Photos courtesy of Iliamna Fish Company; second from left photo credit: Corey Arnol
In conversation with Emily and Christopher Nicolson, co-founders, along with cousins, of the Iliamna Fish Company and its Community-Supported Fishery
Iliamna Fish Company, based in New York and Portland; fishing in Bristol Bay, Alaska.
In operation: 13 years (company), five years (CSF in NYC)
Pick-up locations: CSAs in New York including Lexington Avenue CSA, Greenwood Heights Farm Share, and a CSA in Croton-on-Hudson
Cost: Less than $19 per pound for wild sockeye salmon
Website: http://www.redsalmon.com/
Please note, 2015 salmon share is full; sign-ups for 2016 welcome
Commitments to social and environmental sustainability can often at first feel like swimming upstream.
Iliamna Fish Company knows this well. When the wholesale price of wild salmon plummeted to an all-time low in the late 1990s, the third-generation of family fishermen was compelled to take stock.
“We did not want to stop fishing,” Emily Nicolson says.
Since 2004, Emily has been fishing for wild sockeye salmon with her husband Christopher at the meeting point of Bristol Bay and the headwaters of Lake Iliamna. While it’s Christopher’s heritage that’s salmon fishermen -- the son of a Native Alaskan, this season will be his 28th season fishing in Bristol Bay-- Emily became pretty hooked to wild sockeye salmon fishing herself.
“It's very beautiful fish,” explains Emily with a sense of awe appreciable even over the telephone.
Her reverence is informed by an intimacy with small-scale salmon net-netting: during an intense six weeks that the salmon swim to Bristol Bay to spawn, she and other family members of Iliamna Fish Company navigate shallow waters in 20-feet-long skiffs, just 4 feet deep; throw nets they have mended by hand; await the salmon’s arrival; gently heave the catch onboard until they’re walking in swimming fish; and then bleed and chill the salmon by hand within 24 hours of catching them.
The Nicolsons sustained their custom of set-netting. by reorganizing, together with their cousins, the family fishing business in 2002 during a period of extreme hardship for small-scale wild salmon fishermen in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Their use of short and shallow nets indicate their refusal to succumb to the market pressures of large-scale industrial fishing and fish farming.
The Nicolsons’ nets have an extraordinarily low bycatch percent of 0.06 -- and that bycatch consists of starry-eyed flounder, which they return to the water alive. They consider themselves an integral part of a community, an economy, and a marine environment.
As such, Iliamna Fish Company further developed their commitment to maintaining community by supplementing their salmon sales with information. They’ve since worked with elementary school educators, local businesses, and organizations such as Slow Food USA and Heritage Foods USA, to increase awareness of the advantages of wild salmon and its complex context. Often restaurants, among them Blue Hill at Stone Barns, have asked the Nicolsons to come in to present on wild salmon, “to tell them what it’s all about,” Emily explains in a modestly matter-of-fact tone bearing also passion and persistence.
“We spend a lot of our time trying to work with people to highlight both the health and environmental benefits of wild salmon,” says Emily, calling Christopher a good, animated speaker. “We usually put a focus on the place where the fish is from and how that makes our fish so special— that it actually has a home, has a history, and a very specific life cycle that’s just such a beautiful thing – the fish’s diet, habitat, all the things that make wild sockeye such a good fish.”
Additionally, the Nicolsons often talk to folks about set-netting as compared to line-catching. Her impression is that a lot of people tend to focus on line-caught. For the wild salmon visiting Bristol Bay, though, set-netting makes more sense for the salmon’s brains that are thinking not of eating but of reproducing, Emily explains.
“In general they don't eat, so you don't line-catch. With our fish it’s not a catch-phrase,” says Emily (no pun intended).
“Now, it’s been 13 years, as direct sellers of our own catch and of helping to raise awareness of sustainably caught and managed wild fish vs. farmed fish -- and basically, just ‘keep fishing.’” In the opinion of the Nicolsons, there are many forms of aquaculture that make sense, oyster and clam beds, for instance; but for the U.S. to import large numbers of farmed salmon (and to ignore a sustainably-managed wild salmon fishery like the one in Bristol Bay) doesn’t make sense, says Chistopher.
Within the past 13 years, Iliamna Fish Company itself has grown its catch of customers. Each season more and more friends seemed to ask the couple to bring back some fish for them, requests which the Nicolsons happily obliged. In 2010, after the Nicolsons' cousins in Portland had spent three years developing a "Community Supported Fishery" model in Portland, the Nicolsons adopted their cousins’ model (the cousins in Portland are the Nicolsons' business partners), to create a salmon CSF in their Alaskan boat with members from their winter home in New York and Brooklyn.
