Bay
CrossingsWorking
Waterfront
William G. Dawson
President, Seafood Suppliers Inc.
I own Seafood Suppliers along with
my wife Signa. It’s a mom-and-pop deal. We’re referred to as a
"first receiver, wholesale-to-wholesale" maritime seafood
company. We don’t have trucks that go to restaurants or grocery
stores. We sell to the people who do.
We offload fish, but that isn’t
the only thing that we do. We also promote local fisheries, such as
the California Salmon Fishery, which we’ve been very involved with
for years, as well as other species of local fish, halibut and other
groundfish like black cod, channel rock, sand dab, and petrale.
Most of the boats that fish for
us, are independent operators that deliver to us during salmon
season at Pier 33. They follow the fish during the season, which
usually runs from May through September. And we also will follow
those boats as they’re catching fish, so we may have to unload
them at Bodega Bay or Fort Bragg or Monterey.
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Much of
the salmon handled by Seafood Suppliers is whisked via air
freight to points east. |
Weather, of course, is always a
big factor, and this year it’s been a really big factor. We’ve
had a lot of wind this year.
On an average day, we’ll
coordinate with about 14 or 15 boats, usually by cell phone.
Sometimes we’re selling fish that are actually still on the boat
miles offshore.
Probably 80 percent of the salmon
that we land in San Francisco is sold outside of San Francisco
through air freight. We ship fish into every every major
metropolitan market in the United States.
Wild salmon has become quite the
buzz. We believe that the California king salmon are the best in the
world. Wild salmon as opposed to farm-raised salmon are really
growing in popularity.
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Bill
Dawson, a lovable curmudgeon, surveys his domain from his
cramped, cold corner makeshift office. |
We have a very sustainable fishery
here in California. In fact, the California Salmon Council, which is
backed by the Department of Agriculture here in California, is
working right now to get labeling and certification. The California
salmon fishery is even endorsed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium folks,
as well as the Audubon Society.
The majority of the men and women
that fish salmon in California are not new to it. The average age,
someone told me recently, was 59 years for a salmon boat captain.
Their sons and daughters aren’t following them into the fishery.
There’s been a reduction in the size of our fleets over the years.
It used to be very traditional, handed down from father to son or
daughter. Unfortunately, now you won’t find too many young people
in this business.
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A fishing
boat lays alongside Seafood Supplier’s Pier 33 dock. The
boats call in by cell phone with accounts of the catch,
allowing Dawson to phone New York and sell fish still at sea
(if not still in the sea). |
The heart of the seafood industry
has always been in our fish wharf. Actors can scratch a living off
Broadway; but we can’t; only Broadway works for us. We’re on
Fish Broadway here. The exchange of product, the trucking, by air,
coming in and going out, it all happens in our fish wharf. I could
lower the cost of doing business by doing it in Fairfield in a
warehouse, and that’d be wonderful, because the cost of doing
business in San Francisco right now is atrocious. But I wouldn’t
be able to do what we do, make a living on the ocean.
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Pride
of the Pacific: a Seafood Supplier worker holds a prize
catch aloft. |
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The
work may be hard and the pay not so good, but you can’t
beat the views from Seafood Supplier’s Pier 33 location. |
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Fish’s
up--workers scramble to package fish to make an East
Coast-bound flight. |