When I tell people that my summer job is processing fish, I usually get blank or disgusted looks. I would have done the same if someone told me they were working in a fish processing plant! So I decided to write out what a day for me looks like as a processor. Enjoy!
6:30- I wake slowly to my phone alarm and get ready for the day. Mornings are hard for me! : )
7:00- Breakfast, which usually consists of cheerios and a pancake. I think this is my favorite meal.
7:30- I usually get the processing line ready by placing gut buckets and egg baskets in their proper places, filling large totes with ice for the clean fish, and getting the knifes ready. The processing line or slime line this year has about 8 people working on it. One person de-heads the fish and cuts the stomach. The de-header is pretty amazing. All you do is push a foot pedal and a large triangular knife comes down and cleanly de-heads the fish. The next person in line cuts around the throat of the fish (to detach the guts) then gracefully with one sweep of the hand, rips all the guts out. They then put any eggs in the egg basket and cut the “blood line”. The next “station” are the spooners. There are usually 4 people with metal “spoons” that have s small hose connected to them. They use this tool to spoon out the blood that is left at theback of the fish. The fish get pushed into a big rinsing tub. The fish are rinsed and sorted by size and species by two people at the end of the line. I am usually at the end (rinsing and sorting) or spooning.
This year our team is very diverse. There are two men (college students) from Mongolia, two girls who are also in college from Turkey, two high school boys from Alaska, a high school girl from Alaska, and me. I am having a good time with them all. I enjoy learning more about other cultures. It is also fun to use my language learning skills that I have learned at the Missionary Training Center to learn some Mongolian and Turkish. I can maintain a small conversation in Turkish along with some simple phrases like “more fish please”, “I am hungry”, “He is crazy”, “live forever!”, and much more. Mongolian is taking more time for me to catch on than Turkish. I am learning that Mongolian is tonal which makes it a little more difficult. I really enjoy teaching the Mongolians and Turkish students new English words and phrases. The MTC training has been helpful in this area as well because I am teaching them how to pronounce their English words better by helping them with their mouth placement. Anyway, it is exciting to see what I have been learning at the Missionary Training Center be put to use here in Alaska. I will admit that processing is my least favorite job because my hands and feet always go numb and start to ache from the cold. But so far the year, we have not been processing like we did last year (from 5 am to 12 am).
11:30- The processing is usually done around this time. We spray the processing line down and scrub it clean. We then move on to shipping. We make our own boxes then fill them with fish. They have to weigh 50 pounds so we have to switch out fish to make the weight as close to 50 as possible. We record the weight and number of fish that is in each box. Gel Ice packs (which we also make) are put into each box before the lid is placed on then the box is strapped tight with the strapper machine. We stack the boxes neatly on a wooden pallet. When an order is filled, we shrink wrap the stack and move on to the next order.
1:00- Lunch! We are usually all ready and hungry for lunch by this time. During the meal we typically play a game of cribbage or yahtzee.
2:00- If we are done with shipping we move on to filleting the Salmon. We have a filleting machine that works pretty well.The King Salmon are too big to fit through so I usually get to fillet them by hand. But we just put the smaller Sockeye Salmon through the machine, trim the fillets, pluck the pin-bones out with pliers, bag the fillets, then vacuum seal them. This part is much more fun because it is easier to talk with people while doing these jobs. Sometime after we process I usually have to do a gut run! I strap a large tote filled with fish guts to a truck and take it to a place where they grind the guts. This is a nice break from the fish. Driving a large truck is a little intimidating but I am getting used to it.
6:00- Dinner. We usually play more games and maybe watch a movie if we are done with work.
7:00- If there is more work to be done we usually are continuing to do fillets. Sometimes we put whole fish on racks to be frozen, or take off frozen fish from racks and sort them by size.
10:00- Usually this is the latest we stay up working, but we have worked until 12:00 am some nights. After the day is done I typically run to the showers then run to bed! Long days in the plant are exhausting.
So, I hope that gives you all a glimpse into the life of a fish processor.
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