Fish-O-Gram #23- The Halibut Edition!!! San Juans Fishery--Interrupted--NEW OPENER (TENTATIVELY) SET!!! Greenland Halibut Sweeps the East, Pink Scallops Hit LV!!! Creatures From the Sea!!!

The 2017 halibut fishery has now been open for 16 days.  Alaskan production is over 1100,000# so far with more brewing.  Canadian production is unknown, but we have seen some substantial volumes of fish coming south.  We are not too proud to sell Alaskan or Canadian halibut, but our special joy is the local halibut.  More tender, flavorful and rich than the Alaskan variant, only 150,000-some odd# are harvested a year during two-five tribal-only openers.  Our local tribesmen have figured out how to run longline gear with crab blocks, and so for a few golden days each spring the Inside tribal crab fleet turns into a long-line mosquito fleet.  Last Monday the 20th we got a brief crack at the halibut.  Opening day of halibut is like Christmas, Easter, every birthday and Thanksgiving all rolled up in one, only better.  Monday was good, but then it got very weird.  For years we have trumpeted halibut openers, subject, we said, to last-minute changes and postponement caused by tribal deaths, to weather, and to inter-tribal political melt-down.  We forgot to add Federal Judges to our list of potential threats.  

Seen on the Road

Like most things fish-related, local halibut has a mighty back story.  We sell, eat and recommend Inside fish, but on the coast the Quinault, Quileute and Makah tribes engage in a much larger volume halibut fishery at the same times as the Inside tribes.  The Outside fish are smaller, more abundant and lack many of the toothsome traits of their Inside relations.  The difference is most likely due to diet and water conditions--the San Juans have such tremendous water flow that every marine species caught here is the acme of it's type--this holds for finfish, shellfish and crustaceans.  

Fish Is War.

Quota for everyone, Alaskan, Canadian, Tribal and sport, is set by the International Pacific Halibut Commission.  The tribes may only harvest halibut to the quota set by IPHC scientists.  They may schedule the fishery to their own liking. However, they must all agree amongst themselves.  This is a tall task, given the sums of money at play, the importance the tribes place on their fisheries, and the power-plays of honky fish managers and lawyers, plus the huge disparities in wealth between the central-I-5 "Casino tribes", and the Western and Northern, more fish-dependent tribes and again the disparities based on access to various fisheries resources, including hugely lucrative geoduck fishery.  "All Diplomacy,." in the words of Zhou Enlai the first Premier of Red China, "Is Continuation of War by Other Means".  And this nugget is a play on the Von Clauswitz quote, "War is the Continuation of Politics by Other Means"  In Washington State, "Fish is the Continuation of War by Other Means", whether we are talking Tribal, State-Licensed or Sport fishers, not to mention environmental groups, farmers and loggers, and certainly state and federal bureaucracies.

Everyone Fights Over Fish.

U&A Means Opportunity.
After the 1974 Boldt Decision, which codified the tribes' right to 50% of fish resources in Washington State, each tribe was required to set and verify their rights to fish in given areas, based on evidence of historic usage.  These zones are known as "Usual and Accustomed Areas" (U&A) parroting language in the treaty.  So the S'Klallam tribes, for instance, may fish out to Neah Bay but no further, throughout the San Juans, but not farther north than the northern tip of Orcas Island.  They may also fish in Hood Canal, but are barred from the lower Puget Sound South of a line drawn between Edmonds and Kingston, and East of the opening to Possession Sound.  The tribes are constantly contesting one another's U&As, with the most dramatic change of recent years being a federal court barring the Lummi Nation from fishing the Straits south of a line drawn one mile south of Lopez and San Juan Islands and run East to Biz Point on Fidalgo Island.  The rationale for this was a finding that judge Boldt erred in granting Lummi this area with little concrete evidence of historic usage.  The real driver here, though was that the Lummi Navy, the largest, best equipped and professional fishing fleet on the Inside was dominating the fishery to the point that other tribes were more or less shut out.  The Lummis still, however, maintain rights to fish in Area 9, which runs South of a line from Point Wilson at Port Townsend to Partridge Point on Whidbey and North of a line between Edmonds and Kingston and West of a line from the Southern tip of Whidbey to the Snohomish county shoreline.  As the Lummis sourly point out, how does the Judge think the Lummi ancestors made it to area 9 without passing through the now-forbidden Southern Straits district?  Area 9 is rich in crab, geoduck, urchins and cukes, and is the constriction point for all the South-Sound Puget Sound salmon, but because the Lummi have access to area 9, the Southern tribes and WDFW refuse to allow an area 9 salmon fishery.  And every year the Lummis threaten to unilaterally open for coho and chum salmon in area 9.....War by other means.....

