Nic Mink launched
Sitka Salmon Shares to connect with consumers in
the Midwest with sustainable seafood options. In August, 2012 Nic was
hired by Butler University's
Center for Urban Ecology to help establish
the
Indy Food Council, designed to support food-related initiatives that
improve the sustainability, health, and community revitalization in
Indianapolis. We had a chance to chat with Nic about healthy salmon,
ecologically-sensitive fishermen, and the challenges involved in
introducing ocean-to-plate fish to a land-locked city in the Midwest.
How did Sitka get started?
I
was working for the Sitka Conservation Society in Sitka, Alaska, a few
years ago, and we were trying to figure out how to get citizens in other
parts of the country involved in the protection of Alaska's Tongass
National Forest. The Tongass is the nation's largest national forest, by
far. It's also the world's great salmon producing forest. The forest
supports about 30% of Alaska's commercial salmon production. The health
of wild salmon depend on the health of the forest, and, of course, the
Tongass is public land, belonging to everybody--you, me, and everyone
here in Indiana and the Midwest.
So,
we began working on ways to communicate messages about the Tongass
through the sustainably-harvested salmon that the forest rears. There
were discussions, at first, about developing a line of canned salmon. We
decided we wanted a higher value product, and Sitka doesn't really have
much of a canning industry anyway--just about everything leaves fresh
or frozen. After we departed from the canned idea, I think our first
real business plan was called "Tongass Salmon in your CSA," and the goal
was to get Midwestern CSAs to offer wild salmon supplements to their
members (We do have a few CSAs that still do this.) In the final stages
of development, we decided it would be easier to deliver the salmon
direct to consumers ourselves. We called ourselves Sitka Salmon Shares
and began setting up infrastructure in the Midwest. We also began
working directly with a few fishermen and Seafood Producers Cooperative,
a quality and sustainability-oriented fishermen's coop in Sitka to
source our fish. We knew the conservation message was important, we knew
sustainability was important, but we knew that if the quality wasn't
there, all of those benefits would be lost. Even today, we continue to
work very closely with conservation organizations in Alaska: the Sitka
Conservation Society actually supports one of our positions--a wild
salmon community organizer--and, our CSF members support a Sitka
Conservation Society intern. It's a complete circle, I guess.
What are the logistics involved in getting fish to a land-locked area like Indianapolis? How do you keep it fresh?
We
like to bring as much salmon as possible in via barge and truck. It's
cheaper and it's better on our carbon balance sheet (we pay to offset
all our Alaska transportation carbon anyway). All of our fish is
blast-frozen to 40 below once on shore, so, the trick is keeping that
fish below zero during the transportation. That's actually not a
problem. The cold chain that underwrites our current food system is just
incredible. From the perspective of fresh v. frozen, 99 times out of
100 I'd take a blast frozen fish over a "fresh" fish in the Midwest. The
blast frozen product is much "fresher." Going the barge/truck option
takes about 15 days. Logistically, that's not feasible sometimes, so
then the fish goes on Alaska Air Cargo. It flies, usually, from Sitka to
Juneau to Anchorage, and then to Chicago on the red eye. It gets picked
up by a refrigerated truck. Everything, regardless, goes to our cold
storage facility in Galesburg, Illinois, where it's sorted into shares
and the shipped out on dry ice to the rest of the Midwest.
Growing
Places, like many urban farms, operates a CSA (Community Supported
Agriculture)-- does a Community Supported Fishery work in the same way?
The
CSF is very similar to the Growing Places Indy CSA. Instead of dealing
with an impersonal system, we let people have a personal connection with
the producers of their food, only its our fishermen, not farmers.
Members know who caught their fish, how it was caught, where it was
caught--being as transparent as possible is a core value of ours. Like
the CSF, we also deliver a share of the harvest of our salmon fishermen
and, just as important, we capture much more of the retail value of the
harvest for our fishermen. Our fishermen also fish in the most
ecologically sensitive ways possible--with hook and line and small
gillnet. This minimizes the larger ecological disruptions that less
discriminate forms of fishing cause. I know the Growing Places Indy CSA
puts ecological principles at the forefront of its operations.
