AHS Blog

Alitak Cannery: Looking Forward Towards 100 Years of Operation

by Anjuli Grantham

2017 not only marks the 150^th anniversary of the Treaty of Cession, through which Alaska went from being a Russian colony to an outpost of the United States, it is also the centennial celebration of the Alitak cannery.

The Alitak processing plant, owned and operated by Ocean Beauty Seafoods. Image courtesy Ocean Beauty Seafoods.

Alitak is located near the Alutiiq village of Akhiok, on the south end of Kodiak Island. The Alitak Packing Company was established in 1917, encroaching on what had previously been Alaska Packers Association fishing territory. In 1928, Pacific American Fisheries purchased the Alitak facility, adding a crab processing facility to the plant in 1959.

In January of 1964, a fire at the plant led to one fatality and the destruction of 15 company purse seiners, which were stored on the marine ways.  That same year, PAF sold the plant to Columbia-Wards Fisheries. Today it is owned by Ocean Beauty Seafoods.

While such a listing of events and facts is important to understanding the history of the Alitak cannery, it does little to convey the spirit of the cannery or the generations that have walked its docks. The superintendent of the facility, Woody Knebel, has not only kept the plant in production, he’s labored to keep the history of the place protected and remembered. He started a small cannery museum at Alitak and authored a book about the Alitak petroglyphs, images which Alutiiq ancestors chiseled into boulders in the vicinity of the cannery.

Moreover, he is collaborating on a book that will outline the events and characters that have kept Alitak running for a century. To learn more about the spirit of the Alitak cannery from Knebel himself, listen to the following segment within the Alaska Fisheries Report. It begins 3 ½ minutes into the program. 

For stunning historic photographs of Pacific American Fisheries canneries in Alaska, including the Alitak plant, check out the Galen Biery Collection at the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington, here.

Shrimping in Petersburg 1975

by James Mackovjak

Alaskan Glacier Seafoods produces Petersburg shrimp, a highly esteemed cocktail shrimp, and is the last hand-pick shrimp operation on the West Coast. A family-style business, it has been active in Petersburg, Alaska, since 1916.

Dave Ohmer, Alaskan Glacier Seafoods. Petersburg, Alaska ca. 1975. (Photo courtesy Jim Mackovjak.)

Four species of shrimp were commonly caught near Petersburg, Alaska. Most sought after by Alaskan Glacier Seafoods trawlers were pink shrimp (Pandalus borealis), which constituted the bulk of the “cocktail” shrimp produced at Petersburg. Coonstripes (Pandalus hypsinotus) and sidestripes (Pandalopsis dispar) were also used as cocktail shrimp, except that the larger of these were marketed as “picked, raw, frozen.” The spot shrimp (Pandalus platyceros) was not caught in quantity by Petersburg trawlers, and the few of these large shrimp that were caught were usually enjoyed as an amenity by crewmembers. The humpback shrimp (Pandalus goniurus) is present in Southeast Alaska, but, because of the difficulty of picking the meats from this species, it is not targeted by fishermen.

 Being employed as a commercial fisherman, I had been in and out of Petersburg for several years. However, I only met Dave Ohmer, owner/manager of Alaskan Glacier Seafoods in November 1975, well after the rush of the fishing season had ended. Having enjoyed many meals of succulent Petersburg shrimp, I was curious about his operation, and I introduced myself in his extremely cluttered, if not downright unruly, office.

 “What we have here,” said Dave, “is the last hand-peel shrimp operation on the West Coast. My father, the late Earl N. Ohmer, and his brother-in-law, the late Karl Sifferman, began this business in 1916, initially shipping product [whole shrimp] to Seattle for processing. As we began, we are still today a small, family-type business.” I later learned that two present employees, “Mama” and “Papa” Kaino, had been employed at Alaskan Glacier Seafoods for more than a half century.

Earl N. Ohmer shown here with king crab on the dock. He was later Alaska Game Commissioner at Petersburg, Alaska.

I asked Dave just what set Petersburg shrimp apart from other Alaska shrimp. Why was this variety of shrimp so special? He first responded that, “The inside-waters variety of pink shrimp (Pandalus borealis), in his opinion, “is a bit more tasty than the outside-waters variety. However,” said Dave, “the quality of our product is primarily due to our schedule and method of processing. Our stress is not on quantity, but on the production of a high-quality product. The shrimp are caught daily and delivered that same afternoon or evening, ensuring a fresh product. They are then cooked, allowed to cool overnight, and had peeled the following day. Before the introduction of mechanical peeling machines [in the early 1950s], all shrimp were hand peeled. Machines proved to be far more economical to operate and had a tremendous capacity. But machine-peeled shrimp are very different from shrimp that have been peeled by hand. Machines are fast, but they also tend to cause breakage, and the large amount of water they use washes away flavor and color. Shrimp that are peeled by hand, conversely, are handled slowly but gently. Damage is minimal, and the delicate fluids are retained. Quality is high.”

