Pollock B season

I boarded my current boat on June 23^rd and have just completed my third trip. This boat is a Pollock catcher boat at around 170 feet and had a crew of 5. We’re in the middle of B season for Pollock which is the most fished species in Alaska, and is widely purchase in the U.S. and abroad for use in everything from fast food fish sandwiches to the base for imitation crab. I’m feeling pretty spoiled with my own stateroom (with porthole), two day steams to fishing grounds, and only 4-5 hauls to sample a trip. On this vessel type fish are dumped directly from the net through holes on deck into RSW (refrigerated sea water) tanks. When filled up, we return to Dutch Harbor and offload to the massive Unisea processing plant (which owns half the island). At the plant, the fish are pumped out of the tanks onto a large conveyor belt where fish are sorted, quality tested, and weighed before entering the rest of the factory. During the offload, it’s my job to collect any salmon, halibut, or crab from the millions of Pollock rolling by. This is the most time intensive part of my observer duties on this vessel type with offloads taking between 6 and 8 hours. I might be a bit more exciting if the catch was more diverse but so far in two offloads I’ve had a combined total off around 10 fish to pull from the belt – leaving lots of time for pacing and iPod listening. After staring at the belt of flowing fish for a few hours it’s really eerie when they stop the belt for some reason and the fish appear to travel backwards. Generally, I’ll still get some time off in town as the boat works on net or other maintenance repairs. During downtime after the first trip I was finally able to hike up Bunker Hill which neighbors Unisea and is a great vantage point to see the island on a clear day. Ending the second trip we pulled into town just in time to see some of the 4^th of July parade through the binoculars and our offload ended just in time to watch the fireworks- which were quite impressive for such a small town.