July 5, 2018 — Preschool teacher Hannah Hendrickson said there are two distinct duties for catch samplers working at salmon processing plants around Bristol Bay.
“People oftentimes nickname this job as the pickers and the lickers, so I said, ‘I’m not a licker. I’m only a picker!’ ” she said.
The licker is her colleague Deven Lisac. Across the table at Peter Pan Seafoods in Dillingham, Lisac was snipping off bits of fins and plucking out fish scales. Saliva’s a good enough adhesive to stick fish scales on the thick cards for their journey to the Department of Fish and Game laboratory in King Salmon.
“Grab the tweezers, and then you just give it a lick,” Lisac advised. “And that was fish No. 4, so it goes on slot four.”
The pair are part of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s seasonal crew tasked with sampling 240 sockeye a day from each district in the bay. They also sample 200 chums and 200 kings a week.