I learned that with generally only one boat fishing for shrimp and fifteen workers engaged in processing, the current annual production of shrimp at Alaskan Glacier Seafoods is approximately 75,000 pounds of peeled, canned shrimp, this amount resulting from the processing of about 3,000 pounds of whole shrimp per day, five days per week. (Alaskan Glacier Seafoods also processes, conventionally, a like amount of crab.) However, during the 1920s, a heyday of sorts, eleven boats were fishing and some 225 persons were employed, processing nearly 30,000 pounds of whole shrimp daily. At that time, the company occupied the buildings that are now the Ocean Beauty Seafoods facility in Petersburg.

During the 1960s, four shrimp canneries operated in Southeast Alaska (two in Petersburg and two in Wrangell). Unfortunately, since the early 1960s, there has been a general decline in the availability of shrimp near Petersburg. and Dave cautiously speculates that it was “overfishing, acting in conjunction with water temperature changes, natural cycling and the earthquake of 1964,” that caused the general decline in local shrimp stocks. He further stated that, “Within the general area-wide decline, several local areas are definitely improving.”

Although on occasion several vessels deliver shrimp to Alaskan Glacier Seafoods, the bulk of the catch is provided by the company-owned Charles W, definitely one of the handsomest boats to ply Alaska waters. It was my pleasure to be a guest aboard the Charles W for a day of fishing.

Skippering the Charles W was Bill Grennier, whose father was one of the boat’s previous captains. The very able weekend crewmember was Bill’s thirteen-year-old son, Joe. We left the dock at 6:00 a.m. on a snowy, late-November morning, making our way north between the blinking channel buoys of Wrangell Narrows, and destined for Thomas Bay, some twenty miles distant. Quietly drinking coffee, we watched the trace of the shoreline on the radar screen and peered into the blackness, relaxing before the day’s work began.

Although shrimp were fished in many parts of Alaska, ‘Petersburg’ shrimp was made famous by Earl Ohmer and his partner Karl Sifferman.

We arrived at our destination just as daylight broke, and father-and-son team lost no time in getting the beam trawl into the water, Bill shouting instructions to his son in the wheelhouse while paying cable from the winch. (A beam trawl is a large, tapered net held open at its front by a rigid frame that incorporates a long horizontal wooden beam. The beam trawl used by the Charles W was 52 feet wide at its mouth.) The gear set, Joe went forward into the fo’c’sle to prepare breakfast. Bill was busy watching the fathometer, keeping the vessel on a course along the 22-fathom curve. I asked him why beam trawls were utilized in this fishery. He responded that the usually larger otter trawls were illegal in this area and that beam trawls were better suited to fishing the irregular bottom and less complicated to use.

After a trawl of about an hour, the gear was hauled and some 500 pounds of pink shrimp were brailed onto a sorting table amidships. The gear was promptly lowered for another trawl, during which I assisted Joe in sorting cod, flounder, and other undesired fish from the catch of shrimp. Gently, the sorted shrimp were then pushed into wooden boxes, each having a capacity of approximately 200 pounds.

We made three trawls that short winter day, and at six o’clock that evening were alongside the Alaskan Glacier Seafoods plant with eight boxes (about 1,600 pounds) of shrimp. Quickly unloaded, the shrimp were cooked that evening. The following morning, the shrimp having cooled, peelers began their task of removing the delicate meats.

Hand peeling shrimp was described by Dave Ohmer as “an act of its own, which consists basically of grasping the body of the shrimp with one hand while with the other hand gently pulling, with a turning motion, on the tail, thus separating the meat from the body and exoskeleton.” The quantity of meat that a worker was able to produce averaged about five to five-and-a-half pounds per hour, depending upon the size of the shrimp. Petersburg shrimp averaged about 175 meats per pound, and workers peeling shrimp were paid on a poundage basis, at the time earning about fifty cents per pound.

Once picked, the meats were washed, brined (soaked in a salt solution that enhances the flavor of the product) and then allowed to drip to remove excess moisture. The meats were then air-blown to remove any shells or whiskers that might have remained after the washing and brining process. The clean, brined meats were placed in one- or five-pound-capacity steel cans that were then sealed and frozen.

Petersburg shrimp were sold on the West Coast wholesale market, where demand exceeded production.

In early 1976, Alaskan Glacier Seafoods installed a mechanical shrimp peeler to enable the processing of shrimp that were too small to be efficiently peeled by hand.

