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Crab broker brings buyers to Alaska to see real deal

LAINE WELCH
FISHERIES

Published: September 23, 2006
Last Modified: September 23, 2006 at 05:02 AM

KODIAK -- Rob George has had a long love affair with king crab and he is sharing it in an unconventional way. George is co-owner of the Anchorage-based Crab Broker Inc., which sells all kinds of crab from around the world. But his specialty is fresh cooked Alaska king crab.

"It's my baby," he said, adding that he was the first to begin brokering fresh-cooked king crab clusters out of Dutch Harbor 14 years ago.

George wanted to create a closer working relationship with his customers, and to help them understand the complexities of getting Alaska king crab to their restaurants or retail counters.

"I wanted to take them from boat to box -- to show them all the different hoops we have to jump through to get the crab from the source to them in a timely manner," he explained.

In July, George and his partner, Eric Donaldson, brought 42 buyers and chefs to Nome to participate in the Norton Sound king crab fishery.

"I was blown away by the ability to get seafood from that remote of a location. We get crab from all over the world, but the quality that comes out of Norton Sound is awesome. To take the crab from a small boat, into the cooking pot and to our restaurant the next day is amazing," said Dwight Colton, vice president of Fish Market Restaurants, a chain of nine upscale outlets in California and Arizona. The company also owns its own wholesale seafood supply company, Farallon Fisheries.

As a first-time visitor to Alaska, Colton said his first impression was the friendliness of Nome people. "They opened their homes, offered us rides ... that just doesn't happen in large metropolitan areas of California. People in Nome were always waving at me and it wasn't with their middle finger," he said with a laugh.

The Nome visit turned into a community event. The group netted salmon from the Pilgrim River and cooked it on willow branches on the beach. They also held an auction with items from the visitors' restaurants and stores and raised more than $2,000 for a local women's shelter.

Crab Brokers is now organizing a Dutch Harbor tour for late October, where buyers and chefs can again see boats offload red king crab from Bristol Bay.

"We've got it lined up so the group will actually go out on a big vessel and drop gear about six miles out of Dutch Harbor so they can see how it's done," said Rob George. "We're also hoping to get the OK from fishery managers to pull a pot that's loaded with king crab," he added.

George said the tours let his company meet with its clients, and it's the best way for them to gain a real appreciation of Alaska's seafood and its fisheries.

Colton had glowing words for Alaska seafood in general.

"My visit solidified what we already know about Alaska seafood. You can say hand over your heart that Alaska has superior seafood than any other state."

Colton has booked his ticket for the Dutch Harbor trip. He said he is excited to be going to the source of the "Deadliest Catch," a popular show on cable TV. "If I get even half as much out of the Dutch Harbor trip as I did from Nome, I'll be thrilled," he said.

You can follow along with Colton's Alaska king crab adventure at www.thefishmarket.com.

• Brown seaweed busts belly fat. More research is showing that some kinds of seaweed can fight fat. Chemists in Japan have found that brown seaweed, used in many Asian soups and salads, contains a compound that appears to promote weight loss by reducing the accumulation of fat. The results were presented recently at the 232nd meeting of the American Chemical Society.

In the study, which was funded by the Japanese government, more than 200 obese animals that were fed the brown seaweed achieved a 5 percent to 10 percent weight loss. The compound, which comes from a pigment that gives the seaweed its color, targeted belly fat in particular, the researchers said.

The compound appeared to stimulate a protein that causes fat oxidation and conversion of energy to heat. The protein is found in the type of fat that surrounds internal organs, especially in the abdominal area.

The brown seaweed used in the study is a type of kelp widely consumed in Japan. The same kelp forests are also abundant along the California coast. The research could represent a huge market if the brown kelp compound can be developed into a natural extract or drug to help fight obesity. Human studies are planned, but the researchers said it might take three to five years before a fat-busting pill is on the market.

Laine Welch: Norton Sound supplying summer crab

LAINE WELCH
FISHERIES

Published: July 23, 2005
Last Modified: July 23, 2005 at 03:36 AM

Each summer since 1977, red king crab has been harvested from faraway Norton Sound, where the main port is Nome. Starting on July 1 through mid-August, a fleet of about 30 local crabbers, mostly in boats under 32 feet long, hauls in up to 400,000 pounds of red kings from waters ranging from Cape Romanzof up to Cape Prince of Wales.

That wasn't always the case.

In the late 1970s and early '80s, a flotilla of large boats from elsewhere would steam into Norton Sound and take away 2 million pounds of king crab in a week. Managers changed the rules in 1994 and barred boats fishing in any other Bering Sea crab fishery from dropping their traps, known as pots, in Norton Sound.

It is a region where king crab has become increasingly important, especially with other fisheries remaining in a slump. "We've had trouble getting buyers for herring, there's no interest in our chums and, until this summer, we haven't even had a fishery for king salmon. So our best fishermen have turned their attention to crab," said Jim Menard, the state's area management biologist for Norton Sound and Kotzebue.

There has been no problem finding buyers, and all of the crab is committed even before it's caught. For example, Red Lobster in Toronto takes all it can get.

The company provides Red Lobster with about 130,000 pounds of frozen crab that is a "unique pack just for them," said Tom Magwire of Norton Sound Seafoods. Magwire added that it is listed on menus as Norton Sound red king crab. "That is a requirement."

The company also sends out 5,000 pounds of cooked crab weekly to supermarkets in such places as Florida and Las Vegas.

Norton Sound is not just the source of Alaska's only summer king crab -- it also is the state's first winter crab fishery.

Amazingly, it is done through the ice.

"It's done on snowmachines, and they use power saws or augers to cut a big square and drop cone-shaped pots through the ice," Menard said. "The fishery opens in mid-November, but since we don't have a good ice base, it usually gets under way after New Year's."

The fishery yields up to 25,000 pounds of king crab, depending on ice conditions. Most of it is sold locally, although 300 to 400 pounds of live crab are shipped each week to New Sagaya in Anchorage, Magwire said.

Norton Sound harvesters average $3 a pound for their summer king crab -- $4 in winter -- and the fishery brings in more than $1 million to the region each year.

• Yukon kings ka-ching. A small order of 130 fresh Yukon king salmon recently fetched almost $273 per fish at the Tsukiji Market in Tokyo, according to market analyst Bill Atkinson. Yukon king salmon are prized for their high fat content.

Laine Welch is a Kodiak-based fisheries journalist. Her fisheries programs can be heard on radio stations around the state. Her information column appears Saturdays.