Mandatory Everything

[Once and Future]

I can’t help myself, I am climbing up on the soap box. If I can stay focused, I want to talk about “small” businesses like ours trying to survive in the modern day. Actually, we are not “small” businesses, we are “tiny” businesses. This is extremely inefficient for those charged with regulating us.

For example, I have a friend who had a tiny dairy that bottled the school milk and made local batches of ice cream. Of course, he had to deal with inspectors. First of all, because the huge dairies had political clout, they were able to influence lawmakers so that a tiny dairy like his had to pay the same annual inspection fees as the big boys. Secondly, the inspectors HATED him. Why? Because all his machinery was half-assed. Why didn’t he buy good stuff? He COULDN’T. He wasn’t profitable enough. He did survive to retirement, but he made it on his wits and an incredible amount of hard work for a small margin.

And I can’t fault the inspectors TOO much. If anyone would have gotten sick from his dairy products, the inspectors would have been held responsible. Listeria and E-Coli were some of the concerns. Bruce always had orange hands when he was working because he was forever sanitizing with iodine. He couldn’t use beautiful hand-picked local raspberries in his ice cream because they might have listeria. So he was forced to buy red glop packaged in sterile plastic instead.

From the inspector’s standpoint they could visit just 3 or so big-city dairies and certify 95% of the state’s population had safe dairy products. Then they had to visit 30 little guys to cover the other 5% of the population. Further, if they found a cracked stainless steel surface that could harbor bacteria, they would red-tag it. The big corporate dairy would generate a purchase order and replace it with new. I remember Bruce spending 3 days with a sponge he had dipped in electrolyte with a wire connecting it to DC current, swabbing it around in a circle trying to build new metal up over a hairline fracture.

So what I’m saying is, even assuming the regulators DON’T have it in for the little guy, from their standpoint, they would rather see 4 factory trawlers catching all the seafood in Alaska because it is so much easier to regulate them. What I DON’T understand is why government regulators get so cozy with a company like BP that they overlook even the most fundamental safety and environmental regulations with a wink and a nod.

You can look at trucking, where there is no alternative to thousands of relatively small vehicles swarming over the roads. However, the trend is obviously towards huge trucking companies owning all the small vehicles. They are better able to satisfy the regulations, for one thing.

Also, a huge point is if a guy owns one truck, and he gets cited, he takes it VERY personally. He’s liable to lose sleep and take antacids, etc. If Schneider trucking gets violations, they’ve got guys whose full time job is to handle that, and it’s just another day at the office, plus no money out of their pocket.

The reason I am going on about this is I am trying to start everyone thinking about how we are going to save the small boat fleet we all love. Sounds like that’s gone in Norway. Sounds like that’s gone for the Columbia River gillnetters. Most of the world doesn’t know about us or care about us. Many of those who do are against us. Anybody who was ever offended by a commercial fisherman (and we seem to be good at offending people) is still carrying a grudge and wants to take away our “entitlement”. One benefit of “Deadliest Catch” is that a LOT of people now identify with life on the ocean, if not on trollers.

Lastly, I don’t think it’s a “Republican” or “Democrat” thing. That divides us. I don’t care who is in power, the government bureaucracies are ALWAYS encroaching more every decade. And both Republican and Democratic presidents presided over – and personally gained from – the loss of American jobs for the last 30 years running. Partisan politics makes my eyes glaze over.

[SilverT]

Once and Future,

Thanks, I really appreciate the post. A close friend of mine once told me that if he wanted to make real money, he would develop a safety device and get our legislators to make it mandatory. Think ADA-required bright yellow plastic truncated domes for blind people at cross-walks (I believe the color requirement has since gone away). Good idea, but a lot of other ways to accomplish the same thing.

While considering the mandatory dock inspections, my kids and their possible fishing future came to mind. Suddenly, mandatory sounded pretty good. That cracked me up - almost a complete reversal of attitude in a few seconds. Andrew’s post was eye-opening as well. However, you make an extremely good point regarding the burden of small businesses to adhere to the same laws as the big boys. It makes small business start-up and maintenance extremely difficult. Yak also explained some of my concerns. It’s a huge burden on trollers who live in remote areas. I have an inspector that I work with (not Coast Guard) who, once I had an initial inspection, allowed me in later years to provide photo documentation via e-mail of my equipment and its condition, prior to re-issuance of the permit. It was easy and extremely non-invasive. Laws can be amended and agencies willing to adapt to technological advances can save a tremendous amount of time and money.