The Iliamna Fish Company CSF uses the traditional model of a CSA. In early May, the company begins taking orders and continues to welcome members until the end of the month or the first days of June (during this time half-payment is requested, a difference from most CSAs in New York City). An intense six weeks of fishing happens in June and July, when the Nicolsons--along with their extended family, including their cousins in Oregon and their cousins in Alaska, with whom they co-founded Iliamna Fish Company--head to Bristol Bay. From there, they barge the fish down to Seattle and then transport the salmon up here on a little truck, arriving for one pick-up in September (the one-time pick-up being another difference from the traditional CSAs). Like the farmer of a CSA, Christopher writes and sends out journal entries that Emily says the CSF customers greatly enjoy.
The species itself, Emily says, lends itself well to this model of CSF.
“I think it's just a miraculous blessing: we can fish really crazy for six weeks, and then go crazy for another six weeks of distributing our catch to our neighbors and friends."
The Iliamna Fish Company is one of only a few CSFs in New York City. Emily says she and Christopher have spoken with Maine lobster fishermen - aware as she and he are of the bottoming-out of lobster prices a few years ago and the similarities of the livelihoods. Emily clarifies that they talked in a conversational rather than consultative capacity – an approach of supportive engagement for broader community that can be rare in a city that prides itself on individualist achievement (writer’s view).
In the few years that the CSF has operated it’s become quite –wildly?- popular, appropriate for the company’s dedication to providing the best wild salmon in the world – a dedication of provision the company’s website describes in good spirit as “quaintly, simply.” The fish share has received such good reviews and interest among New Yorkers among individuals and restaurants that three years ago, the company added a second CSF, this one of cold-smoked salmon. It’s a big hit for the holidays, Emily says.
The wild sockeye salmon that the company sells to its CSF members and to restaurants is sashimi grade, such that Ms. Nicolson encourages folks to enjoy the fish raw, or sous vide, or putting it in the oven at 200 degrees for 20 minutes, or really whatever way they feel comfortable. She says that raw is her own favorite way to eat the salmon – and she counts her family as fortunate to have commercial freezers full of such delish.
“Sometimes we make rice; sometimes we don't even make rice,” says Emily. “We always joke that we're just a bunch of bears here.”
Emily explains that she and her CSF co-founders are fundamentally motivated to present salmon as a simple and nice part of a meal.
“I think people are shocked by that...I don’t want to make it seem like it’s not special food, [but] I’m always trying to tell people, ‘Don’t overthink it; it doesn’t need fancy preparation.’”
“I also want to make it [conscientious shopping] easier, so people don’t have to be so thoughtful; I don’t want people to be so worried.”
Helping to make wild salmon accessible for middle-class folks is part of that goal—at less than 18 dollars per pound the CSF salmon price out-competes some New York fish markets. As well Emily says she immensely enjoys meeting the customers--she’s there working at each pick-up--and that partnering with CSAs to offer the fish as an add-on has been a great experience.
The CSF partners with CSAs in the spirit of supporting the farmers and CSA members as well as for mutual convenience, Emily explains. The CSF had been looking for retail shops to team up with for the one-time distribution, but partnering with CSAs seemed like the better route. Now they partner with Lexington Avenue CSA, a CSA in Croton on Hudson, and, for the fourth year, Greenwood Heights Farm Share near Windsor Heights/Park Slope.
“It really is the way to keep good food around and to help farmers with their operating costs,” says Emily. “We love partnering with CSAs as an add-on. It started because we had share-holders in common. It’s really convenient for everyone...We just want to keep building that.”
Meeting her customers in person at pick-up provides an opportunity for her to learn what her customers really want, be it a recipe (the most common question) or an inquiry about the Bristol Bay.
Bristol Bay has been a commercial salmon fishery, managed by the State of Alaska since 1959, when Alaska became a state. Before statehood, when Alaska was a territory, the Bay was a federally managed commercial fishery, explains Christopher, who together with Emily expresses his appreciation for the governance that maintains the social-ecological equilibria in the Bay.
“We love the fishing regulations and the biologists who have have tightly managed this fishery, and who continue to do so, so that that our children will also have the opportunity to be fisherman,” says Emily.
“The reason we still have a sustainable fishery is that it's been very tightly regulated since the day it opened. That's kept it very vibrant and alive,” says Emily. “The scale of it is totally incomparable to any other wild salmon fishery that's around still.”
As the market waters are less rough for salmon fishers nowadays, thanks in part to diligent scientists and regulation enforcement, Emily says the company hopes to strengthen their relationships with CSAs in New York and create more CSA-CSF partnerships.
