it weird is all these islands and the jagged coastline. It's not like Puget Sound or San Francisco Bay, the boundaries are not so well defined. It's more like Norway. You see that nice outline of Norway on your world map, but when you start examining it closely you see that it is just a jumble of giant rocks. The coast doesn't look like it has any proper land at all. Much the same can be said of Prince William Sound.

All around the sound are all these little inlets, and coming down from out of the mountains are all these little streams that empty into the inlet. When spawning season comes along, the adult salmon head back to the stream where they originated. Each one of these streams has their own tribe of fish. Evidently the fish self identify, I don't know that anyone else, man or fish, can tell. When all the salmon are heading home, they break the first rule of security: they have become predictable. Their nemesis, the commercial fisherman, knows this, and sets up his nets just offshore from where the stream empties into the inlet. All the fish swimming home run into his net and are caught. Well, not all of them. Some get by and that's enough to keep the salmon population going. At least I hope it is.

Then there's the issue of the number of streams and the number of boats. Too many boats might catch more salmon than the market wants, the price would collapse, and some fishermen would go broke. That would thin their ranks. So it's a very capricious way to make a living. The fish may or may not be plentiful, the market demand may be high or low, and there might be more than enough fishermen, or there might not be enough. If things go your way you could living high on the hog, if they don't you may find yourself on the beach, casting a line into the surf.

And that's just the business side of it. The reality of it is zillion dollar boats, crews hard at it all day long, out on the boat for weeks at a time, well, as long as the season lasts, or until the refrigeration system breaks and you have to come into Cordova which is only town to speak of.There is Valdez, but that's an oil town, Cordova is a fishing town. They have their own jetport so they can fly Ukrainians in to work in the fish processing plant. Liza has been working in Cordova as a general factotum, doing, among other things, delivering parts to repair the broken refrigeration systems on the commercial fishing boats.Anyway, fishing season is over and they are all here in Portland.

Nick informs me that Prince William Sound is under a kind of tsunami watch (pdf). They (the guys who watch these things) have latched onto Barry Arm as a potential disaster in the making. I am not quite sure what Barry Arm is, whether it is an arm of a glacier or a piece of land, but there is a glacier involved. The prediction is that sometime in the next 20 years, Barry Arm is going to collapse into Prince William Sound and that is going to trigger a tsunami 1600 feet high which will be like the biggest wave ever! It would cool to surf it, hey? 1600 feet. I can't even imagine. Of course it will dissipate very quickly, it's not like a major underwater fault shift. Still, it will probably be felt all over Prince William Sound, and since all the fishermen up there know about it, it is liable to influence the choice of fishing grounds. 

Prince William Sound

Prince William Sound - Nick

Prince William Sound (red placemark)

Showing Anchorage (upper left), Valdez (upper right) and Seward (lower left)

Wikipedia has a bit of history about this place:

James Cook entered Prince William Sound in 1778 [right in the middle of the American Revolutionary War] . . . was named to honour George III's third son Prince William Henry, then aged 13 and serving as a midshipman in the Royal Navy.

Which would have made him a contemporary of the fictional Lucky Jack Aubrey which is important because I am almost done with rereading the second volume of the series.

Via Iaman

Report from Alaska

Iaman forwards a report from my nephew:

The sleepy guy is a deckhand on Nick's boat. The guy in the water with the chain around his neck and a knife is Nick.

Nick called today to say "hi". He was on the boat, sitting in port waiting for the DNR [Alaska Department of Natural Resources]  announcement tomorrow on which fisheries would/or-not be open. Fishing has been spotty, but other than not making money he is happy.

Asking him what he does with his day, "not much". Then he tells me the boat had a "net in the wheel" ??? The boat got its net tangled in a prop. Nick having his NZ wetsuit with him grabs a "vicky" and dives under the boat no mask, no tank, but with a chain thrown over his shoulder as a dive belt. It takes many surfacings for air and a lot of slashing with the Vicky to clear the prop. Salt water doesn't bother his unmasked eyes. Estimates vary but it is said this bold action saved the Captain a couple thousand bucks, motoring, time, fuel, hiring a pro diver.

"Vicky"

A Vicky is a cheap knife made by Victornix, they are ubiquitous on the boats, used for everything from clearing props to slicing up ones meal. No more caring your personal blade, "there is typically a vicky in reach"

Speaking of meals and diving, Nick says if he doesn't go be a Gaucho in Argentina, or canoe the Mississippi, he may give a go at diving to harvest Sea cucumber for the Asian seafood trade. A new industry to me, cuke-divers are said to be paid well for their efforts, but google says it is fraught with risk. Nick knows of a local captain who is legend in the area. He runs his boat down the coast all the way to Mexico, fishing for whatever is paying: ablaone, shrimp, sea cukes, salmon, crab. Nick hopes to find out more about the cukes from him.

Nicks First Day training at Camp.

Promotional Photo for camp Oopsie

Nick is my nephew, he lives in Iowa. Iaman relays this tale.

Nick hired on as a camp counselor / teenage wrangler at Camp Oopsie [name changed to protect the guilty].
He arrived for training but through a snafu, that wasn't available,  so he went to the kitchen to help out.
The dishes needed washing so he loads the dishwasher with the first load,  and the motor shorts out and burns.
Dealing with small fire,  that he sets to wash the 200 dishes by hands.
Wednesdays are cookout day,  the cooks day off.  except it starts to rain, hard.
Nick having cooked at HyVee, says "I can handle this"  and cooks 200 hamburgers for the starving kids.
They sit, they say their blessing, and......Tornado sirens go off,  drop your burgers and into the shelter, quick.
An hour there and the power goes off.
Then an all clear.
Raining like crazy, another tornado warning, back into the shelter for another hour,
Luckily somebody brought fruit chewy snacks.
Another all clear,  still raining,  the rivers flooding, so Nick goes and pulls the 12 canoes up the hill from the flooded bank.
Kids sheltering in the church building are frantic, there's a bat swooping inside, getting a tennis racket Nick sweeps the critter out into the black blowing night.
Leaving the kids in the care of the staff, Nick drives home at 11 PM through the storm.

Nick's Tale

Nicks tale from Charles Pergiel on Vimeo.
Up into Saguaro cactus desert hills at twilight, Nick grabs a lizard by the tail.

Update June 2022 replaced missing video.