Why landlocked foodies are buying wild Alaskan salmon in bulk

Hanna Merzbach Oct 21, 2024
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Many local residents bring coolers filled with ice to the salmon share pickups so they can leave behind any packaging. Hanna Merzbach/Wyoming Public Media

Why landlocked foodies are buying wild Alaskan salmon in bulk

Hanna Merzbach Oct 21, 2024
Heard on:
Many local residents bring coolers filled with ice to the salmon share pickups so they can leave behind any packaging. Hanna Merzbach/Wyoming Public Media
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Kirstyn Sterling spends every summer fishing for salmon at the mouth of Bristol Bay in Alaska with her husband and two little kids. They’re 9 and 5, but they’ve been going on fishing boats since before they could walk.

“They’re kind of wild, feral children running around,” Sterling said.

The fish they catch is trucked and barged to Salt Lake City, where the family spends the rest of the year hiking, skiing and delivering sockeye salmon direct to customers or restaurants.

“We all started out with this because it was like, ‘Oh, you’re a fisherman in Alaska. So how do we get fish?’” Sterling said.

A family, two adults and two young blonde kids, pose on a fishing boat with blue bay water behind them.
The Sterling family on their boat in Bristol Bay. Kirstyn and Tyler Sterling have been bringing their kids — Hans, 9, and Iris, 5 — up to Alaska for fishing season since before they could walk. (Courtesy Kirstyn Sterling)

Fed by six major rivers, Bristol Bay is home to the largest wild salmon run in the world. Historically, almost all of those fish were exported to Japan, but now some fisherman and direct-to-consumer companies — like Sterling’s — are focused on markets closer to their homes.

“If you’re an expecting mother, this is like the most perfect food for you ever,” said Sterling, who’s a bit of a wild salmon evangelist. “If you are a little baby, this is the most perfect food for you ever. If you’re a dog, this is the most perfect food for you ever.”

Sterling said you do pay a little bit more for her wild fish, which is ruby red from eating plankton and krill in the open ocean. It’s about $16 a pound — nearly twice as much as the farm-raised grocery stuff — but buying salmon in bulk can cut down on costs for customers.

In Teton Valley, Idaho, dozens of customers have done just that by signing up for a community salmon share.

On a late summer Saturday, they lined up in a parking lot to pick up 10-, 20- and 40-pound boxes of filets and ground sockeye.

“This is it right here. So, see — it just looks so beautiful,” said Carlen Hervig, unwrapping the paper around a vacuum-sealed bag of ground salmon.

A blonde middle-aged woman in a bright blue shirt holds up a plastic bag of over foot-long salmon pieces. You can see the skin and reddish flesh. Behind here is a blue tent and blue trailer, where the company is delivering fish to other customers.
Carlen Hervig holds up the wild salmon filets that she just bought in Driggs, Idaho, from the Kvichak Fish Co. The business stops in the eastern Idaho town once a year after the end of fishing season in Alaska. (Hanna Merzbach/Wyoming Public Media)

She was also getting a box of filets to serve at dinner parties. “‘Cause you see, it’s a pretty big piece. So once you’re going to thaw one out, you kind of want to know, ‘OK, I’m having friends over. I can serve this many portions,’” she said.

Amanda Wlaysewski with Kvichak Fish Co. was handing out the day’s fish.

“I think the first year we delivered seven boxes and we thought that was a huge deal,” she recalled. “Now, it’s grown into, what, 70 people.”

Two women stand in front of a blue trailer that says “Kvichak Fish Company” in a parking lot.
Amanda Wlaysewski, left, and her sister, Alena Chacon, stand in front of the trailer they drove to Driggs, Idaho, from Bozeman, Montana, where they are based. “It feels like we have 3,000 pounds of weight off of our shoulders,” Wlaysewski says after what was the last delivery of the season. (Hanna Merzbach/Wyoming Public Media)

That’s 3,600 pounds of salmon.

She processed it all in Bristol Bay, then shipped it by barge to Seattle and trucked it 700 miles to where she lives in Montana. From there, she loads all the salmon into a bright blue freezer-cold trailer, and once a year, delivers to rural communities like this one.

Many of her customers put in orders months in advance.

“They care about knowing where it comes from, because the economy around here is focused around agriculture and food,” Wlaysewski said, “and just a desire to support small producers, because a lot of them are small producers themselves.”

One customer, Kyle Barrus, works at a nearby ranch. He crammed 15 boxes of salmon into his Subaru Outback. Some of the fish is for him, some for neighbors. He said it’s special to get Alaskan salmon from a local Mountain West business.

“I’ve come to just really like these guys,” Barrus said. “I like supporting small business.”

And just like having a deer or elk in the freezer, Barrus said he’s excited to have all this wild salmon stored up for the long winter ahead.

A man wearing glasses, a baseball hat and a plaid short-sleeve shirt stands in front of a dark gray car, filled with brown boxes that say “Kvichak Fish Company.”
Driggs, Idaho, resident Kyle Barrus loads the fish into his car at the annual pickup. He says his favorite way to cook salmon is on the barbecue. (Hanna Merzbach/Wyoming Public Media)

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