Commercial Shrimping in Alaska

What I learned about commercial shrimping in Alaska 

NOTE: interesting facts will be in red bold font

Aboard the Hummingbird with Captain Snead (my hubby, John), we departed for our adventure early July 5, after an amazing Seward 4^th of July firework display, parade, mount marathon and a 14^th year wedding anniversary dinner at Ray’s Waterfront where we embarked on our life together (our first date nearly 20 years ago).

Captain John fueling up

 After about a $500 fuel fill up, we were off. We departed Resurrection Bay out into the open Pacific. Weather channel announced 7 foot waves, so we got to see what they looked like and they were big and rolly, sort of like riding on the back of a bull in slow motion. Birds were everywhere: Eagles, Puffins, the Common Murre sort of looked like a mini loon floating out at sea, the Cormorants were magnificent, Gulls everywhere, circling the boat and a few unidentifiable winged species.

icebergs afloat in Icy Bay

We ended up in Icy Bay, half way to Whittier, full of ice berg figures afloat around us. It was sort of like how you can find faces in clouds, these bergs sometimes looked like critters. One that had beached itself on a shoreline looked like a great white bear rummaging around. Did you know that it’s a $2,000 fine if you are found to have any iceberg on your vessel (some have been known to use this as a source of icing their catch)? They carry bacteria that can contaminate food, best not to go this route. Captain Snead brings two large heavy-duty coolers full of an estimated 250 pounds of ice each. Took both of us to guide them onto the boat; notice I didn’t say lift.

The best shrimping is found in Fjords following lateral, medial and terminal underwater moraines* and that exactly what Icy Bay is.  On certain maps you can see these underwater features; pays to know and understand these types of geographical phenomena’s for a successful approach to the trade.

Captain John and his "other" first mate, JC

 After getting the pots rigged and baited with herring we would drop 600 foot of line, to include 5 shrimp pots and a buoy at the tail end. Shrimp are found at depths between 300 and 400 feet. In Alaska the maximum amount of pots you can have is 60; 5 pots to 1 buoy or a buoy on each end of 10 pots. The 5 pots per buoy works for us and I even lightened the load by plowing over one of our lines as John dropped them, tangling it into the propeller which broke the line and I lost us 5 pots of potential product. I believe John gasped the dollar amount of our loss, but in my regret, I immediately let it out of my head and continued with whatever task I had at hand. No worries of the shrimp being trapped forever though, law requires the pots to have a small hole in the nets that is stitched together with a type of string that will break down and release its contents in such events. Yeah, for science.

The shrimp we would pull in would be the large and meaty spotted prawn, which are the common ones found stuffed in restaurants; the sweet tasting coon striped shrimp and an occasional tiny red shrimp fished mostly on the east coast and found in your frozen section of the supermarket.

Shrimping in Alaska can occur only between the hours of 8am to 8pm…thank goodness as I believe John would have had me dropping and pulling pots around the clock. We need to report to Fish and Game everything from when (date and time) we drop and pull, where (latitude and longitude), how many of each species per line and a lot more. John was writing everything down; then when we got home he filled out a report and called all of it into a recording. Helps fish and game to keep them from being obliterated and areas will be shut down to instill rejuvenation of population.

Other items we’d find in the pots were the small tanner crab, jelly fish, baby lingcod, octopus, starfish, sea snails, coral, lots of mud and shells. Because we are out there to shrimp, we keep nothing else and release everything back into the water. The fish, once out of the water, need some assistance. I’d hold them in the water and move them back and forth to get their gills working before they’d swim off.

Critters seen among the tinier ones, when we were in the open ocean on our decent and return was a rock piled up with sea lions, a pair of killer whales, otters and a pod of porpoises sped along our wake for a portion of the trip.

The return was a little more problematic, which can happen in the world beyond land, with the loss of our second engine, we were knocked down to at a creep of 10 mph. Unable to get the weather report, we returned to the open ocean of waves that increased up to 9 feet, which was like riding on a large surf board that would break with the sound similar to thunder as it enveloped the sides of the boat. It only worsened as we approached Resurrection Bay, rain became heavier, we lost visibility of any landscapes and were navigating by compass alone. We needed to remain farther from the coast than usual as the waves were less reckless. We had entered into the open ocean at 4:15 in the afternoon and didn’t see the land markings of Resurrection Bay until 8:00 that evening. It was middle of the morning before our heads met our pillows at home in Anchorage. It made for a long and treacherous journey.

*a mass of rocks and sediment carried down and deposited by a glacier, typically at its edges or extremity.