Side stripe shrimp sell quickly at dock

Justa: It’s ‘not anything anyone will get rich at, but it’s fun’

Freshly cooked side stripe shrimp. Photo courtesy of Kinsey Justa

Their first venture into Prince William Sound in April in search of side stripe shrimp didn’t yield a big catch, so Kinsey Justa and Ezekiel Brown told only a few people they’d be selling the fresh catch at the dock in Cordova.

The second trip went better for the two Cordova residents. Locals snapped up about 300 pounds of shrimp between 9 a.m. and noon, said Justa, speaking during a break in advance of heading out on the tide on their 58-foot seiner, the Lucid Dream, for more shrimp.

“People were so excited about spring, and we were the only ones down there [selling shrimp],” she said.

This past year the couple has really tried to do as many fisheries as possible.

“We fished for shrimp and Tanner crab, tendered and fished for salmon and in the fall more tendering for the cohos,” she said. With the novel coronavirus pandemic going on, they figured, they might as well stay out on the boat.

This is their third season fishing for side stripe shrimp. In previous seasons they tried freezing and shipping them out, but the high price of freezing, storage, shipping and packaging persuaded them to sell locally in 2021, and it worked.

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The side stripe shrimp fishery is a small one, “not anything anyone will get rich at, but it’s fun,”

said Justa, who arrived in Cordova in 2016 to work for the Copper River/Prince William Sound Marketing Association. “Met a fisherman, fell in love and now we fish together,” she said.

During the off-season Justa, who hails from Colorado, is working on her master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Her favorite for the side stripe shrimp, she confided, is to eat them raw with lime juice, salt and spicy red pepper, scooped up on a tortilla chip. “They are really sweet and clean,” she said.

Even before arriving in Cordova, Justa had traveled a lot, much of it fisheries related.

Deckhand Skyler Lewis inspects and sorts fresh shrimp. Photo courtesy of Kinsey Justa

She tried lobstering in Maine in 2015, while doing research for her undergraduate degree in anthropology on coastal fisheries and natural resource use. That led to a funded research project on lobster in Maine.

Her master’s degree involves a social science seascape mapping project on the ocean, which is known as cultural mapping, she said. “Maps are often created solely for bureaucracy use, like navigation or ownership of land areas,” she said. “Cultural mapping uses information that is valuable to people in other ways, like tourist maps that show you where a coffee shop is.”

That’s what brought Justa to Singapore, where she is working with a group of small-scale fishermen to create a cultural map they will use to add to the history of Singapore.

“It’s about recognizing this small fishing community as an important part of Singapore’s history and adding it to their archives,” she said.

Justa made the connection to the Singapore harvesters, who fish for reef fish, octopus and crab, through some of her professors who had worked with the harvesters.

“I was interested in it because it is a fishing community that has been able to survive all these years despite urbanization,” she said. “I think that is important knowledge to look at. How do we stay resilient and keep cultural traditions alive amidst change? It’s relevant to look at global fisheries as a fisherman. It’s nice to learn about other people’s mistakes and successes throughout the world.”

In pursuit of the master’s degree, Justa must still complete her final field work and a final global information systems map.

“I’ve traveled to a lot of places and still think Alaska is the best,” she said. “That’s why the seasonal fishing lifestyle is so perfect. You can use the rest of the year to do other things you love.”

Now out in pursuit of another harvest of side stripe shrimp, Justa said she and Brown are thankful for the great response of Cordova residents to their dockside sales.

“It’s so much fun,” she said. “After this last year of isolation, seeing everyone on the dock is very heartwarming,” she said.

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