Bless me Father, for I have Seined

compiled by James Mackovjak

Here are some excellent shorts on seining in Alaska (complete with references) from the 1890s through the 1930s.

 1890s: “In 1893, when our company started fishing, we found it very difficult to conduct successful seining operations at Karluk Spit due to large numbers of rocks and boulders in the fishing area which continually snagged the seines. Alaska Packers Association therefore found it necessary to remove these rocks and boulders by dynamite. The work continued over a period of years at enormous expense, with the result that the beaches at this point and adjacent waters were almost entirely cleared of these obstructions. Had the obstructions not been cleared, the purse seiners would have found it extremely difficult to carry on their operations in this area.” (Statement of A.K. Tichenor, Vice President and General Manager, Alaska Packers Association, San Francisco, California, October 9, 1939, reprinted in September 1939 Hearings of Special Subcommittee on Alaskan Fisheries of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, U.S. House of Representatives, p. 247.) http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?u=1&num=257&seq=11&view=image&size=100&id=mdp.39015023148375

Sketch of fish traps at Pt. Adolphus, in Icy Strait. Note that the seiner’s anchorage and seiner’s tent camp are shown. Seiners back then were so small that the whole crew couldn’t live aboard. (Sketch and text courtesy Jim Mackovjak.)

 1888: “Captain Killeran of the schooner Storey, is reported as saying that he saw [at Karluk in 1888] “drawn with one haul of the seine 31,500 salmon, of an average weight of 9 pounds, aggregating 141 tons of fish.”(Report of the Governor of Alaska for the Fiscal Year 1889, (Washington: GPO, 1889), 19.)

 Karluk, 1898: “The fishing is done entirely with seines from 20 to 25 fathoms in length, 3 fathoms in depth, with a mesh of 3-1/2 inches.” (Seal and Salmon Fisheries and General Resources of Alaska, 1898, p. 274.)

 1923: “seines from 2,500 to 3,000 feet long were towed and dragged around by powerful towboats and hauled in by steam donkeys on the beach, 300 feet from the mouth of the [Karluk] river.” (Statement of Ottar Hofstad, October 11, 1939, reprinted in September 1939 Hearings of Special Subcommittee on Alaskan Fisheries of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, U.S. House of Representatives, p. 262.) http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?view=image;size=100;id=mdp.39015023148375;page=root;seq=271;num=262

 Purse seine in Southeast Alaska. “It was done by small purse seine boats. We had no gas boats then, however, gas engines were just coming into operation and use. They had two little open boats with a small engine in them, and they towed around a big flat skiff, and the purse seine was operated by a small hand winch.” (P.J. Watkinson, Kodiak Alaska, 1938 Congressional hearing on Alaska Fisheries, p. 192. See Moser, 1897 for Karluk seining, around p. 151

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?view=image;size=100;id=mdp.39015023148375;page=root;seq=202;num=192

Another Ray Troll classic t-shirt drawing. Troll, who lives in Ketchikan has created a series of fishing related art scenes on t-shirts that can be found in most every Alaskan fishermans’ duffle bag. Famous for such fishy classics as ‘jammin’ salmon’and ‘coho ho, merry fishmas’ you can see his entire collection here.

 “One day a seine fleet might produce very tremendous quantities of fish, enough to swamp or flood the cannery beyond its production facilities. The next day the weather may turn bad, or some other cause may arise, and they may catch nothing.” (W.C. Arnold in Leasing of Salmon Trap Sites, Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce and a Subcommittee of the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee on S. 1446 and H.R. 3859, Bills to Authorize the Leasing of Salmon Trap Sites in Alaskan Coastal Waters, and for Other Purposes, 80^th Cong. 2d. Sess., January 1948, (Washington: GPO, 1948), 86.)

Rebuilding Alaska: Breathing New Life into Kake’s Historic Cannery

Reconstruction project to incubate business and stimulate rural Alaska economy

Published: December 10, 2015 by Alaska Business Monthly

The Kake Cannery near Kake, Alaska had a significant role in the history of salmon canning in Alaska during the first half of the 20th century. It is currently threatened by the loss of the canning industry and its deterioration over time. (From historythruhistory.com, America’s Most Endangered Places.)

“It was approaching dusk in April when something out-of-the-ordinary, yet strangely familiar, caught Casimero Aceveda’s eye. “It was like something being reborn,” says Aceveda. The lights in the old cannery were on for the first time in almost forty years.”

Check out this informative article online at: Alaska Business Monthly on the renewal of one of Alaska’s oldest canneries in Southeast.

Updates on the Canneries Initiative

Greetings,