It only gets more complex from here.  

Halibut Hi-Jinx--Cry Havoc!!!

Typically the Washington tribes open their fishery on the first day of the season, this year being the 11th of March.  This guarantees the highest pricing of the year, as our local halibut hit the market crucial hours before the first Alaskan or Canadian fish can.  So Salish Sea Halibut is not only the best of the year, it is typically the first of the year.  This first fishery is an unrestricted derby fishery, meaning that fishers may land as much fish as they like.  Subsequent openers occur around other fisheries and are typically limited to 300-500# per boat.  Outside tribes like to stretch out the limited fishery so as to be able to retain halibut in their targeted black cod fishery. 

This year saw a string of bad weather forecast for the early days of the halibut opener.  Inside tribes would have chosen to fish anyway and take their chances with the weather to take advantage of the high prices.  Outside tribes were more conservative, and the fishery was delayed from March 11.  That entire week actual weather conditions dramatically under-performed forecasts.  The Makah were willing to take a flyer on the weather, but the Qulieute refused to budge and the Quinault backed them up.  The Inside tribes, watching time, good tide series and markets slipping away, decided to buck Quileute and go fishing.  An opener was called for Monday the 20th from 7:00am 'till midnight Tuesday.  Roughly 150 boats from Lummi, Nooksack, Swinomish, Tulalip, Suquamish, and the S'Klallam tribes, Port Gamble, Jamestown and Elwha hit the water.  Each boat spends at least $1000 in bait with fuel, gear and other expenses adding up higher yet.  Crab is always slow through the deep-winter months and the halibut fishery marks the first big financial bump of the spring season.  Our last Monday was spent burning up the phone lines as we lined up fish logistics, moved last-minute bait around and fielded pricing chatter.  Catches were strong on the first few picks.  Meanwhile, Quileute went to court. At roughly 2:30pm Federal Judge Ricardo Martinez ordered the fishery closed by injunction, with all hooks required to be out of the water by 6:00pm Monday.  Judge Martinez further ordered the tribes to come up with a revised plan to present to him April 15.  In the interim the halibut, and all related fisheries are to remain closed.  This includes black cod, the biggest money of any coastal fishery. 

Predictably, the inter-tribal back and forth has gotten very heated.  Many of our sources in the tribal-politics world are scratching their heads over this one:  Quileute has the smallest and least-productive fleet of the coastal tribes.  By some counts they field no more than eight boats for the halibut fishery.  They are also the most remote and likely the poorest of all the Western WA tribes.  In this instance, Quileute has decided to play the spoiler.  Maybe it is simply the weather, or maybe, behind closed doors, the Quileute are pushing some other issue, far from prying F.O.G. eyes and ears, by means of stalling fisheries worth tens of millions of dollars.  War by other means............

BREAKING NEWS!! In a subsequent ruling, in consideration of all tribes coming to  agreement, Judge Martinez has allowed fisheries to proceed effective 7:00am Weds the 29th.  As of now the tribes are planning a Thurs/Friday opening.  We're going fishing again!!!!!!!!!

Nobody, I mean NOBODY goes fishing 'till I say so

.  

Salish Sea Halibut, JFF and You.

Despite the train-wreck-like nature of the opener, we managed to secure 11000# of beautiful, large, inside halibut.  The bulk of these fish are lovingly rat-holed, in beds of crushed ice, at at a secure location in South Seattle.  We are carefully metering out these precious fish to make them last as long as possible.  Remember, halibut is one of the few fish that actually improve with age--at least up to a certain point.  Back in the halibut schooner days of 6-week return trips from Seattle to the Gulf of Alaska or Bering Sea grounds, the old-time crewmen made a point of pulling fish from the bottom of the hold for their homepack.  So treated with age, cold and weight pressure, halibut turns mildly yellow, the texture firms up and the flavor rounds out, something like a fine aged gouda.  We have experimented with this, and have found aged halibut to be one of the finest seafoods we have ever eaten.  We don't push it this far for sale to you, but the point is: don't be afraid to purchase and sell well-handled halibut that is up to three weeks out of the water.  We will have Salish Sea Halibut throughout the next few weeks.  We will always be the first and last in the market with local fish.  Even with the best of intentions, though, it is just a few fleeting weeks of the best halibut in the world.  Once they are done and gone,  this, we will return, with a sigh, to Alaskan or Canadian product until next year, weather permitting, and judge allowing. 

