Whether you're buying a car, a pair of sneakers or even an apple these days, most likely it comes with some sort of label or logo attached. Now Alaska's commercial fishing industry is starting to get into the game.
Whether you're buying a car, a pair of sneakers or even an apple these days, most likely it comes with some sort of label or logo attached.
Now Alaska's commercial fishing industry is starting to get into the game.
Fed up by what they call "impostor fish" in the marketplace, Prince William Sound fishermen and processors this summer started tagging individual fish to assure domestic and Japanese buyers they're getting genuine Copper River king, sockeye and coho salmon.
Cordova District Fishermen United, a trade organization, launched the novel program using a $40,000 grant from the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development.
All the major fish processors in Cordova agreed to participate, including Ocean Beauty, NorQuest, Bear & Wolf, Copper River Seafoods and Prime Select, as well as Peter Pan in Valdez.
The money was used to make a "tag of authenticity" and to equip the packers with applicator guns. The plastic tags are slightly larger than a postage stamp and have a tiny barbed post for anchoring the tag in the fish.
CDFU marketing coordinator Rochelle van den Broek designed the tag logo -- a golden fish riding atop gentle green waves -- and had promotional posters and rack cards printed up for display in markets and shops.
As everyone in the salmon world knows, Copper River kings and reds are the rock stars of Alaska fish, with a fervent first-of-the-season following.
But fishermen and processors in Cordova felt they had to do more to protect the Copper River brand.
They were appalled by an April 10 story in The New York Times that said salmon sold as "wild" in six of eight New York City stores tested as farm-raised. The Copper River producers are concerned about possible widespread fish fraud that cheats fishermen, processors and customers alike.
The tag says "Genuine Wild Alaskan Copper River Salmon" on one side, with the same thing printed in Japanese on the other. There's also a code indicating which processor handled the fish, and a Web site where consumers can submit confidential comments on the quality of their salmon purchase. The address is www.crsalmon.org.
Originally, the goal was to tag every king, sockeye and late-season coho coming out of the fishery, but program organizers soon found that wasn't practical. For one thing, the tags proved brittle and tended to snap off in frozen fillets. Van den Broek said the glitches can be worked out for coming seasons.
Last season, the Copper River fishing district produced about 38,000 king salmon, 1 million sockeyes and 468,000 cohos.
The tagging program is going well so far, said Cordova fisherman Jim Kallander, a former board chairman of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.
Over winter he approached top managers at each processing company about the tagging idea, and it wasn't hard to persuade them to join in.
"They were on board from Day One," Kallander said recently. "One processor has applied well over 100,000 tags now."
Fishing groups in other parts of the state also are jumping into product tagging to hook choosy consumers. Alaska Peninsula fishermen marketing their catches under the Aleutia brand name plan to affix the same kind of tags as the Copper River producers -- but with a twist.
The tags will tell consumers how to go online to read a biography of the fisherman who caught the salmon, said Karen Montoya of the Aleutians East Borough, which is backing the Aleutia effort.
Alaska salmon industry players think tagging and other marketing efforts are vital for competing with foreign fish farmers, whose prolific output has depressed prices for the state's strictly wild salmon catches in recent years.
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Source: Knight Ridderr/Tribune Business News
