“We don't do anything special, we just take care of them.”

Pete Knutson, co-founder of Loki Fish Company speaks casually about his fishing practices, but how he handles his catch has garnered the respect and admiration of many Seattleites, as well as Martha Stewart’s American Made Program.

Knutson says the company’s aim is to keep the quality of the fish from the time it lands in their boat in a gill net to when it’s served on the table. Freshness, respect, scope are the foundation of their practices, and the quality of their products convey a message of stewardship, of independence and respect for the harvest. That message is being communicated beyond the farmers markets, small time purveyor shops and Fishermen’s Terminal where people find Loki Fish Co.

Martha Stewart’s American Made Program has recognized Loki Fish Company as one of 10 small businesses honored in a variety of sectors, including food, fashion and technology. The program brings attention to small businesses that make their products in the United States. They met two weeks ago in New York City for the American Made Summit. Among Loki Fish Company, other honorees included a cheese producer, a furniture builder and a company that makes bio-based dyes to use for textiles.

“It was a surprise. We didn't expect it. … We’ve been in this business a long time, and we’ve just been trying to do it right – what we consider as right, which means taking responsibility for the fish all the way from the water to the table. It was nice to be recognized by an organization that appreciates that,” said Peter Knutson.

Knutson and his wife, Hing Lau Ng, started Loki Fish Company over thirty years ago. Pete started out fishing halibut in Alaska and eventually the Knutsons bought their own gillnetting boat, Loki. A year later in 1980 they started Loki Fish Company, marketing their fish to vendors a Pike Place Market. From the start Knutson said he wanted to bring the freshest and best product possible and started his practice of maintaining quality by handling the fish respectfully, bleeding them out and dressing them onboard Loki, and then immediately storing them in refrigerated seawater holds at below freezing. Once off the boat, the fish is immediately off loaded to trucks and brought directly to their processing or distribution facility.

Today, the Knuton sons, Dylan, 33, and Jonah, 37, fish for and manage Loki Fishing Company. Dylan manages the business, and Jonah and Peter bring in the salmon and halibut each season. What separates Loki from the rest is how they handle their catch, maintaining the practices that Pete established. Their methods have earned the designation of a sustainable fishing company by the Marine Stewardship Council.

“I’m gratified for my sons, especially Dylan who’s put 10 years of his life developing the business. None of us start out as business people, we start out as fishermen, and so it’s been real interesting. All we wanted to do was just take the fish out of the water and transmit that quality directly to the consumer, and it seemed like we were out here in left field doing that for all these years, and now it seems like we’re part of a larger movement.”

The Ballard News-Tribune was invited aboard Loki Fish Company’s second gillnetter, Njord, last Wednesday in the waters off West Point (off Magnolia neighborhood) where Pete Knutson and his crew showed exactly why Loki Fish Company is being honored.

From the view of Njord’s helm the light of the Seattle cityscape spread across Puget Sound as the haze of rain moved in, fazing the view of the shore. With the rain, the sun sunk beyond the ragged spine of the Olympic Mountain Range. Wind gusts were up to 40 knots, and the water was rolling heavy in mortar furrows that ominously curled small white caps at the tops of waves. Off in the distance were tugs slogging bovine barges and the floating buildings that are the international cargo freighters languidly plowed through the waters not a third of a mile from Njord. One could only speculate what stirred in the vacuous cacophonies of those hulls. People? Vehicles? Chinese metal?

“It’s likely full of Chinese goods that end up in the Wal-Marts across the Northwest region,” Knutson said causally and quickly moved on to explain his automatic identification transmitter display on his cell phone. The device syncs with the transmitter on Njord and communicates to other vessels that it is a fishing boat. Knutson pointed to a freighter on the display. It had a Chinese name and a Panama nomenclature.

“Probably registered there to avoid taxes.”

He pointed to a dot just south of the center dot that represented Njord.

“That’s Jonah in Loki.”

We looked southwest across the water and saw the mast of Loki and the running lights.

“Looks like he’s already setting his net.”

Pete Knutson navigating with his phone that is synched with instruments on Njord.

Njord and Loki set off at about 3:30 p.m. from Fishermen’s Terminal where they moor. From there they went through the Ballard Locks and out to Puget Sound. Other fishermen in boats of their own accompanied Loki and Njord. Loki Fish Company works other fishermen in order to help them meet their growing national demand for high-grade salmon. The captains commiserated from the decks of their boats as the sea green walls of the Ballard Locks rose above their heads as the Lake Washington Canal water was drained some 20 feet to the level of Puget Sound.