Halibut Market Report. 

Halibut used to be a cheap fish.  Back in the day it was the choice of fish-and-chip restaurants and a favorite retail fish. In the past years, however, pricing has climbed to be one of the most expensive fish around and is strictly in the realm of fine dining.  This year retail halibut started at over $30#.  Halibut pricing has always baffled us, why, out of all the firm white fishes available, has halibut scaled the greasy pole to become a premium animal?  A major part of it is likely the transition in Alaska from a derby fish to an IFQ, or Individual Fishing Quota, fish.  This means that fishers own a small fraction of the resource, and can harvest  their quota at any time within the IPHC mandated time window. This has allowed the bulk of halibut to go out to the world fresh, rather than the frozen-market focus of a volume derby fishery years.  What Alaskan halibut does get frozen is generally from from the more remote reaches of the state and is a truly premium product, destined for high-end domestic, largely Eastern US markets. Across the pond in Russia, a substantial halibut fishery burns on with a frozen-focus.  The lower end and food-service segments of our market are big users of Russian halibut.  Also, the fishery has been steadily ratcheting down over the past 10 years as the Alaskan resource has cycled downward, constricting supply.  Size and presentation surely has something to do with it as well--halibut are big and beautiful and fun to cut and play with--Pacific cod, a better tasting fish, in our opinion, are small, bony and a nightmare to process--we always end up badly slashed every time we try to work with whole p-cod.  Halibut are an almost entirely domestic fish--there is practically no export market for them, and our friends in China get almost no Pacific halibut.  So halibut are an America-First kind of fish, beloved across the land. with little appeal for foreigners.  Now the resource and fishery are on their way back up in terms of volume.  Where to for pricing?

Flatfish Rivals.

The Atlantic Ocean is blessed with two, roughly equivalent fishes.  The Atlantic halibut and the Greenland halibut, or Hippoglossus hippoglossus and Reinhardtius Hippoglossoides.  Iceland, Greenland, Norway and Russia are the primary harvesters of these fish.  Greenland Halibut are harvested in huge numbers, the most recent figures we could find, for 2010, put the catch at a quarter of a billion pounds a year, five times the entire harvest of Pacific halibut, with harvest numbers certainly higher now.  Atlantic halibut tally up closure to Pacific halibut numbers, but along with Greenland and Pacific hali, all these species are on the increase.  Pricing for Greenland halibut is dramatically lower than for Pacific.  The only published figures we could find were for frozen Greenland fish delivered into Japan for less than $4.00#.  Greenland halibut has been a major import species for both China and Japan in recent years.  This past winter, with increased abundance, harvests, aggressive pricing and the ongoing slow-down in Chinese and Japanese seafood imports, Greenland halibut has made major inroads in the American market.  Major Alaskan processors report large volumes of frozen halibut still on hand, as expected sales to the East Coast did not materialize.  As our fresh season has kicked off here, we are seeing a sluggish pipeline for halibut sales into these markets.  Reports have it that the major fish processors are shipping fresh halibut into the Eastern states at well below cost to try and claw back some of the Eastern market share from the Greenland product.  So fresh Pacific halibut offers are actually lower right now in New York than in Seattle.  This situation will not endure, Pacific halibut must drop in price to compete with the Greenland.  Processors are going to be skittish about freezing fish and adding to their inventories.  So we expect mildly lower halibut pricing this year.  Nothing dramatic, but with the ongoing ramp-up in seafood pricing, halibut will stand out as a relative value fish.  We do, however, expect the usual price bump midsummer when the bulk of the Alaska fleet is chasing salmon.   

Those Greenlanders Out-Fish and Under-Price us.  

Scallop Photo of the Week!

