September 11, 2013 — Buying a fish at the fish counter in a grocery store is so disconnected from the reality, that it's often hard to imagine why a wild Alaskan salmon might be so much more expensive than a similar looking farmed salmon. But head out to Alaska and take a ride on a fishing boat, and the differences become clear quite quickly. We went to Juneau to get the real story behind Alaskan Wild Salmon.
The life cycle of a salmon begins in fresh water, where they spawn and then incubate for a period of months. They head out to sea for three to five years and then depending on which of Alaska's five species they are — King, Sockeye, Cohoe, chums or pinks — they start coming back between the spring and early fall.
Commercial fisherman are heavily regulated in where and when they can catch salmon. Kirk Hardcastle, a salmon fisherman in Juneau pointed out that, "In the King season time we'll only get one or two day openings. During the sockeye season, when we're getting a lot more fish, we'll be able to fish for three or four days. A lot of people in the Lower 48 might think 'Don't you want to catch all the fish?' No, we don't want to catch all the fish. We want them to reproduce, we want the fish to escape."
Once the fish are caught, it's the handling that can further differentiate the quality — processing is affected by supplier. Higher end suppliers pride themselves on having the fish on a plane and onto your plate within 24 hours. For the majority, since it is seasonal, most year-round salmon is frozen. But since most of the salmon processing is done right when the fish come off the boat within Alaska, they are handled and frozen immediately to maintain their quality.
Read the full story and watch the video at the Huffington Post