En route to West Point Knutson slowed to let a tug go ahead of him as Loki took the lead. On the radio the tug captain – who Knutson said used to be a gillnetter – chatted with one of the other fishermen about how gillnetters in the traffic lanes was “irritating.” The captain joked with him and told him to remember his roots. They planned to catch up soon and signed off.

Jonah Knutson (left) on Loki, Pete Knutson on Njord chatting with a fellow gill netter in the Ballard Locks.

Aboard Njord was Atom Smith, 27, one of the few Loki employees, and his girlfriend, Chelsea, 28, visiting from Whistler, B.C. The two were about to celebrate their birthdays together, and Smith wanted to show Chelsea how he spends his time. Smith lives in White Center. He recently spent two months aboard Njord in Southeastern Alaska with another crewmember and Knutson. They fished the winter salmon season. Smith showed the BNT the tiny oblique double bunk in the belly of Njord where he slept. He said his skipper, Knutson, slept not a foot above him. The other crewmember slept in the helm up the ladder from them. Smith said the worst part was adjusting to the close quarters and hitting his head on the top bunk every morning.

Chelsea and Atom hanging out on the deck of Njord.

Not long after sunset Knutson gave the word and he and Smith put on their rubber boots, pants and jackets and started preparing the net at the stern of Njord. A huge spool holds the coiled netting that will eventually be unfurled across a swath of the Sound. The metal spool looks as if it was dislodged from Neptune’s giant fishing pole and bolted to the back of Njord. Knutson said he usually has 300 fathoms of net but this season he is only using 285.

“I’ve been too lazy to add more gear. I’m not as hungry as I was in my 30s and 40s,” he said.

The spool acts much like a fishing reel and lets out the net and eventually reels it back in. The net is attached to a large buoy that blinks a red light. Knutson and Smith toss out the buoy and let loose the netting. They place smaller buoys on the net every 25 feet or so. The buoys keep the netting at the surface, while the six fathoms of the net sinks. The netting itself is patterned with holes three to six inches wide. Fish swim into these holes and then their gills do not allow them to swim out.

The two get to the end of the spool.

“Okay. The hard part’s done,” said Knutson, smiling.

Inside Njord’s cabin the crew sits down to soup and a can of beer. Chelsea starts in about the beer and how she never knows what to tell Germans when they visit her restaurant where she works in Whistler. Then Pete tells a story about demonstrating at a nuclear power plant in Germany. The stories went on for a while, and it came up that Germany was neither the first nor the last time Knutson demonstrated. In fact he was actively protesting the Vietnam War while attending classes at Stanford University. He was going to school for a degree in anthropology. Later Knutson earned a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Washington and started teaching full time in 1996. He currently teaches at Seattle Central Community College.

But his activism didn’t stop. Later, Knutson was instrumental in maintaining fishermen’s rights at Fishermen’s Terminal when there was a push by the Port of Seattle to allow recreational vessels to moor at there. They were also making rules more stringent on fishermen living and marketing their fish from their boats. However, Knutson organized with other fishermen and fought the Port. They ended up coming to a compromise and today though recreational boats moor there, fishing boats have priority. Today Knutson is a founding member and Commissioner of the Puget Sound Salmon Commission, a group effectively advocating for the protection and stewardship of salmon in Puget Sound and Alaska.

Back at West Point more stories were shared aboard the Njord as schools of Keta salmon (also known as Chum Salmon) swam into the invisible net floating in the Sound. Njord drifted at less than a knot toward Magnolia as the crew waited an hour for the fish. As they waited Knutson made a phone call. Chelsea read an old copy of the Seattle Weekly. Smith made a beat on his electronic beat maker. A warn paperback copy of Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” was lodged in the shelf near the table, jammed between flashlights, old newspapers and bottles of hot sauces.