Scallops continue to roll and continue to win new hearts and markets.  Going forward every weeks' Fish-O-Gram will include the loveliest scallop photo forwarded to us that week.  Keep 'em coming!

Pink Scallop Photo of the Week.  Chef David Perez, Estatiorio Milos LV.  Chef David, You have won an all-inclusive tour of the JFF shellfish hatchery or a 5# bag Lopez Island smelt, Your Choice! 

Visitors from the Deep!

As we settle into a routine with scallops, one of the unexpected bonuses is the fine variety of deep-water fauna that ends up in the dive bags along with a healthy assortment of rocks and barnacles.  Below are some of the highlights.  

This is a Puget Sound King Crab, one of the most beautiful forms of life we have ever seen. 

 

The Children are NOT dive-caught.

What an animal!

A jingle shell oyster.  Edible, but nasty....

Another small crab.  We don't know what it is.

Until next time we are your, Halibut-Beheading, Mermaid-Gawking, Court-Order-Following, Ice-Fishing, News-Breaking, Scallop-Fetishizing, Species-Identifying, JFF Crew.  Just a call, text or e-mail away. 

Fish-O-Gram #19

Fish-O-Gram!! Spring is Here, Sorta. Scallop Photojournalism!! Rock Bottom Rockfish!! Hagfish Fun Facts!! Bread Baker SuperStars!! Fare Thee Well, Paisley!!

Dear Peeping Customers,

Despite flying snow, constant wind and biting temperatures, we have been enjoying the music and re-assurance of the peeper frogs down the valley from us these past nights.  Our firewood is burnt up, the squash are rotten, the spuds froze out and all our winter greens failed.  The first nettles are up, but they are tiny and stunted.  So while Jones Ranch is still in the throes of deep winter, the frogs report otherwise.  We'll go with the amphibians. 

Trust me.  Warmer weather ahead. 

Pink Scallops--Our Dream For Reals.

Long-time JFF friend and photographer Erik Johnson took to the seas this past to document a scallop harvest.  From the most beautiful place in the world, our home, the San Juan Islands, comes the rarest commercial seafood in the world.  Pink Scallops capture the aesthetic and Merroir of the San Juans like nothing else.  We hope you enjoy these photos as much as we do.  Feel free to use them in any promotional form you like.  Send us your scallop preparation photos!!

The Pink Scallop Fishery has now been been open and seamless for almost twenty days!!  We have been reveling in all the scallops we can eat and working to spread the word.   As ever, all credit to our intrepid dive partners.  Joe Stephens and his crew deserve a tremendous amount of credit for the scallops.  And, as a sharp-eyed reader pointed out last Fish-O-Gram, we need to specially call out Brady Blake of WDFW and his boss, Rich Childers for their role in opening the fishery as well as Bob Sizemore, dive harvest manager.  Thank you, Brady!, Thank you Rich! Thank you Bob!

 

Pink Scallop Hall of Fame. 

Harvesting Scallops.

It is a rare privilege to bring such an animal to market.  Back in the go-go 80s Pink Scallops were a stalwart of the West Coast Culinary world--there is an amazing amount of pink scallop info on line, as it turns out.

Along the way we came to an interesting conclusion: Pink Scallops are the rarest for of legal seafood in the world.  We have long sung the hazards of scallop harvest--rampant bureaucrats, strong currents, anomalous PSP results, fragile product and more.  Pink Scallops lurk on the very downward edge of dive-able seafloor anyhow.  Harvesting them is highly technical and quite dangerous.  Divers use a nitrogen enhanced oxygen blend, but even that considered, work time at depth is as short as 15 minutes.  Divers collect them with bare hands or butterfly nets and stuff them into harvest bags. 

Pink scallops are biologically amazing. 

Pink Scallops have the ability to attach or detach themselves to rocks at will.  This allows the scallop to live in very high-flow areas--when the water is calm they detach and zip around like butterflies or water angels.  When the tide begins to run hard they snuggle down, bind themselves to rocks and happily filter-feed until the tide slackens.  They swim forwards, not backwards as one would assume, with a jet action.  Intake water is compressed by their mantle and fired out the slight apertures just up the shell from the hinge.  They can swim remarkably fast this way, but are not terribly good at aiming themselves.  Pinks have a series of eye spots around the outside of their mantle that, combined, fulfill the function of a complex eye.  In molluscan terms, a pink scallop is somewhere between an oyster and an octopus.  Most scallops are coated with sea sponge, which protects them from predators and has deeper, little known symbiotic functions.  When conditions are right pink scallops can breed in the millions per female.  We often get baby pinks settling in our oyster gear, meaning the larvae is so abundant they settle well outside of their optimum growing conditions.