“We love what we do--people can see us and shake our hands,” says Emily.
In conversation with Emily and Christopher Nicolson, co-founders, along with cousins, of the Iliamna Fish Company and its Community-Supported Fishery
Iliamna Fish Company, based in New York and Portland; fishing in Bristol Bay, Alaska.
In operation: 13 years (company), five years (CSF in NYC)
Pick-up locations: CSAs in New York including Lexington Avenue CSA, Greenwood Heights Farm Share, and a CSA in Croton-on-Hudson
Cost: Less than $19 per pound for wild sockeye salmon
Website: http://www.redsalmon.com/
Please note, 2015 salmon share is full; sign-ups for 2016 welcome
Commitments to social and environmental sustainability can often at first feel like swimming upstream.
Iliamna Fish Company knows this well. When the wholesale price of wild salmon plummeted to an all-time low in the late 1990s, the third-generation of family fishermen was compelled to take stock.
“We did not want to stop fishing,” Emily Nicolson says.
Since 2004, Emily has been fishing for wild sockeye salmon with her husband Christopher at the meeting point of Bristol Bay and the headwaters of Lake Iliamna. While it’s Christopher’s heritage that’s salmon fishermen -- the son of a Native Alaskan, this season will be his 28th season fishing in Bristol Bay-- Emily became pretty hooked to wild sockeye salmon fishing herself.
“It's very beautiful fish,” explains Emily with a sense of awe appreciable even over the telephone.
Her reverence is informed by an intimacy with small-scale salmon net-netting: during an intense six weeks that the salmon swim to Bristol Bay to spawn, she and other family members of Iliamna Fish Company navigate shallow waters in 20-feet-long skiffs, just 4 feet deep; throw nets they have mended by hand; await the salmon’s arrival; gently heave the catch onboard until they’re walking in swimming fish; and then bleed and chill the salmon by hand within 24 hours of catching them.
The Nicolsons sustained their custom of set-netting. by reorganizing, together with their cousins, the family fishing business in 2002 during a period of extreme hardship for small-scale wild salmon fishermen in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Their use of short and shallow nets indicate their refusal to succumb to the market pressures of large-scale industrial fishing and fish farming.
The Nicolsons’ nets have an extraordinarily low bycatch percent of 0.06 -- and that bycatch consists of starry-eyed flounder, which they return to the water alive. They consider themselves an integral part of a community, an economy, and a marine environment.
As such, Iliamna Fish Company further developed their commitment to maintaining community by supplementing their salmon sales with information. They’ve since worked with elementary school educators, local businesses, and organizations such as Slow Food USA and Heritage Foods USA, to increase awareness of the advantages of wild salmon and its complex context. Often restaurants, among them Blue Hill at Stone Barns, have asked the Nicolsons to come in to present on wild salmon, “to tell them what it’s all about,” Emily explains in a modestly matter-of-fact tone bearing also passion and persistence.
“We spend a lot of our time trying to work with people to highlight both the health and environmental benefits of wild salmon,” says Emily, calling Christopher a good, animated speaker. “We usually put a focus on the place where the fish is from and how that makes our fish so special— that it actually has a home, has a history, and a very specific life cycle that’s just such a beautiful thing – the fish’s diet, habitat, all the things that make wild sockeye such a good fish.”
Additionally, the Nicolsons often talk to folks about set-netting as compared to line-catching. Her impression is that a lot of people tend to focus on line-caught. For the wild salmon visiting Bristol Bay, though, set-netting makes more sense for the salmon’s brains that are thinking not of eating but of reproducing, Emily explains.
“In general they don't eat, so you don't line-catch. With our fish it’s not a catch-phrase,” says Emily (no pun intended).
“Now, it’s been 13 years, as direct sellers of our own catch and of helping to raise awareness of sustainably caught and managed wild fish vs. farmed fish -- and basically, just ‘keep fishing.’” In the opinion of the Nicolsons, there are many forms of aquaculture that make sense, oyster and clam beds, for instance; but for the U.S. to import large numbers of farmed salmon (and to ignore a sustainably-managed wild salmon fishery like the one in Bristol Bay) doesn’t make sense, says Chistopher.
Within the past 13 years, Iliamna Fish Company itself has grown its catch of customers. Each season more and more friends seemed to ask the couple to bring back some fish for them, requests which the Nicolsons happily obliged. In 2010, after the Nicolsons' cousins in Portland had spent three years developing a "Community Supported Fishery" model in Portland, the Nicolsons adopted their cousins’ model (the cousins in Portland are the Nicolsons' business partners), to create a salmon CSF in their Alaskan boat with members from their winter home in New York and Brooklyn.
