AK Tour 2021: Cordova
Our second ever blog post is going to be the first in a series of three about our Alaska Tour 2021. The NYP team came together for a pretty epic three week trip to Cordova, Homer and Dutch Harbor this past June, and we can't wait to tell you all about it. This post is written by Nicole, as she travelled to Cordova on her own before joining Sara and Erin in Homer later on.
This epic journey begins in early June, and was my first time to Cordova. I visited to support the Copper River Watershed Project (CRWP) in scaling up their gillnet and seine recycling program. They have been collecting end of life fishing gear for 10 years, much longer than NYP has been around, but in that time, recycling markets, especially those for plastics, have changed alot and CRWP wanted to make sure they knew what was happening to the nets once they loaded them into containers and shipped them away. So 2 years ago we met at an Alaska Forum on the Environment conference in Anchorage and started working together on finding a new home for their gillnets. But without ever having been there, it's hard to get an idea of how things are working, what kind of problems we are dealing with, who is involved and how we can improve. So on June 8, I boarded the “milk run” flight to Cordova, which after leaving Seattle stopped in Juneau and Yakutat, kind of like a bus, before landing in Cordova. I got into my rental truck with the change oil and tire pressure lights on, and off I was into town. My destination: the local grocery store (affectionately known as the AC). This was to be the center of my universe and a hubbub of activity for the next six days. You see, the CRWP had previously tried an unsupervised drop off system, in the harbor, but because nets need to be stripped of all non-nylon materials to be recyclable (including corks, cork line, lead line, hanging twine and weedlines) this system didn't work too well. Plenty of nets were dropped off with these items still attached. Thankfully, we had an army of volunteers during the next six days to help us with processing these old nets.
When I finally arrived to the AC, some of these volunteers were already present, members of the CDFU staff, working hard picking twine out of nests of tangled web. I jumped right in, and after a few hours had to take a break to check in at the local post office. Miraculously, even after being addressed incorrectly, when we walked in, the customer service representatives (the owner of Knot Crazy!) recognized me, and knew right where my box was. So I proudly affixed our new magnet proclaiming our recycling services to the truck, and back to the AC we went.
Day after day, I rolled up to the grocery store to meet Shae, the coordinator of the CRWP recycling program. We set up our tent, tarp, knives and signage, and waited for fishermen to drop off new nets while picking twine out of old ones.
We made it into the local newspaper, drove around residential neighborhoods identifying way too many nets that looked like junk that we didn't have permission to take, ate way too many tacos from the Taco Bus and scored big after visiting Teal at Cordova Net Supply. Teal hangs nets, which means that she “sews” the nylon web to the cork line and the lead line, and is a real advocate of the net recycling program. We left her shop with the entire bed of our truck filled with web from her that needed no further care. We dropped it right off at the storage container next to the baling machine CRWP purchased last year, which really makes a difference in increasing how many nets you can fit into a shipping container. Think cardboard stacked with bands holding it together or a nice compressed rectangle of aluminum pop cans - we can do the same with nets.
One of my favorite parts of the trip was sitting at “The Jump” coffee hut, right above the entrance to the harbor and watching the boats come in after a successful opener. This fishery is very unlike the others I have been a part of over the years; fishermen leave town the night before, fish for 12 hours, then come back home to their families and await the next open period to fish. Loved ones are waiting for them to come home, and they can sleep in their own beds at night. You can really tell that the Cordova salmon fishery is a community affair, and after a few days, I felt like I was fitting in. After a pizza party in the woods, a clothing swap party at a cabin, kayaking, smoking salmon, drinking “subsistence spritzers” and hiking to a glacier - I began to seriously contemplate living in Cordova in the summer and Seattle in the winter. More to follow on that after I discuss it with my new husband 😃
The other really fun, energy filled event was the fundraising BBQ.
SO many people contributed to the success of that event (we raised over $1000!), including the many volunteers and the AC as the sponsor for sure - but my job was a little detached from the main action. I was gladly given the task of walking the docks and telling fishermen about the hotdogs and hamburgers we were serving for lunch, and getting them interested in bringing us their nets once they were done using them. I had my business cards, my wit, and my Waterhaul knives (click on equipment at the top of their webpage if you want to order your own!). These are a new product made by a company in the UK, and the handle of the knife is made from the same plastic we were trying to collect from fishermen; nylon from recycled gillnets.
It's a great conversation starter and gets fishermen thinking concretely about the second life their nets could have if they recycled them instead of taking them to the landfill - and why they might want to bother taking out the hangings while they are stripping it. I ran out of business cards while doing this outreach, and it was my favorite part of the trip. Bullshitting should be my middle name!
Towards the end of the trip, I spent time talking to a seine fishing couple that also runs a tender and a seafood processing company about some strategies to make the recycling program financially sustainable. Right now it is supported by donations and proceeds from activities the Watershed Project runs, but the long game here, like all NYP programs, is for it to support itself. We don't make enough from selling the web to the recyclers, so we need some funds from elsewhere. If you have any ideas, please let us know and please tune in next month for Sara’s summary of our visit to Homer.