Pink Scallops are delicious. 

Pink Scallops have a highly unique flavor profile--as a live, whole animal, in-shell scallop, they combine the sweetness of a sea scallop with the deep umami and slight funkiness of whole, live, shellfish, plus the tang and turn of caviar, as each scallop includes eggs or sperm.  Each pink scallop contains the foot or aductor muscle, what in other scallops is harvested and sold for meat, or what is punched out of a skate wing and sold for a scallop, anyhow.  Raw, pickled, steamed or grilled they are perhaps the finest seafood of our acquaintance.  They are also just flat-out beautiful. 

Department of Comparative Seafoods-- Scallop Edition.

Pink Scallops are found from San Diego to Alaska, but only occur in density in the inside waters of the San Juans and Canadian Gulf Islands.  Most sea creatures are much more widely dispersed--King Salmon occur from California to the Arctic Circle.  Urchins haunt kelp forests world-wide in the temperate band.  Even the elusive Olympia Oyster is found, sporadically, coast-wide.  So while our area is literally carpeted with pink scallops, this is true nowhere else.  Pink Scallops are the quintessential San Juans seafood.  Production is small--we are going to be lucky to harvest 100,000# this year.  Canada harvests another 60,000#, more or less.  This makes Pink Scallops the rarest commercially harvested seafood in the world.   Even Beluga Sturgeon caviar is more abundant--global production is upwards of 500,000#/yr.  Pink Scallops are expensive.  Dive harvest is pricey, our holding system is labor intensive and losses are high.  However, at a 15ct/#, they are substantially cheaper than premium oysters and much cheaper than beluga caviar.  Scallop meat yield is also much higher than clams or oysters or crab--the shells are thin and light and you are not paying for any retained water. Compared with urchin, king crab, premium meat cuts or spot prawns, scallops are a screaming deal.  Back in the day, scallops were served by the bucket at a wide range of restaurants.  But just as halibut will likely never again hit $3# and $5/hr kitchen labor is a distant memory, scallop prices have come up to level in the modern world.  We think they are worth it. 

Once out of the water, they need to be eaten within a few days.  This means that, unlike more ship-able forms of sealife, Pink Scallops will never be vaccumed up by our Chinese friends.  So Pink Scallops, the ultimate San Juans seafood, find their best application within overnight-shipment range of us and especially in our regional markets.  Beautiful, delicious, mysterious, elusive, abundant, sustainable, rare and ephemeral.  Pink Scallops are the ultimate taste of the most beautiful corner of the world.  THINK PINK!

Helpful Scallops Hints.

Pink Scallops are a deep-water species and unlike clams and oysters have not capacity to seal off their shells out of water.  This means they do not retain liquor in their shells, but in the meat, even when pulled directly out of the water.  Cooked or shucked, even an open, gaping scallop will have  plenty of liquor once prepped.  A gaping scallop does not mean a dead scallop.  A dead scallop is a stinky scallop.  Do not serve or sell stinky scallops.  Scallops should be stored in the dark, covered with a moist cloth and protected from direct contact with ice.  Too-cold holding conditions will substantially reduce scallop shelf-life.    

Once eaten, the shells make fine crafts or ashtrays.  Bust out the hot glue gun!

A nice sideline for the Saucier....

Rock Quotas Rise, Prices Fall. 

They are coming for you.

Coastwide, green rockfish numbers are strong and rising.  The Pacific Fisheries Management Council has responded by increasing the quota for some of the most common rockfish species off the Oregon and Washington coasts.  Last year's quota for greenies was 7 million pounds.  This years' quota is 25 million pounds.  Correspondingly, rock prices are falling.  This condition should endure for most of the year, subject, as ever to the vicissitudes of weather, other fishery openings, boat breakdowns, government shutdowns and more. 

Science Corner--Department of Expanding Fisheries.