The Iliamna Fish Company CSF uses the traditional model of a CSA. In early May, the company begins taking orders and continues to welcome members until the end of the month or the first days of June (during this time half-payment is requested, a difference from most CSAs in New York City). An intense six weeks of fishing happens in June and July, when the Nicolsons--along with their extended family, including their cousins in Oregon and their cousins in Alaska, with whom they co-founded Iliamna Fish Company--head to Bristol Bay. From there, they barge the fish down to Seattle and then transport the salmon up here on a little truck, arriving for one pick-up in September (the one-time pick-up being another difference from the traditional CSAs). Like the farmer of a CSA, Christopher writes and sends out journal entries that Emily says the CSF customers greatly enjoy.
The species itself, Emily says, lends itself well to this model of CSF.
“I think it's just a miraculous blessing: we can fish really crazy for six weeks, and then go crazy for another six weeks of distributing our catch to our neighbors and friends."
The Iliamna Fish Company is one of only a few CSFs in New York City. Emily says she and Christopher have spoken with Maine lobster fishermen - aware as she and he are of the bottoming-out of lobster prices a few years ago and the similarities of the livelihoods. Emily clarifies that they talked in a conversational rather than consultative capacity – an approach of supportive engagement for broader community that can be rare in a city that prides itself on individualist achievement (writer’s view).
In the few years that the CSF has operated it’s become quite –wildly?- popular, appropriate for the company’s dedication to providing the best wild salmon in the world – a dedication of provision the company’s website describes in good spirit as “quaintly, simply.” The fish share has received such good reviews and interest among New Yorkers among individuals and restaurants that three years ago, the company added a second CSF, this one of cold-smoked salmon. It’s a big hit for the holidays, Emily says.
The wild sockeye salmon that the company sells to its CSF members and to restaurants is sashimi grade, such that Ms. Nicolson encourages folks to enjoy the fish raw, or sous vide, or putting it in the oven at 200 degrees for 20 minutes, or really whatever way they feel comfortable. She says that raw is her own favorite way to eat the salmon – and she counts her family as fortunate to have commercial freezers full of such delish.
“Sometimes we make rice; sometimes we don't even make rice,” says Emily. “We always joke that we're just a bunch of bears here.”
Emily explains that she and her CSF co-founders are fundamentally motivated to present salmon as a simple and nice part of a meal.
“I think people are shocked by that...I don’t want to make it seem like it’s not special food, [but] I’m always trying to tell people, ‘Don’t overthink it; it doesn’t need fancy preparation.’”
“I also want to make it [conscientious shopping] easier, so people don’t have to be so thoughtful; I don’t want people to be so worried.”
Helping to make wild salmon accessible for middle-class folks is part of that goal—at less than 18 dollars per pound the CSF salmon price out-competes some New York fish markets. As well Emily says she immensely enjoys meeting the customers--she’s there working at each pick-up--and that partnering with CSAs to offer the fish as an add-on has been a great experience.
The CSF partners with CSAs in the spirit of supporting the farmers and CSA members as well as for mutual convenience, Emily explains. The CSF had been looking for retail shops to team up with for the one-time distribution, but partnering with CSAs seemed like the better route. Now they partner with Lexington Avenue CSA, a CSA in Croton on Hudson, and, for the fourth year, Greenwood Heights Farm Share near Windsor Heights/Park Slope.
“It really is the way to keep good food around and to help farmers with their operating costs,” says Emily. “We love partnering with CSAs as an add-on. It started because we had share-holders in common. It’s really convenient for everyone...We just want to keep building that.”
Meeting her customers in person at pick-up provides an opportunity for her to learn what her customers really want, be it a recipe (the most common question) or an inquiry about the Bristol Bay.
Bristol Bay has been a commercial salmon fishery, managed by the State of Alaska since 1959, when Alaska became a state. Before statehood, when Alaska was a territory, the Bay was a federally managed commercial fishery, explains Christopher, who together with Emily expresses his appreciation for the governance that maintains the social-ecological equilibria in the Bay.
“We love the fishing regulations and the biologists who have have tightly managed this fishery, and who continue to do so, so that that our children will also have the opportunity to be fisherman,” says Emily.
“The reason we still have a sustainable fishery is that it's been very tightly regulated since the day it opened. That's kept it very vibrant and alive,” says Emily. “The scale of it is totally incomparable to any other wild salmon fishery that's around still.”
As the market waters are less rough for salmon fishers nowadays, thanks in part to diligent scientists and regulation enforcement, Emily says the company hopes to strengthen their relationships with CSAs in New York and create more CSA-CSF partnerships.
“We love what we do--people can see us and shake our hands,” says Emily.