Regarding the comment about government regulators getting cozy, it is thought by some that good big-business strategy is to be known as the firm who hires regulators after they retire from the agencies that govern them. It’s all very subtle, but regulators find themselves thinking, “Now let’s see…what would make them want to hire me?” Enforcement sometimes relaxes a bit when folks begin thinking about the large salaries may receive after their public service.

The best way to save, preserve or improve the fleet is to create such a demand for troll-caught salmon that everyone from dock to table wants it enough to pay what it’s worth and more.

We know what we have, but few others do. The problem has always been that trollers have little money. We have a clearly demonstrated model of advertisement and education in the Copper River fishery. I doubt they had a lot of money to begin with either. We have hype in the Bluefin tuna market. One just sold for over 1 million. That’s enough to buy every troller in Alaska over $1,000 dollars worth of mandatory equipment with the sale of a single fish (albeit a big one). Tuna sells for that much because there is insane demand for an excellent product that the public knows is rare and tastes great. Our products have the same qualities. We just rarely hear about them unless we are on the Commercial Salmon Trolling Forum. I hear about the Copper River run every year on the radio.

Implement a % tax (dare I say mandatory?) on the troll fleet that goes exclusively to hiring a publicist to create radio advertising / education regarding troll-caught salmon in major Japanese & U.S. cities. Only sell to producers / processors that can prove that they spend 1-2% of their profit on the same, rather than just selling wholesale lots, leaving it to the retailers to tout the differences in fish and the trollers to take it on the chin. Retailers don’t commonly have the knowledge or motivation to tout the differences. They don’t want to make the other 80% of their fish products sound inferior so who does that leave to educate, advertise and explain? We need to create an environment where anyone selling salmon understands they are committing a huge blunder if they have troll-caught salmon in their possession, but don’t advertise it as such. Everyone who sells Copper River salmon understands that. As a result, the fishermen get a tremendous return on their advertising investment in the form of free advertising and education from every salesman in the chain, resulting in higher prices, resulting in more money to work with.

There are a lot of people, particularly in Alaska who are working really hard to preserve our tiny businesses. They could concentrate more on upgrading their equipment and vessels if the money rolled in from an educated public and world, who understood the quality and value of what we provide. Where’s the hype? Think what a 10-20% increase in dock price would do for the wellness of the fleet. I don't see any other way to get there.

Thanks again,

Lane

[JYDPDX]

How do we get the ball rolling on program/campaign like this?

[Salty]

It is already rolling. SPC, ASMI, Triad Fisheries, Tongass Forest being referred to as the "Salmon Forest". Several posts on here highlighting individual efforts. Chum Trollers demanding, and getting at least a nickel more for our round troll chums and pinks than the net fisheries. King salmon ex vessel right now are $9.75 per pound.
A whole site and festival dedicated to commercial fishing videos which, if you watch all of them, really impresses you with the contrast between the handling of gillnet fish in particular and troll salmon. Go check out the SPC web site. The world is increasingly wanting to know where their food came from, is it healthy, is the harvesting or growing of it good for the environment, in wild fisheries, are these fisheries independently certified as sustainable, etc. Go take a look at the label on the Ocean Spray Cranberry jugs. The emphasis on their family farm members in the co-operative with different stories and pictures on each jug.
Cultivate your relationship with your fish buyer, sell him your story with your fish, help him market you and your fish. Send him some pictures of the great quality salmon you are producing. (I just sent 27 pictures to ASMI for example.)
This ball is rolling, climb on.

[JYDPDX]

Lane was proposing a marketing campaign to increase brand awareness and inform consumers about what separates our products from others. He mentioned an organized plan involving a tax and hiring a professional marketing firm.

This is what I meant by how to get the ball rolling. I appreciate your optimism but I'm not content sitting and waiting for consumers to find their own information and inform themselves about salmon species and how they are caught. Various forms of commercial fishing have been happening for quite some time now and the vast majority of the general public hasn't got a clue about the products we provide.

Regardless of whether or not they want to know where their fish came from, they do not.

[SilverT]

Thanks JYPDX & Salty,

In the office yesterday morning I was asked by a coworker, “What were you doing here so late last night?”

I responded, “I have opinions about why commercial trollers don’t get paid enough for their fish and I was posting them on a forum I belong to.”