We
are different in a few key ways, though. We guarantee product for our
members, no matter what. If you buy a share of our salmon, you'll get 15
pounds of fish--5 pounds of king, 5 pounds of coho, and 5 pounds of
sockeye. It's salmon for your family all summer to compliment those
awesome veggies. Depending on fishing conditions, though, sometimes we
have to move around deliveries in order to do this. Like our friends at
Green BEAN Delivery, we also home deliver. Finally, the scale is a
little different than Growing Places Indy. Even our smallest fisherman
catches enough fish to feed several hundred families for an entire year.
We want to be in a place soon where we can take everything that our
fishermen catch all season. That's better for us and it's better for our
fishermen. So, we have to grow.
How is Sitka's product better?
First, we realize that no system's perfect, but we're always striving to improve, to perfect.
For
us, we look at the line from production to consumption and think
systemically about how we can make improvements to the current system.
We think that putting more money back into the pockets of small boat
fishermen is a huge improvement; we think offsetting all our carbon
during transport is another biggie; we think our 1% to the Wild program,
where we return 1% of all our revenue back to the marine and salmon
conversation, is better; we think our new Salmon Give Back Initiative,
where we make strategic investments in other local and sustainable food
projects in the Midwest, is also a nice improvement.
As
far as the product goes, we ask our fishermen to have all their fish
bled, gutted, gilled, and packed on ice with 20 minutes of being landed.
Fish spoil 4 times as fast at 40 degrees than they do at 32; it's also
the blood and insides of the fish that causes decomposition. So, the
idea is to get that fish cleaned and cold as fast as possible. As one of
our fishermen likes to say, it's not how long it takes the fish to get
from ocean to plate that makes the difference in quality; it's what the
fishermen does within the first 20 minutes of that fish being caught
that makes the difference in quality. We also ask that all of our
fishermen be "On Shore in Four," meaning that from the moment that first
fish is caught, they're back at the dock in four days. Most
hook-and-line salmon fishermen go on five day trips. Technically, you
have 8 days before you see a decline in quality. This just gives us a
little added assurance.
What are the biggest challenges in educating a new market on why your product is better- both in quality and sustainability?
Education
is an on-going thing, and always will be. Most Midwestern consumers
know very little about oceans, fish, and fishing, even though, however
odd it might seem, their lives are bound intimately to them. I'm a
professor by day, so my first inclination is to go into wandering and
complex explanations. I'm getting better at simplifying and distilling
so that the message comes across to people. The problem is that these
concepts--quality and sustainability--are incredibly complex! In
simplifying, you lose important truths that need to be conveyed.
Sometimes I feel like it's a lose-lose situation.
What
we've begun to start doing--and this has been effective--is taking the
market on its own terms, at its own knowledge base, and building out
from there. Wisconsinites, for instance, know that Dan and Deb Carey at
New Glarus Brewing Company make the highest-quality beer; Indianapolis
residents know that Goose the Market makes the highest-quality bacon the
world has ever known; Indianapolis residents also know that Mark and
Josh at Fermenti Artisan are guided by sustainability and quality
standards that are hard to match. Once we make those connections, we
the let them know that the same principles that go into being a craft
fermenter, a craft butcher, and a craft brewer can be applied to fish
and fishing--care, intimate knowledge of the food that's being produced,
years of experience. People get the difference between artisan
production and mass production, and it's about making that connection.
How have you been received here? Next steps for Sitka?
Things
have gone wonderfully in Indianapolis. The media has been great. CSF
sign ups have been brisk, proving that people are hungry for good, fair
fish. Nowadays, everyone wants--and I'd even say needs--a personal
connection to their food. We love this type of transparency and
accountability between consumer and producer, and it's clear that Indy
is that type of scene. In the next month, people will begin to see Sitka
salmon at some of the city's--the Midwest's--best restaurants. Our long
term vision is to see a Midwest where people have access to fish they
can trust; a Midwest that understands the value of supporting small boat
fishing families and sustainably managed wild fisheries; and a Midwest
that actively supports fishing families who'd rather fish as artisans,
not cogs in a machine. We're working on that.
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