These past years a new fishery targeting Hagfish, or Slime Eels has blossomed on the West Coast.  Slime eels exist in huge numbers in deep waters in all western waters.  They are the ultimate scavenger/recycler at depths.  They use tooth-encrusted tongues to burrow into carcasses and eat them from the inside out.  They are long, slimy, and deeply strange.  Slime Eels have a superpower, in that when stressed they have the ability to gell vast volumes of water into the consistency of jello.  In the wild, this allows a threatened slime eel to escape predators, who are immobilized and potentially killed by the slime--it can plug fish gills to the point that they cannot absorb oxygen.

The Horror....

Starting in the mid-2000s fishermen began targeting the eels for the Korean market.  Barrels with holes drilled in them are baited with rotten fish and set in deep water.  Fishermen haul them back, hopefully stuffed with eels.  In recent times the fishery has been worth close to $2 million/yr just in Washington waters.  Eels must be shipped live to Korea, where intrepid chefs prod them to exude slime and thicken soups and sauces. Once eaten, the skins are stretched and preserved for leather production.  Slime eel slime is also at the forefront of food-science, military and biomedical research, with all sorts of applications.  Holding and shipping eels is an extremely specialized business.  Eel tanks must be constantly cycled to keep water fluid enough sos the eels don't suffocate.  Apparently eel meat tastes like squid.  Eel slime tastes like salt water.

The Slime.....

Staff of Life--Bread Baker Goes Pro.

The trick is not to get between the children and the bread.

Here at Jones Ranch we get a twice-weekly delivery of the best bread we have ever eaten from our good friend and Orcas Islander Heather Immoor.  Heather landed on Orcas a few years back after a decade and a half bouncing around the broader culinary world.  After a year's stint opening the Catkin Cafe, Heather retreated to her mountain-top redoubt to have a second baby and bake bread.  Dubbed "Hedder Bread" by our 4 year old, deliveries are the most anticipated event of the week here--sometimes the loaves don't even make it inside from the van--hungry young Joneses will tear apart a full boule like a wolf pack taking apart a sickly caribou.  Heather's bread has a depth, crumb and authority like no other, and her crusts are always beautifully crusted and caramelized.  Weeks without Heather bread, such as immediately following the birth of her son, are dark and difficult time.  Heather's bread is truly superlative.  Now she is making the leap to bake and sell under health department discipline and we are delighted to promote, recommend and deliver "Hedder Bread" to the wider world.  

In Heather's own words.....

"What do you do after twenty years of professional cooking? You bake! After bouncing around the country in more restaurant kitchens than I care to count, two kids and island life have led me down a new path: the Path of Sourdough. Water, salt, flour, wild yeast beasties. After years of fascination and experimentation with the complexities arising from the combination of those four things, I'm finally devoting my daily life to the study of them. And the eating of them. Lots and lots of eating of them. We're pleased to bring you Endswell Bakehouse, a microbakery that, come spring, will be turning out a range of sourdoughs and other goodies to fill Island bellies. Retail customers can look for us at the Orcas Island Farmers Market, and restaurants and others interested in wholesale inquiries can find us at heather.immoor@gmail.com (until our website emerges from the dust of construction). Endswell Bakehouse: All's Well."

God Speed, Paisley Madison!!

After a year and a half of representing JFF in Seattle, Paisley is moving on to other endeavors.  We have appreciated her persistence, dedication, cell phone skills and flare.  Thank you, Paisley! you will be missed!

Place Your Orders Here.

For the time being Ma and Pa Jones will be fulfilling sales duties.  In the weeks to come we will be making personal contact with each of you.  Do not hesitate to reach out to us.  Sara may be reached at 360-468-0533 or orders@jffarms.com.  Nick may be reached, when off-island, at 360-298-5407 or ns@jffarms.com.  

AND TEXTING IS POSSIBLE FROM OUR REMOTE LOPEZ LOCATION, LET US KNOW IF YOU PREFER TO SEND ORDERS VIA TEXT AND WE CAN SET YOU UP WITH OUR 'EMAIL-TO-TEXT' OPTION.

Until next time, we are your Scallop Cake-Walking, Rock Fish Low-Balling, Slime Exuding, Bread Eating, Post-Paisley JFF Crew.  Just a call or e-mail away!!