Tag Archives: Kwik’Pak Fisheries
Emmonak comes to life with summer fish plant jobs and commercial dipnetting
At the Yukon River’s fish central, the warning on the door to the buzzing office of the big boss, whom everyone calls “Jack,” says “Danger. Earache Area.”It’s the nerve center for Kwikpak Fisheries — a small dockside processor with an outsized role in a region where jobs are scarce, the salmon are ultra-rich, and a unique commercial dipnet fishery provides early season jobs and money. Kwikpak operations manager Jack Schultheis is buying summer chums from, as he put it, the only commercial dipnet operation “in the world.” It’s a novel setup intended to help rebuild crashed king salmon runs, but still allow fishing. During scheduled dipnet openings, residents with commercial permits from Emmonak and nearby Southwestern Alaska villages head out in open skiffs. Read the story here 10:25
Demand, Prices Up for Succulent Yukon River Chums
Autumn has set in on Alaska’s Lower Yukon River, where the fall harvest of those oil-rich Yukon chum salmon is in progress, a fishery that feeds the regional economy with seafood sales in markets domestic and European. After a robust harvest of summer chum, enhanced by an innovative dip net fishery, the Yupik Eskimo harvesters who deliver to Kwik’Pak Fisheries, a subsidiary of the Yukon Delta Fisheries Development Association, were waiting out a lull, ready to begin harvesting more fall Yukon River chum salmon for markets awaiting Kwik’Pak’s fillets, gourmet smoked products and more. more@fishermensnews 17:07
