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Chum salmon

Processors turn to ikura, the chum salmon eggs prized by Japan, to boost prices for their product

If the Alaska salmon industry is looking for a glimmer of hope after what has turned out to be a truly disastrous season, consider this:

One Alaska processor was selling fresh chums to a supermarket chain in the United Kingdom this summer for $2 a pound, about 50 cents a pound more than the chain was paying for farmed Scottish salmon.

“They’re tired of nothing but farmed salmon. There’s a niche for wild salmon in Europe,” says the processor, who estimates he sold about 100,000 pounds of fresh chums.

Unfortunately, though, 100,000 pounds is a drop in the bucket of an annual summer Alaska chum harvest that is routinely more than 150 million pounds. Many more European retailers would have to sign on to have any impact on the beleaguered Alaska salmon industry.

It wasn’t that long ago when chums were the featured fresh salmon in supermarkets across much of the United States. Relatively cheap and plentiful, whole fresh chums were featured at $1.99 a pound or less.

But the rising tide of farmed salmon has changed all that. And this summer’s complete collapse of farmed salmon prices has made it more challenging than ever to move chums.

“It’s been flat ugly,” says another Alaska processor.

Despite the fact that chums are a bargain and are a fine-eating fish, with fresh whole farmed salmon selling for $1.10 a pound and frozen boneless fillets for about $1.50, it’s hard to find retailers who want to take a chance on chums.

So why were processors in Southeast Alaska paying fishermen 40 cents a pound for chums, the same price they were paying Bristol Bay fishermen for their sockeyes?

It’s all about the eggs.

Of all the salmon species, chums have the most desirable egg, big and red and with just the right pop for the Japanese palate. After a smaller-than-expected chum run in Japan last fall, the price of chum ikura, or individually salted eggs, jumped from $14 a pound to $21.

On a whole-fish basis, that made a chum worth an extra 20 cents a pound, which is why processors were willing to gamble on a higher chum price this summer.

With this year’s Alaska chum catch off almost 40 percent from previous years, Alaska processors have been bullish about the ikura market. However, this September they nervously watched the catches from Japan’s chum run, which is typically two or three times as large as Alaska’s, to see if their bets would pay off.

Meanwhile, Alaska processors will do their best to export as many frozen chums as possible. In spite of the deluge of farmed salmon, annual U.S. exports of frozen chums to Europe have actually increased slightly, from 8,500 metric tons in 1995 to 9,500 metric tons in 2000.

Even the Norwegians have acquired a taste for chums. Over the past four years, Norway’s purchases of American chums have gone from nothing to more than 300 metric tons.

Alaska processors have also had success developing markets for value-added products using chum portions. A number of Europe’s largest supermarket chains have begun selling skinless, boneless chum portions in a variety of ready-to-cook entrées.

And although they won’t call it chum, a number of family-style restaurants in the United States grill chum portions.

The growing demand for chum portions has led most Alaska processors to book airplane tickets to Qingdao, the center of China’s seafood-reprocessing industry. Over the past three years, U.S. exports of frozen chums to China have tripled every year, reaching almost 3,500 metric tons in 2000.

“There’s absolutely no way we can do this processing in the United States and be competitive,” says one Alaska processor.

“You tell the Chinese what you want, they give you a cost, and you’re done. They take care of all the trim and everything else. We don’t know where it goes, and we don’t want to know.”

Priced at anywhere from $2 to $2.50 a pound, depending upon the spec and whether or not it’s vacuum-packed, skinless, boneless chum portions are priced lower than chum steaks used to be.

The problem, however, is that frozen farmed salmon portions have been almost as cheap lately. For now, processors say, most of their portion buyers are sticking with chums.

“Portions are pretty much a program business,” explains one processor. “We don’t produce the product until we have an order. Prices for portions have held steady. They are much less volatile than H&G.

“Most of our portion customers don’t think farmed salmon will stay this cheap, and so far we haven’t lost any of that business.”

But there is some business they are likely to lose. This summer, Chilean farmers were quoting frozen whole cohos for just 85 cents a pound delivered to European buyers, undercutting chum prices by about a dime.

“That’s put a lid on our prices and made it very tough for us to sell H&G fish to Europe without losing money,” says the processor.

And in the wild salmon business these days, breaking even is about the best any processor can hope to do.

Supply outlook

Even if Alaska salmon processors lose money on a lot of their chums, they can console themselves with the fact that they’ll lose a lot less money due to this summer’s smaller chum catch.

It looks like Alaska salmon fishermen caught about 65,000 metric tons of chums, although the final numbers weren’t in by the end of September. That’s down sharply from last summer’s big haul of almost 98,000 metric tons.

Most of the decline can be attributed to the low returns to the hatcheries in northern and southern Southeast Alaska.

The fact that returns to the big Southeast hatcheries, which release hundreds of millions of smolt into the ocean each year, were down sharply normally would be good news to chum salmon fishermen in other parts of Alaska.

The huge increase in Alaska chum catches this decade has caused a sharp decline in the average ex-vessel price for chums, from more than 50 cents a pound to just 26 cents a pound last year.

While salmon fishermen in the Southeast have made money on the increased catch volumes, native fishermen on the remote rivers of western Alaska, where there are no hatcheries, have struggled as the value of their catch has plummeted.

The state kicked in some money to help fishermen in western Alaska promote the higher quality of their catch by establishing a brand for “Arctic keta” salmon. And some of these chums are indeed a cut above your average chum, despite the fact that for hundreds of years local villagers have fed these fish to their sled dogs.

Take fall Yukon chums, for example. The fish swim more than 2,000 miles upriver into Canada to spawn, making the whole journey without eating. To do that, these chums have a lot of fat — about 15 percent — compared to most chums, which spawn near river mouths and have a fat content of about 4 percent.

