Mark Coulthurst: Switch to Seining

The logic of success inexorably pushed Mark Coulthurst toward bigger and better. That meant a switch to purse seining. That move was, from the beginning, borne from a rational set of decisions, driven by changes in the business itself.

The Boldt decision to reapportion the salmon harvest was one driver. Declining fish stocks were another. So were the costs of staying competitive — including the perceived need to hire spotter planes to find the ever-elusive fish. The June 1982 Pacific Fishing “Letter from the Editor” put it succinctly:

Take Mark Coulthurst’s sophisticated long-range business planning. You’ll see how his business-oriented approach has resulted in profits and expansion while many other fishermen are floundering in a sea of red ink.


Mark Coulthurst: Doing the Bellingham Scramble (excerpts), by Doug McNair.
PART III

[Mark Coulthurst’s] switch to seining came in 1976. “We began to take a long, hard look at the effort and expense of gill-netting versus seining. What it comes down to is that you’re going to work just as hard whichever way you fish so you might just as well go with the tools that will give you the best return.”

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Purse Seining Boats, Alaska – Note the power skiff in the lower left corner. (Alaska Fish & Game)

Of his first salmon seining season out of Blaine, Mark says, matter-of-factly: “Luckily we planned it out well enough financially so that we didn’t have to make a big season. If we’d have been in dire need of a good season, we would have really flopped hard.” Although still primarily a salmon fisherman, the backup herring experiment had really paid off. Also, Mark played a card that some fishermen are reluctant to, “overfinancing” to provide a year-end safety net.

In 1977, [Mark’s purse seiner] Kit started paying off, and that winter Mark built another gill-netter for spring herring fishing to replace the Mel Martin boat he’d sold to buy the Kit. Never missing a chance to have the boat working, Irene and Mark sent their dad tendering for Southeastern herring aboard the Kit.

By 1979, their season was firmly based around Southeastern salmon and their operation was working well. […] By 1981, with several successful herring and salmon seasons behind him and a dwindling tax advantage with the Kit, the time to shop for a new boat had come.

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Purse Seiner Bringing in the Fish

[But] Coulthurst was just starting to climb, this time toward an entirely new area of the fishing business.

“In 1979, John Costanti, John Curry, Karen Evich and I formed the Angel Island Pacific Salmon Co. The idea was to buy quality seine fish from a few boats — brined or slushed fish — for sale on the fresh market. We wholesale all over the world and one of my partners is experimenting with retail distributing to Eastern Washington. It’s a limited, open-book, profit-sharing type of venture where we’re trying for some of the best of both a co-op and private business situation.”

He sees this type of operation as one that more and more fishermen will enter as the costs of capital, equipment and operation, along with fluctuating prices, put a greater and greater emphasis on smart marketing. “It’s not something you try to make a killing with but it’s just one more little advantage, that little extra nickel that means another $5,000 at the end of the season. Also, it’s brought me much closer to the fishery. I understand it from an entirely different perspective now.”

Seining
Source: Alaska Department of Fish & Game (Commercial Fishing Division)

Copyright Leland E. Hale (2018). All rights reserved.


Craig

Order “What Happened In Craig,” HERE and HERE, true crime on Epicenter Press.

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