Alaska Gold Seafood is the direct source for seafood delivery from the fishermen-owners of Seafood Producers Cooperative (SPC). SPC is owned and led by fishermen working to improve their livelihoods and the southeast Alaska communities in which they live.
In the case of many other seafood companies, profits go to shareholders, investors, or other distant corporate entities. In the case of Alaska Gold Seafood, all profits go to the fishermen-owners. We are 100% focused on delivering the best-quality wild-caught seafood. Our quality seafood earns your business, as our quality determines our fate.
Fishermen are the only owners of our co-op. We are not beholden to investors or Wall Street gurus. Our Board of Directors is 12 fishermen who answer to their fellow fishermen-owners. Our mission is to serve our customers the very best fish and get the fairest price for it. See more on how producer co-ops work here.
In the case of Seafood Producers Cooperative, our fishermen-owners risk their lives to deliver a pure, wild, minimally processed protein to our customers. When we ship fish to you, the ingredients list reads simply "wild salmon" or "halibut." The people behind this food work hard, each bringing their unique style and background to their craft, and put their lives on the line to feed people, yet their share of the profit is modest. Which is why writer Wendell Berry so rightfully asks, "How can we assume that the world can be fed by an agriculture that continues to assign the greatest risks, the lowest income, and no regard at all to the primary producers?"
This question is relevant to our fishermen, especially our coho salmon fishermen. There is so much labor involved in producing a fine line-caught wild coho salmon that fishermen could never be fairly compensated for it.
When you buy fish, your dollar is traditionally shared between four entities: 1) a fisherman, 2) a processor, 3) a wholesaler, and 4) a retailer all touch a fish before it ends up on your plate. For each dollar that you spend on fish, each of these entities takes a cut. And there’s a reason each takes a cut, because they do indeed all work hard to complete the transaction, but traditionally the producer’s cut is the smallest, as Wendell Berry eloquently notes.
In the case of our co-op’s web-based retail store Alaska Gold Seafood (URL), this division of the dollar looks a little different. We have an ecommerce platform—hosting for our shop (you might call this rent for occupying a space on the world wide web), credit card processing (a few % of each dollar spent on the website), website maintenance (upkeep of our rental space). Then once an order comes in, it gets sent to our cold storage partners in Reno and Ohio. These shipping hubs are strategically located so that we can ship our seafood to most of the lower 48 using ground shipping (MUCH cheaper and sustainable than air freight). Here again, it's all about the cold chain, so we use LOTS of dry ice to ship it to your door (most if not all of that dry ice will have sublimated by the time it reaches you, but dry ice is remarkably effective at keeping things frozen). The most important factor in the quality of the fish is how it was handled on the boat, but that cold chain is a very close second. So, we take that very seriously. There are very sturdy cardboard boxes and plenty of dry ice. And of course, UPS and FedEx take these packages across the country, and we sit with our fingers crossed waiting for a successful delivery without delay.
Of course, we have to have advertising. Google and Facebook essentially serve as modern-day Yellow Pages. (Look at how much money the folks like Mark Zuckerberg have—yes, a lot of our earnings go that direction just so that customers can find us.)
During all of these steps, a portion of that dollar is taken by each of these four entities.
A question people rightfully ask is how much of that dollar goes to the fisherman himself? Certainly, many fishermen think it unfair that they deliver seafood to a processor for let’s say $1.00 per pound, and then the fisherman sees that same fish in the store or a market being sold for $30.00 per pound. This 50 to 1 ratio is a hypothetical situation, but is not terribly far from what we see in reality.
In general, fishermen produce a whole fish. In the case of salmon, the fisherman might deliver it head-on and gutted, headed and gutted, or in the round (all of the fish), depending on catch and freezing method. Once brought to our plant, there is hard work in cutting, portioning, freezing and boxing the fish. We think we have the hardest working plant in Alaska! See them in action here.
For each whole fish delivered, depending on the species and size of fish, roughly 60% of that fish can become the boneless dinner-sized portions that most end consumers want. You don’t want to eat a fin or a bone or a tooth. Or any viscera. We DO make minced meat out of our leftover meat from portioning. And we also offer collars. What we can’t portion or use in another manner can become bait. Or fertilizer. But regardless that’s a chunk of the fisherman’s dollar.
While fishermen’s gear has modernized and harvesting methods have become more efficient over time, the fishermen’s share of your dollar has declined over time, a fact known by fishermen all too well. In bad years, many fishermen revolt, try to form their own companies, many of which fail, because frequently those 3 other steps to find the people buying the fish and how to get the fish to them are more challenging than we realize. This same plight applies to farmers, syrup harvesters, ranchers, and any other direct producer of food products.
It is conceivable that a couple of steps can be eliminated when you go direct to the dock and buy an unprocessed fish, or a fish that the fisherman might cut up special for you right there. The fisherman might expect to see all of that $50.00 in such a scenario. However, most people don’t sit on a dock and wait for fishermen to show up. And somebody with enough time on their hands to stalk the docks might expect a significant discount over what they’d pay in the store.
Or a fisherman might go to the farmer’s market, spending time they could be fishing, to gab with people, and sell fish. This puts a face on the product, but the fishermen’s boat hold might fill up with more fish than can be sold, so the farmer’s market might not be the most efficient model—what does the fisherman do with what he doesn’t sell? How does she keep the fish at a proper temperature throughout the process? That fisherman then still needs to get involved in processing, cold storage, and transportation, at least at a small scale, and then comes all of the risks entailed, too.
Of course, there are costs here, too. You could go fishing, too. Just make sure to take a tab on equipment costs, licenses, fuel used, and then do an honest calculation of your meal cost. Unless you’re REALLY efficient and a good fisherman, those are some expensive meals! They make Alaska Gold Seafood look really inexpensive. Fishing for our fishermen is fulfilling and you might even say fun. And that’s why we’re here. I’ve been doing this for a long time now and I can’t say that I’ve seen anybody get really rich and those that have done really well have had that perfect combination of timing and an unbending desire with a super strong work ethic.
