Over the course of the summer, I had a chance to talk to a huge number of fishermen, but our conversations did not happen just at the harbors, docks, or in Sitka's Pbar. Instead, they occurred on tenders.
Tenders are a very important component of Southeast Alaska's fishing industry and serve fishing boats that are far from their home harbors.
Robby Bruce stands in front of his tender the "Ginny C", which was serving gill netters in Deep Inlet, Sitka, AK.
As a community organizer, I saw working on tenders as not only a way to reach out to fishermen about the Tongass Transition during the busy fishing season, but also as a way to get some sort of experience in the lifestyle and hard work that most people in Southeast commit to in order to make their living.
Picture the King salmon opening in July, which is one of the busiest times for salmon trollers and consequently for the tenders. A typical day for tender deckhands begins at 6 or 7 in the morning with greetings from fishermen that have been waiting to sell their fish since 3 am. There is not just one boat waiting to offload, but a line of 5 boats with more lingering close by. The hydraulics are turned on, the crane is in motion, and bags of fish are hauled one at a time from the fishermen's boat to a tray on the tender where the deckhands sort the fish for quality and weight.
The skipper and a deckhand aboard the Shoreline Scow around Pelican, AK sort Cohos to be weighed.
With troll caught Coho aboard, deckhands of the Ginny C and myself removed the ice from salmon bellies, weighed the fish, placed them in totes, and then stuffed their bellies again with ice.
The Shoreline in Pelican, AK has been a woman-run operation for decades, and I was fortunate to join them for a few days and share in their hard, hard work, which helps our fishermen keep fishing.
Stay tuned! I will be posting a blog piece focused on the advocacy work I did on tenders entitled "You slay 'um, we weigh 'um": a mix of tendering and Tongass Transition advocacy in Southeast Take Two.A big thank you to KaiLea Wallin who coined the two slogans I have used as titles for these blog pieces.
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