The problem is that the Yukon fall chum fishery was closed for the second year in a row this year, and escapements have fallen below the levels needed to sustain the run. Last year, the state’s governor declared the region’s salmon fisheries a disaster in order to get federal funding.

This year, however, according to one state official, the governor probably won’t declare a disaster because “by definition, a disaster is an event that is unexpected. This was not unexpected.”

In other parts of western Alaska, the runs are in better shape, but with chum prices well below a buck, flying the fish to Anchorage for processing is a marginal operation at best. As a result, the total chum catch from western Alaska this summer was expected to be less than 250,000 fish.

Chum fishing in British Columbia has gone downhill fast in recent years. Prior to 1995, chum catches in the province averaged almost 20,000 metric tons. Since then, they have declined sharply, reaching a record low in 2000 of just 800 metric tons.

Fishing this summer has picked up again, although with landings estimated at 2,500 metric tons at the end of September, the fishery has a way to go before it makes a complete recovery.

Chum catches in Washington state have also been disappointing. After averaging about 5,000 metric tons a year, harvests have dropped below 1,500 metric tons the past two years. Biologists were optimistic that good ocean survival conditions would lead to a rebound in catches this fall by the time the fishery winds up in November.

Price trends

The bullish bet by Alaska salmon processors on continued high prices in the ikura market resulted in fishermen getting some very high prices for their chums this year in some parts of Alaska. This spring, processors bid between 50 cents and 60 cents a pound, for example, for fish harvested by chum hatcheries as part of their cost-recovery programs.

(Non-profit salmon hatcheries in Alaska sell a portion of their returns each year to generate revenues to fund their ongoing operations.)

In order to make money on those fish, processors will be crossing their fingers that Japan’s chum harvest will be another disappointing one.

After egg prices softened this summer, so did the price processors paid fishermen. The average price in Southeast Alaska was less than 40 cents a pound. Fishermen in other parts of the state received anywhere from 10 cents to 30 cents a pound, with the lower prices being paid in more remote parts of the state where processors incur higher operating costs.

Alaska processors typically sell as many fresh chums as they can early in the summer to generate cash as quickly as possible. So it wasn’t surprising to see decent-quality H&G chums being offered for less than 60 cents a pound in Seattle in early June.

But as the season went on, and it became apparent that the run was indeed going to be well below that of previous years, f.o.b. Seattle prices started to inch up, reaching 70 cents a pound by mid-July and 80 cents a pound by the end of the month. That’s where they remained through the end of the season.

With a smaller chum run, processors were trying to hold the line on frozen chum prices in late September. Processors were quoting dark, pale-meated H&G chums for about 45 cents a pound, f.o.b. Seattle, while “silver bullets” with good meat color were being offered at 90 cents.

Processors say the problem is that Chilean farmers have been dumping whole frozen cohos and Atlantics for 90 cents a pound or less most of the summer. Don’t be surprised if you can pick up chums with reasonably good meat color for about 75 cents a pound or less later this winter.

Buying tips

One of the tried-and-true tricks with chums is to pass them off as cohos to ignorant, or careless, buyers. It wasn’t that many years ago that a smooth salmon seller could pocket an extra buck a pound or more in this value-adding exercise.

These days, though, there’s a lot less incentive, as the difference in price between chums with good meat color and cohos is only about 10 or 20 cents a pound. Still, buyers should know how to spot the difference: Chums have a much thinner caudal peduncle (the area just in front of the tail) than cohos.

As with all wild salmon, be prepared to shop around when buying chums, since quality will vary widely, depending upon where, when and how the fish were caught. At the top of the quality chart are troll-caught chums from Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. These ocean-caught fish are bright and normally have good meat color.

Be prepared to pay a premium of about 25 cents a pound. And remember, if you see net marks on your fish, it’s not a troll fish.

Some very good chums also come out of the rivers in western Alaska, especially Kotzebue Sound, just north of the Arctic Circle. While the intrinsic quality of this fish is excellent, you still have to pay attention, because not all the local fishermen bother to carry ice. And if somebody tries to sell you Yukon chums, you might want to inform them that there hasn’t been a chum fishery on the Yukon for the past two years.

Hatchery chums from Southeast and Prince William Sound can also be quite good, especially if they were caught early in the run. Take the time, though, to find out which hatchery your fish came from. Some hatcheries, such as Neets Bay on Behm Canal near Ketchikan, have a higher percentage of dark, pale-meated fish.

Speaking of pale chums, for years the Alaska seafood industry resisted the publication of a standard meat-color chart on the premise that an educated customer is no friend of a processor. Fortunately, though, enough processors were finally convinced that educated buyers buy more seafood, so they have allowed a meat-color guide to be published.

This handy tool, as well as a skin-color guide, are both available from the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute at www.AlaskaSeafood.org.

Instead of relying on vague industry terms such as silver-bright or “good meat color,” spend $10 and get a copy of the guides. It’s better to use an objective color key, because there are many shades of color when it comes to chums.

Keep in mind, too, that you can’t judge a chum by its cover. Some dark chums will have good meat color, while some bright fish will have pale meat.

And don’t forget that freezing a chum will affect its color — at least temporarily. The skin of a bright fish, for example, will darken in the freezer and lighten again once it’s thawed out. The opposite will happen with meat color. It will lighten after it’s frozen and darken somewhat after thawing.

Culinary notes

Even though chums have a much lower fat content than sockeyes, cohos or kings, they’re still fine for grilling. To enhance their flavor profile, many chefs marinate chums first, or coat them with a butter-based herb sauce.

There’s really no limit to what you can do with chums, and in some respects they’re more versatile than the full-flavored wild salmon species — or high-fat farmed salmon, for that matter

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