During the summer "B season" in the Bering Sea the deck crew of the trawler Pacific Glacier haul and reset their nets around the clock in search of Alaskan pollock . Below decks a full-fledged factory processes the pollock into frozen fillets, surimi and specialty products like pollock roe, which is very popular in Japan.
Reef net fishermen work to catch sockeye salmon off the shores of Lummi Island in Rosario Straight. Using a fishing technique that was invented by Coast Salish native Americans and is unique in the world, a handful of "amateur" commercial fishermen spend their free time in the summer and fall netting salmon that swim down a gauntlet of lines and into a net rigged between two boats. A spotter in a tower on the front of the boats gives the signal to haul when he sees the targeted fish species swim into the net (while letting non-targeted fish escape). In the 1950s over a hundred reef nets were rigged along this shore but now market conditions have turned this environmentally sound and picturesque fishery into a hobby business and only nine crews remain.
