Juneau entrepreneurs turning salmon skin into wallets, belts

So-called "upcycling" of seafood byproducts is the business model for Tidal Vision (http://tidalvisionusa.com/ ), a Juneau-based company of five entrepreneurs selling a line of aquatic leather and performance textiles. The start-up is making wallets, belts and other products from sheets of salmon skin using a proprietary tanning formula from vegetable oils and other eco-friendly ingredients.

"We can produce the same quality and durability products with no formaldehyde, no chrome-based tanning chemicals or EPA-regulated chemicals to dispose of. And we can do bigger batches with less labor per skin," said Craig Kasberg, the company CEO.

"We've come up with a way to remove and dry the skins without any manual labor, and we have a pneumatic heat press that presses the resin into the salmon skins and gives them a consistent durability and glossy finish," he added.

Tidal Vision launched its aquatic leather line on Kickstarter, a web-based crowd-funding community that has helped bring nearly 90,000 creative ideas to life since 2009. The company reached its $17,500 funding goal in less than 24 hours and now has 764 backers who have pledged $55,664 to the project. (Only 14% of business hopefuls raise at least $20,000 by the end of their campaign, according to Kickstarter.)

Now Tidal Vision aims to attract business partners to grow the small company.

"We want to grow the business through joint ventures with businesses that want to use our leather," Kasberg said. "It's ideal for the upholstery industry, footwear -- we've even been approached by a gentleman who owns a guitar company and wants to make guitar cases out of our salmon leather. There are a lot of different applications."

Coming this fall is a line of clothing and textiles made from a polysaccharide in crab and shrimp shells called chitin, whose applications range from commercial water filtration to textile and pharmaceutical uses, such as dissolvable sutures.

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So far, Chitin has not been able to be produced in the U.S. because of the harsh chemicals used. For about 40 years it has been made in China and India because those countries have less stringent regulations on disposal.

"Our chemist, who has a Ph.D. from the University of Alabama, has derived a much simpler solution that has turned chitin production on its head," Kasberg said.

The system is being designed for use in mobile shipping containers, so the units can be sent to remote locations , with the products returned for production elsewhere.

In fabrics, chitin acts as an antibacterial polymer that kills odors from sweat. Other textile and apparel companies use chitin as a coating that tends to wash out and wear off over time.

Another plus: Crab from Alaska contain a higher percentage of chitin than species found elsewhere.

"We've tested brown king crab from Southeast Alaska, tanners, Dungeness and blue crab and shrimp from all over the country. The Alaska crabs can yield up to two times as much chitin from their shells," Kasberg said.

Tidal Vision will launch its line of aqua-fabrics this fall. Visit TidalVisionUSA.com and see its line of salmon skin products.

Following young halibut

A project to track the movement and growth of young halibut has been underway since May in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea.

"Although we have done a lot of tagging over the years we haven't done much with the smallest category of juveniles," said Bruce Leaman, executive director of the International Pacific Halibut Commission. "And by the smallest I mean the 15- to 45-centimeter range (about 4 pounds), which is what a lot of the juveniles in the Eastern Bering Sea are."

Part of understanding and solving the bycatch issue is knowing much more about the distribution and movement of juveniles, Leaman explained.

"We know … that juveniles do migrate out of the Bering Sea, but we don't know very much about the rates," he added. "Studies of young halibut were done throughout the 1970s to early 1990s, but that research was more localized. Now we are casting a much bigger net."

Tagging is being done during the annual summer trawl surveys used for overall halibut stock assessments. Commission researchers have a set of widely spaced survey "stations," so fish will be able to be tagged in many locations. About 1,000 toddler halibut have been tagged in the Gulf, and 800 in the Bering Sea. Researchers hope to tag 2,000 fish by August.

Fishermen catching a tagged halibut should notify the IPHC in Seattle and report the information on the tag. Better yet, bring the tagged fish to IPHC port samplers stationed from Dutch Harbor to Petersburg so they can sample it.

New owners at Icicle Seafoods

Icicle Seafoods has been sold to Convergence Holdings, Inc. and Dominion Catchers LLC of Indonesia. Paine & Partners, a global private equity agribusiness firm announced the sale in late June and hopes to have the deal completed in August.

Along with a fleet of 11 vessels, Icicle owns shore plants in Petersburg, Seward, Egegik in Bristol Bay, Larsen Bay in Kodiak and Dillingham.

North Pacific Seafoods has reached an agreement with Inlet Fish Producers, Inc. to buy their Kenai and Kasilof processing facilities. North Pacific is owned by Marubeni, one of Japan's largest seafood trading houses, which paid an estimated $8 million for the company.

North Pacific's John Garner said that no personnel changes are expected. With the Inlet acquisition, North Pacific expands its processing presence in Alaska to seven facilities -- three in Bristol Bay, one each in Kodiak and Sitka, and two on the Kenai Peninsula.

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Russia has extended its ban on food imports from the U.S., the European Union, Canada, Australia and Norway for another year. For Alaska, that adds up to a loss of $60 million and 20 million pounds of seafood sales, mostly pink salmon roe and pollock surimi. The food ban resulted from trade sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and several other nations due to its aggressive actions in the Ukraine.

Laine Welch is a Kodiak-based commercial fishing columnist. Contact her at msfish(at)alaskan.com.

Laine Welch | Fish Factor

Laine Welch is a Kodiak-based journalist who writes a weekly column, Fish Factor, that appears in newspapers and websites around Alaska and nationally. Contact her at msfish@alaskan.com.

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