Soon enough, Knutson gave the word, and he and Smith put their rubbers back on and went out to the stern. The wind was really blowing then and rain whipped their faces. Overhanging lights beamed down into the green water, revealing the net at least a fathom down. Knutson flipped a switch and the spool came alive, turning and pulling in the net. At first there was nothing but transparent jellyfish dropping to the deck like bags of primordial ooze. The machine whined. Then in the water there emerged a wriggling dark orb shrouded in the green fibrous web of the net. Then there was another orb. The net came in further and a huge Keta salmon came over the stern, its giant eyes unmoving, vacantly looking back at the alien scene on the deck. Knutson carefully removed the fish with the aid of a special tool that picks at the fibers of the net. The net is damaged in the process and holes develop as the season goes on. However, Knutson said that sometimes the holes in the net work in their favor allowing some fish to come through, while steering others to be trapped. As more and more fish were brought in the male and female fish were separated. Females carry roe, which will be cleaned from the skeins and brined to make Loki’s ikura. Smith stuns the fish by detaching the gills and puts them in large bins on the deck. There they bleed out, which is what keeps the quality of the meat high by preserving the integrity of the cellular walls in the flesh. The practice is what separates Loki from other larger operations.

Knutson pulling Keta from waters off West Point.

“If I take a fish out of water I feel an obligation to the creature that I’ve taken. That’s a responsibility if you’re going to be a harvester. You’ve got to think about what created that fish, and how can I help make sure those fish will continue to come back and also just in terms of the fish itself. I want to preserve that perfect quality that it has when it comes out of the water and not screw it up.”

More orbs appeared from out of the dark water, and after over an hour of picking the net was wound up, and there were over 70 fish onboard. The single by-catch being a lone dogfish, which Knutson tossed off the side.

“You just play the hand you’re dealt. I try to have no expectations. If you get some great, if you don’t you get to go to bed earlier.”

Knutson said the catch was pretty good but that over 150 fish is more of a typical night. But, it’s not always like that. The biggest thing standing between a big haul and an empty main hold is unforeseen mechanical issues like blowing a hydraulic line while bringing in the net. There’s also the chance that too many jellyfish get caught in the net, illuminating it like a glowing warning sign and steering fish away. And then of course there is always the looming danger of bigger boats moving at around 18 knots snagging the gear.

Without a lot of talk Knutson heads to the helm and starts Njord back to the terminal while Smith gets to work on the ikura. A light shines on the top of the main hold where Smith has set up his station made of rubber mats, bins, strainers and razor sharp knives. The fish had started to go rigid but still warm to the touch. Smith carefully dressed the Keta with the precision and speed of a seasoned heart surgeon. He removes the head, roe and the entrails and then removes the remaining blood from the central body of the fish. Chelsea brings him a beer, lays more Keta on the table.

Smith dressing fish and removing the roe to later make ikura.

“What’s attracted people to fishing historically is being independent and being your own boss, but increasingly it’s become more and more difficult to do that. But what we’ve done is taken a path where we catch less but have more control over what we do, and we are actually building a business as opposed to just showing up and being a sharecropper for some larger economic entity.”

It doesn’t take Smith long and he’s done before we can see the red glare of the of Ray’s Boat House sign at the mouth of the canal.

Before going into the canal Knutson stops to check in with Jonah. Loki had drifted further north than Njord. Knutson comes near enough to shout at the vessel. Jonah is at the stern bringing in his net. Jonah tells Pete he’s had a big night bringing in over 170 and still picking the net. He tells Pete he’s going to stay out.

“He’ll be out here all night.”

Knutson said there was a time when he would have done the same. He said after his sons were born, and he had a family to support he would stay out and fish up until the final minute. The season only allows a finite number of hours to fish. Knutson said he was also feeling the pressure of a changing market as farmed fish became more prevalent.

“I really was burning the candle at both ends. … It got tougher and tougher as the farmed salmon came in, and we would get squeezed out. Then we started at the farmers markets and that really helped by acting like an incubator.”

“What we’re doing is real similar to what small farmers are doing. With the way our economy works little guys get forced out and you either have to become a big producer and catch a lot more for a lot less, or you have to just totally leave that paradigm and just make the direct connection with the consumer, which is what we've done, and they recognized that.”

Today Loki Fish Company can be found at the Ballard, Broadway, University District and West Seattle Farmers Markets. Customers also find their fish at co-ops and specialty shops as far as the Midwest.

“Customers who go to the farmers markets are a particular sort of cross section of very socially aware Seattle consumers, and they want to support the producers, the harvesters who share their values. I think the food is better, and also I think we all feel better when we are doing something that is long term sustainable.”

For more information visit http://www.lokifish.com.