Kodiak, AK

I was in Kodiak all last week for a fisheries conference.  It was a great place for a fisheries conference since it’s definitely a town where there are two primary types of employment – fisheries (fishing, processing) and the Coast Guard.  I was fortunate enough to get to see both up close.  I’ll post about the fish processing tour and the Coast Guard hangar tour separately (keep reading, they should be below).  I’ll also post a lot more of my photos from the week on my flickr site (http://www.flickr.com/photos/steadyrain/).

First, some details on Kodiak, in case you’re curious.  It’s stunningly beautiful (I’m starting to sound like a broken record though, seems like everywhere in this state could be called the same!).  The city of Kodiak is small by lower-48 standards but big for AK, with about 6000 people.  It’s about a 1 hour flight from Anchorage, either by Era Airlines or Alaska Airlines.  I was on Era for the flight there, it was a twin prop DASH-8 that seats about 40 or so.  The Alaska Airlines flights use a larger plane, often with half the cabin divided off for cargo and the back half with seats for passengers.  I’ve heard lots of tales of very rough flights, sounds like the winds can get pretty high and toss the planes around.   In a lot of the smaller airports around AK the planes taxi down the runway to the end and then whip a shitty and take off (pretty sure the pilots have another name for the manoeuver, but I call a spade a spade).  I managed to take this picture as we turned for the take off.  You’d hate the botch the take-off on a runway like this, not a lot of room for error.

One of the tour options was a visit to the windmills on Pillar Mountain.  I didn’t go on that tour, but I heard from those who did some interesting tidbits.  The city is currently largely powered by diesel, which is expensive and obviously has to be shipped in.  The windmills are relatively new and becoming very popular with the locals.  I don’t remember how much power is currently generated with them (20% is sticking in my head), but the city (maybe even the whole island?) hopes to be 98-99% wind powered by 2020.  That’s pretty neat-o.

Much like Juneau, there’s not a lot of roads on Kodiak.  Most of the ‘Kodiak’ grizzly bear viewing is far from the city of Kodiak and reached by boat or small plane.  Halibut fishing is also a huge attraction, as it should be since they’re so yummy.   I would absolutely love to live in Kodiak…I liked the vibe of the city and I’d fish every day I could and watch the storms roll in when I couldn’t.

Kodiak wildlife

I was impressed with the amount of wildlife that could be seen at the marina, right across the street from the convention center where we were meeting.  I’ll admit that I slipped outside between talks or during lunch to see what was out there.

There was a couple of sea lions (Stellars sea lion perhaps?) hanging around.  Have you ever seen one’s backside?  Weird that they have tails.

These sea lions are BIG.  Maybe 6-8 feet long and looked like they weighed several hundred pounds.  And they have big teeth.  I wouldn’t want to mess with one.

A sea otter

Some different types of starfish, best visible at low tide.

Sea gull.  It makes my feet cold just looking at him.

And this eagle was buzzing around the harbor, chasing the gulls. It was surprisingly agile for such a big bird.  It seemed like it was pretty effortlessly weaving in and out of the masts and boat rigging.

Coast Guard hangar tour

The largest US Coast Guard base is in Kodiak, AK.  We were given a tour of the helicopter and airplane hangars.  We learned that they have two types of helicopter here – the ‘60’ or Jayhawk, and the ‘65’ or Dolphin.  The 60 is larger and has a much larger capacity and range compared to the 65.  The 65s are able to land on the backs of the CG cutters.  Much of the search and rescue work is done by the larger 65s and using the C-130 planes.  Our guide was a (really cute) C-130 pilot.  

This is a ‘60’ J-Hawk.

A C-130:

Some random things we learned…The C-130 ‘officially’ needs 7 crew to get off the ground (think pilot, copilot, engineer(s), and I don’t remember the rest), though when pressed he said they could probably do it with 3 or 4 in an emergency.  These aren’t your automated commercial airliners!   

They can take off with as much as 175,000 lbs cargo, though in non-wartime situations 155,000 is the most usually authorized.  In a search and rescue mission, the back end of the plane can open up – to drop equipement or (holy crap) for harnessed crew members to lay on the open door and help visually search for their rescue targets (I’d sh*t myself, but would do it in a heartbeat!).

 

Fish processor tour - Kodiak

ISA – International Seafoods of Alaska – was kind enough to let a bunch of fish geeks inside for a tour.  It’s definitely not set up for tours, so I doubt they give them regularly.  We were a group of about 18, and totally in the way down on the processing floor.  There were forklifts moving huge orange plastic bins of fish around and you had to keep your eyes open to stay out of their way.  I was very impressed with the whole process – very clean, little waste, super efficient, and fast.  The processor handles fish only  (as opposed to shellfish) and were processing pacific cod, arrowtooth flounder and several other species of flatfish while we were there.  They can process 300,000 to 700,000 pounds of fish PER DAY, depending on the species.  The guide said there were two crews of 80-90 people working around the clock.  It was really, really cool, and my favorite tour.  Seeing how the fish are processed made me happy – I would still eat seafood after seeing how it’s all handled and processed.  I wonder if I would say the same after a slaughterhouse tour?  Probably not.  Actually, I think it would be good to see more about how the foods I eat are processed.  I may make that a new goal.  

Also, I should note that the processing process isn’t at all like I imagined it would be.  For some reason I thought it would be a more…linear…process with fish going in one side then moving down a loooong straight line from step to step.  It wasn’t.  It wasn’t exactly a maze, but there were different centers of activity (which makes sense and mostly shows my naivety, really).  And I never, ever would have guessed that there would be a machine that could take a whole fish and pull out two nearly perfect looking fillets with seemingly nill waste.  Amazing.

Some photos and brief explanations:

Sorting fish by species and size.  They come past on a conveyor belt and the staff pick out their assigned species or species/size combination, then drop them into bins.  Bins are moved to the next station (species specific processing techniques, of course, flatfish are handled different from say, cod).

Sorted bins of (I think) arrowtooth flounder and pacific cod

A couple of workers holding up fish for me to photograph.  The staff seemed very welcoming and willing to share their work.

Fish moving up a belt for processing

After being filleted by a machine, the cod (and other species perhaps) were trimmed by hand

 

Then fish fillets were packed and frozen, or frozen individually and packed.  Our flight off the island had a couple of pallets of fresh (not frozen) fillets loaded aboard, headed for the lower 48.  It looked like most of the fish was frozen but some was shipped fresh.