Lucrative and dangerous<\/strong><\/p>\nWhile workers dealt with the week\u2019s haul, fisherman Travis Easlon pulled up in his boat the F\/V Spryden to deliver his catch.<\/p>\n
With 2,000 pounds on board, Easlon had filled his quota limit for the two day fishing opening. Like many fisheries, he explained that sea cucumber fishing is both lucrative and dangerous.<\/p>\n
The big key to having success is determination. Easlon has gathered his allotted quota every week this year, so he\u2019s off to a good start. But just finding sea cucumbers can be demoralizing.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going to get your wind knocked out of your sails a lot when you don\u2019t find them. Over and over and over,\u201d Easlon said.<\/p>\n
To find his catch, the crew will pull up to a beach the night before fishing, drop an underwater camera down on a cable and let it drift along the bottom.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat gives us an idea where they\u2019re at and we\u2019ll mark them out on maps,\u201d Easlon said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to find sea cucumbers at the right depth. Find them too deep, and dive time will be cut down substantially. Nitrogen, which is toxic in certain levels, increases the deeper a diver goes.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou try and stay in the 40-foot range, it just depends where they\u2019re at,\u201d Easlon said.<\/p>\n
Easlon and his fishing partner will dive for cukes while a deckhand stays on board to process the catch. Regulations limit the dive time to seven hours during the day. Easlon said it\u2019s a \u201cchess game\u201d to use as much of that time as he can for actually harvesting cukes.<\/p>\n
Unlike other fisheries, Easlon said sea cucumber fishermen can pay off their overhead a little quicker. The amount of money you can make in a season is high compared to the cost of a permit.<\/p>\n
Easlon bought his permit seven years ago for $15,000. He hopes to earn that several times over in gross earnings this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a season, if you do 12,000 pounds at $5 a pound, that\u2019s a good amount,\u201d Easlon said. \u201cThe prices for a permit should be more but they\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s not hamburgers\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\nWorking the sea cucumber season allows AGS to stay operating during what typically is a down month for the company, president and founder Mike Erickson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt stretches our season out five or seven weeks, depending on how they\u2019re caught,\u201d Erickson said.<\/p>\n
They keep a processing staff of 75-90 for the season. This year the quota is set at 1.5 million pounds. AGS hopes to process between 300,000 and 500,000 pounds of that catch.<\/p>\n
Most of that quota is down near Ketchikan, a few days run away from Juneau. AGS sends boats down to buy sea cucumbers. But transporting them for a few days can pose problems. If salinity levels are off in a ship\u2019s hold by more than a few parts per thousand, sea cucumbers can die.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to be very careful with it. \u2026 They\u2019re a very sensitive critter, for sure,\u201d Erickson said<\/p>\n
Erickson said he sells most of the skins to Asian markets. They\u2019ll send a \u201cfair amount\u201d of the meat to East Coast markets, but much of that is to high-end restaurants in Asian American communities.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the skins are ground into capsules and used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat anything from cancer to fertility.<\/p>\n
Erickson doesn\u2019t know if or when American tastes will come around to sea cucumbers. He says he\u2019s seen bottom-shelf seafood become delicacies in a matter of years. He compares it to black cod, which has risen in price in recent years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem with it is that the aesthetics of a cucumber skin is not attractive. \u2026 It\u2019s not hamburger, it\u2019s not steak, but it\u2019s really delicious,\u201d Erickson said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Kevin Gullufsen at 523-2228 or kevin.gullufsen@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Inside the processing plant at Alaska Glacier Seafood (AGS), plant manager Nick Segal held out a slimy, gelatinous sea creature about the size and shape of a pickle. The cylindrical bottom-dweller has little bumps \u2014 like nascent horns \u2014 running up and down its body. Brown and alien-like, it\u2019s not exactly appetizing. But despite appearances, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":15366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15365"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}