He asked me something about why and I responded with, “Have you heard of Copper River salmon?”
He responded, “Oh, ya!”

I asked, “You’ve heard of troll-caught salmon?”

He said, “I thought that was just salmon. I thought the Copper River had really high oil content or something like that that made it a lot better.”

I explained that it is good stuff, but the reason he’s aware of it is because a unified group of fishermen taxed themselves and hired a publicist.

Later in the day I remembered something he said previously and I asked him, “Steve, do you even eat salmon?”

He quickly replied, “Oh, no, don’t like it.”

Here’s a fellow who wants nothing to do with fishing, doesn’t like salmon, but is an enthusiastic spokesperson for the Copper River fishery when the subject comes up. Yet, he places troll-caught on par with every other salmon on the market. This was a great example of what the average person in Washington knows about salmon. He didn’t go to a web-site. He didn’t talk with a processor or read a label. He didn’t have to work to get this education. He just heard it on the radio and speaks fluent Copper River. We want people to speak fluent troll-caught, but it takes unity, money and an entity empowered to collect, hire and advertise.

I went to a previous thread where we discussed this at some length and there were some suggestions for who to talk with to explore the possibilities. When I said we had a model, I was only partially correct. It appears that the only vehicle allowing fishermen to tax themselves was created by Alaska in the form of Regional Seafood Development Associations. Salty, I'm assuming this is what you were referring to as far as the ball rolling. http://www.dced.state.ak.us/ded/dev/sea ... a_home.htm

If I understand it correctly, the SE association was created by SE gill-netters and technically they were required to show how they would include other regional fisheries, including trollers. The problem: Apparently trollers can operate within the organization, but it would appear to be difficult to promote the superior qualities of troll-caught salmon over other salmon coming from the region. The same issue exists with ASMI.

After digging a little deeper, when I said we have a model I was only partly correct. SE trollers appear to be the only trolling group in a position to tax themselves, but it doesn’t appear that they can advertise exactly as they want to within the regional organization. It doesn't appear that the Alaska Troller's Association has the power to tax. I have no problem with promoting fish based on their region. But the quality of the product has much to do with whether it was harvested in or near the ocean vs. in or near a river mouth and more to do with handling techniques than what region it originated from or returns to. I have nothing against net-caught salmon, but I know that troll-caught is the best, regardless of what part of the Pacific it comes from.

A self-governing organization created specifically for the purpose of education and advertisement that includes all U.S. West-coast trollers would enable trollers to advertise exactly as we wish with a relatively consistent source of revenue. I’d also like to see the same for Canadian trollers who have been hammered so hard as a result of an un-educated public among other things. I would at least like to see something like the State Trollers Associations have the ability to implement a % tax solely dedicated to advertising and education. I am concerned that the burden of financing advertisement and education should not fall on individuals or trollers in a single state or province while rest benefit. I do not know how to get that specific ball rolling, nor do I know how much interest exists, but will continue to look into it and perhaps talk with our state associations.

JYPDX is right on regarding the public understanding. I believe it may be difficult for Alaskans to understand just how ignorant and disinterested we are in the southern U.S. regarding our fishing resources because fishing is such an integral part of SE Alaska life. I've heard people say they don't really care. They've done such a good job with Copper River that even the people who don't think they care can explain their products. If we ask the average person, “Ever hear of troll-caught salmon?” we want to hear, “Oh ya, that’s the best!” and be able to tell us why with little effort on their part.

Thanks again,

Lane

[yak2you2]

