Rockfish Available Thursday!

Rockfish Available!

Hello everyone. We have for sale, as we promised, rockfish fillets, skin-off, vacuum-packed, and frozen. These fish, in my personal opinion, are better than halibut; their texture is more firm, but they have more flavor. They make the best fish taco imaginable. They were caught out of Southeast Alaska, and processed by a small commercial processor in Sitka. At only $6.00 per pound for this skin-off filleted sides, these fish are a total deal. If you want to donate to Fish for Teeth, please pay $8.00 per pound, and the extra $2.00 will go directly to the Fish for Teeth program (see below).

I personally like to season the fillets in salt, pepper, garlic, parsley, and olive oil (the "standard-five" as I call it), then toss in flour, then pan fry. For a fish taco, I put salsa and mayo on a tortilla, grill or pan-fry the fish (same seasonings--no flour--and substitute cilantro for the parsely), add chopped cabbage mixed with Newman's Balsamic dressing, then wrap it up and chow it down! YUMMY!

We caught these fish while fishing for halibut, which is certified by the Marine Stewardship Council as a sustainably managed fishery. If we were catching too many rockfish while fishing for halibut, the MSC would not certify it as sustainable. There is vast rockfish habitat in Alaska, and we take a very small portion of the resource.

FISH FOR TEETH is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization I started, which works with fishermen and dentists in San Juan County. Its goal is simply to provide dental care and prevention to those who cannot otherwise afford it. Fish for Teeth has recently partnered with the San Juan County Oral Health Coalition to help further their efforts to achieve the same goals. Fish for Teeth will be sponsoring a FISH TACO fundraiser on Wednesday, August 11 to raise money to fund specific projects. Stay tuned for more.

Sincerely,

Matt and Maureen Marinkovich
378.2628 (BOAT) Reach us at the shop!
472.0392(cell) Matt's cell
thinkfish@gmail.com (Matt's email)

**Matt Hugging Troll-Caught King Salmon**

I will be shipping down a batch of FRESH SOCKEYE salmon from Bristol Bay. I will catch these fish and take care of them like little babies so you can have the best possible fish-eating experience possible. The price is $6.00 per pound. I'm just guessing, but I could have the first batch here as soon as Friday, June 18.

This is possible because I am working with a guy who self-processes and direct-markets 100% of his Bristol Bay salmon catch (that's no small feat), and he will process my fish and have them on a flight to Seattle in short order. From there I work with a cold-freight mover to bring them to Marine View Cold Storage in Burlington, who will repack them in totes with LOTS of ice, then Heuristic Enterprises will bring them back to Friday Harbor for you to come and buy from Compost It!

I know it is a lot of effort to get them down here, but since we have not had a sockeye fishery for THREE YEARS here in the San Juan Islands, I figured I would assure our fish-eating pubic an opportunity to sink their teeth into a FRESH sockeye by shipping them from the abundant harvest of Bristol Bay.

If you want to do something to help bring our local sockeye back to the San Juan Islands, please become involved in the fight against farmed salmon in B.C. There are numerous fish farms located on the out-migration routes of the salmon smolt, which fall victim to out-of-control (controlled by nasty chemicals) sea lice, which latch onto the tiny smolt and suck them dry like a vampire. There's no wild fish left in Norway; we have to do something to keep Canada from having the same fate.

**Dressing a Rockfish**

Where:

Compost It

65 Nichols Street

Friday Harbor

When:

Thursday, May 27th

10:30-ish

F/V Discovery in Seward

Mike Throws The Line

A couple of Norwegians eating Swedish Pancakes

Sperm Whale Hovering Near the Boat

St. John II (Marty Hulse from FH is aboard)

The Beautiful Vessel

Matthew was recently elected to the Board of the BB-RSDA (Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association). Matt hopes to bring his enthusiasm for direct marketing to the rest of the board, thereby encouraging the entire fleet of Bristol Bay Fishermen to do the same. Make sure you are on the fish list and not just the feed list if you are interested in eating seafood directly marketed to you from your very own local fisherman.

**Click on photo to read up on your local fisherman.**

**Laysan Albatross**

"I now belong to a higher cult of mortals for I have seen the albatross."

-Robert Cushman Murphy aboard the brig Daisy (1912)

The Birds in the background above are Laysan Albatross and two or three more common gulls. Albatross or Gooney Birds (as Matt calls them) are a common sight for fishermen but a rare sight for landlubbers. Albatross are a very threatened family of birds. Longlines were part of the problem. Our educated fish customers should know about this problem and what has been done to prevent these tragedies. It is now standard practice for all longliners to use "tori" lines.

Bird-scaring or "tori" lines (tori meaning bird in Japanese) have been shown to virtually eliminate seabird mortality caused by longlines. They were first developed by Japanese bluefin tuna fishermen who recognized that keeping birds off bait was in their own economic interest, as leaving more bait for fish increases the chances of success. The tori lines are mounted on poles at the stern of the boat, and are connected to a floating buoy that is dragged behind the vessel. Colored streamers are attached to the lines, and these flap erratically in the wind above the area where the bait enters the water. When the longlines are properly weighted, they sink immediately behind the boat and the flapping streamers scare the birds away. By the time the baited hooks are beyond the streamer zone, they have already sunk below the depth where they can be reached by most seabirds. To read the entire report please click here. It is very interesting and required reading as part of the continuing education of all our fish customers.

The use of bird-scaring lines and other avoidance measures, ensures that we can still enjoy seafood, knowing that no albatrosses or other sea birds have had to die to bring the catch to table. Japanese southern ocean tuna longliners setting 481 million hooks, killed an estimated 44,000 albatrosses annually in the early 1980s.

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