A key industry for Alaska is the salmon fishery. Everywhere we’ve been, we’ve seen commercial fishing boats.
Salmon troller – this one is in much better condition than most we’ve seen
The most common type of boat we’ve seen is the troller. Mostly run by a single a person, or sometimes by a couple, these boats are easily identified by their long extension arms sticking out either side. Each arm has a few fishing lines with multiple hooks and weights to determine the depth at which the lures are trolled.
Purse seiner – note the tender for circling the net parked on the back deck
While the salmon fishery is highly regulated with strict opening and closing times, there are still some opening for purse seiners. These boats deploy a long (~1/4 mile) net along with a smaller skiff – the skiff drives the end of the net in a big circle, and then the net is gathered in a “purse” and lifted aboard.
Two seiners rafted up to fish buying boat
When either of these two types of boats fills up with fish, they head in to a buyer to offload their catch. These buyers move from cove to cove along the coast and announce their location on the marine radio.
Sorting and weighing salmon after they are vacuumed out of the hold – the seiners catch a LOT of fish…
We were anchored in Nichols Bay at the south tip of Prince of Wales Island with a fish buyer for the purse seiners. The seiners catch so much fish each day that the buyer actually vacuums the fish out of the seiner’s hold before it is sorted by species, weighed, and then sent down to the buyer’s hold to be taken in to a processing plant.