Marketing and advertizing, is important, but it is only one aspect of the spectrum. (See the main thread title), it won't do much good to have markets, if we ignore the other aspects, and allow ourselves to be regulated out of business. To me, this thread directly correlates to the thread about mandatory dockside inspections, among others. As I said in the dockside inspection post, we have thus far been fortunate in avoiding the hoops that many other industries already endure, but it's only a matter of time. We narrowly avoided a few bombs already. Anyone remember the deck rain water runoff catches? Or how about the concept of making us grind guts and gills before dumping? As was pointed out in the beginning with the ice cream story, what I fear the most, is red tape. Somehow,, we need to develop a watch dog group that can help law makers keep it real for us little people to be able to stay in business. While looking for a processor manager 2 summers ago, I was shocked to learn that a citizen doesn't just walk into a fish house anymore. All kinds of TSA style rules are in place to keep me from accidentally, or intentionally tainting the product I suppose. My question is, how long will it be before these same inspectors are going thru our boats next? After all, the product comes from us. Don't get me wrong, I'm not feeling threatened by the healthy, common sense, cleanliness stuff. I'm talking about things that most of us would never even consider a problem. In my early days as a gillnetter, we used to use fish pews to move fish. They were incredibly handy for moving large amount of fish fast, and saved on your back. Basically a shovel handle, with a steel point on the end, the idea was to either slip the point under a gill, or stick the fish in the head, and you then could move it, without having to bend over to pick it up. Well, at some point, someone decided that there existed the chance of poking a fish in the wrong spot, so they made them illegal. Now, you could argue all day about whether or not the threat was warranted, but the point I'm trying to make is, are all the different agencies going to get around to coming after our gaff hooks next, based on the same theory? There just has to be some common sense, and the changes that are inevitably coming simply have to be based on necessity, and not based on creating another group of jobs for potential overseers.

[Once and Future]

Lane, thanks for responding to my post. The rambling nature of what I said has brought us on to a new topic - the one of how do we promote. Perhaps we should start a new thread to keep that specific discussion going. I am interesting in observing people discuss new ideas. While ASMI does some good work, they are not going to promote troll-caught specifically. Also, I sent them an email on a topic last year, identified myself as a fisherman, and received no reply... I am sure if any troller contacted Dale at ATA, they would at least get a reply. I am pretty sure Dale's plate is already over full with current responsibilities. But perhaps that is the scale of the organization we need.

I am not a PR expert, and I'm not sure we can afford it. But you can see the insidious efforts of a big-money PR program, such as the farmed salmon industry employs. One example is the cooking show we were all a victim of here a couple weeks ago. Incidentally, we thought we all did a good job of fighting back to tell the show's producers our story - and we got zero satisfaction - correct?

Of course, there are examples of how some of the trollers out of Sitka have found a way to tell their own stories to specific markets. I know if we reject the project as "too hard" we are pretty much conceding we have a short future.

[JYDPDX]

Normally I don't understand why people have such a problem with a topic evolving but in this thread it makes a lot of sense to split it into two topics because they are very different. Although I get a sense that most of us will find the impending long arm of bureaucracy and coast guard regs the more compelling of the two, especially with Salty's endorsement of basically (and paraphrased) 'we are doing enough, its up to the consumer to find their own information on obscure websites'.

Seriously, I don't know what most trollers do in the winter, I travel all over the place and meet people from all over the US and discuss salmon with laypeople daily. The consensus: 'salmon is salmon, right?' The ignorance is astounding but of no fault of the public, it is our fault. If we continue in blissful complacence we are shooting ourselves in the foot. (especially with continued rising costs, ie. more safety ergs)

We need to brand our products and sacrifice to fund a marketing campaign. But most importantly we need to find a common ground and utilize it. Identify the items of most importance, unify and compromise.

I understand if nobody is on board with this but I would at least like to hear some reasons why not.

I am not a marketing major but I think there are some simple and fundamental items of information that would affect our prices in a positive way if conveyed to the public in a clear and efficient manner.

1. Difference between wild and farmed salmon.

2. Difference between King, Coho and Chum salmon.

3. Difference between troll caught and any other method.

Dale? Anyone?……

[Kelper]

Back to the subject of marketing..

My wife watches all of those wedding shows on tv. I suffer through more than I like to admit, mostly shaking my head at what they spend on them. These gals spend 40-80k on a wedding, and the food often sucks! I sit there wondering wondering why I don't see troll caught salmon at these really expensive weddings.

What do we need to do to get our fresh salmon as a "must have" at these the 6200 weddings that happen daily in the United States? (source: http://www.soundvision.com/info/weddings/statistics.asp) With an average of 20k per wedding, they deserve to have fresh troll caught salmon!

The wedding industy alone could keep us fat and happy as trollers.

[Salty]

Not often I am characterized as being satisfied that we "trollers" are doing enough on anything from regulations, marketing, allocation, quality, innovation, ergonomics, etc. Kind of gives me an idea of how people have felt when through my actions and comments I have characterized them that way.
I guess when you have spent as much time as I have innovating and literally forcing change in the industry by writing, proposing, and shepherding everything from regulatory change to new fisheries through the process you develop a keen (or more likely cynical or jaded) eye for the ideas that are likely to gain traction and those that aren't.
500 word essay on my history in salmon marketing from Appointments to Alaska task forces and travel from New York to DC to Dallas deleted.
But I did sit through nearly the whole SPC Board meeting and listen to their staff go into detailed presentations on what is happening in salmon marketing last month. For some crazy reason I have been asked several times to make presentations to various fishing groups on topics such as "Leadership" and " Transforming your good idea from the back deck to the bank account" or something like that. I just went back through some of those power point slides and presentation posters.
So, on this topic of "Mandatory Everything" that has morphed into something else, like blog discussions seem to, seemingly a discussion in this case of the need for a better idea for marketing of troll salmon I offer this:
There is a great book called "Made To Stick" by Chip and Dan Heath, subtitle "Why some good ideas succeed, and others fail. In which the key acronym is SUCCESS. For a hot lure tip, what does SUCCESS stand for:

Or what is the single most important word to describe why some ideas succeed and others fail?

[elkiller]

the word: Timing

[Salty]

Good guess, Malcolm Gladwell does a whole lot of work in his book "Outliers" on timing. And it may be the correct answer in a lot of cases. Maybe I should have asked "What is the word Chip and Dan Heath say is the single most important word to describe why some ideas succeed and others fail? Hint: Pretty common word in Alaska's fisheries.

[squareface]

"Simple"

Troll caught fish= "white table cloth " "weddings" one fish at a time, bled, handled carefully, iced, delivered not in mass volume. Folks buying salmon need our help, yes, we and our buyers need to promote what a "troll" caught fish is.

[JKD]

My guess is "seasonal".

[Salty]

"Simple" is one of the words in the acronym SUCCESS, but it isn't the most important word in why your idea might succeed. I have sold King Salmon and even taken a bride and groom fishing to catch the king salmon served at their wedding banquet. It is great wedding food. I have even gone out and caught king salmon to be served at a congressional event in DC. So troll caught wild Alaska king salmon is a really good idea at special events like weddings or other special events. Here is another question since it came up. What is the #1 white table cloth restaurant dinner event in the US?

"seasonal" I don't understand this answer?

Lack of this word in the pursuit of making your idea succeed almost ensures that it will fail.

[Salty]

It also applies to dealing with "mandatory everything".

[JYDPDX]

Salty, with all of you vast experience in fisheries activism, why don't offer something useful and cut the BS with all of the bragging, riddles, book recommendations, rhetoric and "lessons"?

Your "know it all" condescending attitude is beginning to grate on me.

Seriously? Because salty has taken people out fishing it makes it good food for weddings? And because Salty once took a fish to a DC congressional event that also reinforces that its good for weddings?

Case in point why we need to hire marketing professionals.

Oh, and to paraphrase a little more salty basically says, ' this marketing idea wont gather traction, I know this because of my experience alone, I have so much experience I can automatically shoot down an idea'.

[Salty]

Being a long time troller humility is part of the business. The nature of the business continually humbles even the best trollers, of which I don't claim to belong in. Participating in Blogs also includes being flamed. So, I usually take it with good humor. I was trying to re-enforce the idea posted here that King Salmon is great food at weddings and other celebrations with my own experiences, not that I know all about wedding food. My wedding to my wife cost $250 and I provided the salmon so I confess to not knowing much about the expensive weddings.

On the flaming though, I learned a long time ago that it is not usually a good idea to put words in other people's mouth. The whole point of the posting on what the most important word in successful ideas is not to "shoot down" the idea but to encourage readers to think about, perhaps even do a little research, on what makes for success.

I encourage ideas, I have been asked to speak on how to make ideas work to young fishermen and college students. One of the challenges in sharing experience is being perceived as "a know it all".

Finally, since it is Martin Luther King day, here is a quote from him from one of my presentations on this subject which applies to taking the risk of stating what you think on blogs or elsewhere:

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

Still looking for that word that is crucial to making your idea a success. This post illustrates a bit of it.

[JYDPDX]

1. This is not a blog. You may think it is your personal blog, but in fact it is not a blog at all.

2. I am not a Flamer and you did not get flamed.

3. I did not put words in your mouth, you have used your own words to paint yourself how you are. However I will use direct quotations if I need to call you out on BS again.

4. Go teach a college class then, but save it for the kids, stop detracting or diverting a useful discussion.

5. You have not encouraged any ideas on this thread.