THE SKIPPER - IVAN ASKGAARD
I started fishing in the Fraser River and on the North Coast with my Brother-in-Law in the summers as a teenager. I must have liked it because he didn’t pay me anything. But I got a little experience and after high school I landed a job on a halibut boat. I sure paid my dues there too! My share on a 3-man boat was only 3%. I persevered and by 1979 I was on my way to fish in the Gulf of Alaska as a “full share” man. In the early 80’s, having learned the ropes -no pun intended-, I moved on to skipper freezer boats and fished for prawns around the coast with some success. When I wasn’t doing that I was fishing for halibut, black cod and herring.
By 1989, I had met my wife Loretta and bought a little boat, the ‘Rana’. I quit deep sea fishing to go entirely my own way.
Loretta and I fished four salmon seasons together. The memories we made! It became too much time away from the kids though, and so we decided to sell the license. We started full-time prawn fishing for nine months a year out of Powell River. As pure luck would have it, prawn fishing took off, salmon went into decline, and we looked like visionaries.
The ‘Rana’ had been powered with only a 40hp engine and may have been the slowest boat on the coast. We used to joke that at least we were able to see the whole fleet go by us on our way to Prince Rupert. We saved our money and I used the hours and hours I spent at the wheel to design my new boat, in my head. It was time to make our move; we cashed in our RRSPs, mortgaged the house to the limit and bet the farm on building a new boat.
The Boat – ‘RAVEN BAY’
In 1995, we designed and built the ‘Raven Bay’ with the first of its kind state-of-the-art live holding capability, and with the speed to get live spot prawns to market in short order. Spot prawns, like all seafood, are particularly perishable. It is imperative to keep them alive after capture to yield the highest quality, whether they are destined for the live or frozen markets. Quite simply, the ability to keep our prawns alive – every last one – is the secret to our competitive advantage in quality.
Our live prawns are also destined for the restaurant market in Vancouver and as far away as L.A., Toronto and recently Hong Kong by air. Dead or “fresh” prawns are discarded in this market. The distributors who buy our product keep our prawns in tanks overnight, sorting out and disposing of any perished prawns in the morning. Our prawns must be not only alive, but have the vitality to make another journey by air and truck to the restaurant aquarium. It was through servicing this demanding market, by research and trial and error, we became experts at handling and live transport of spot prawns.
OUR FACILITY
We reserve part of catch for local sales. In the old days, we would sell “fresh” prawns but sometimes we would bring in too many. Not knowing better, we would sometimes freeze what we couldn’t sell. We learned that this product, processed as an after thought, was poor quality; there were always some prawns that were mushy. As our seasons grew progressively shorter, we decided to get serious about freezing prawns to serve the markets for the rest of the year when the prawn fishery was closed.
We found the ‘Raven Bay’ to be a very efficient processing unit because of its water chilling, pumping, and holding capabilities. We remove the heads from live prawns and keep them cold throughout the process. The difference is amazing. We’ve learned that the reason why the market places such a premium on live spot prawns is that if a prawn is alive, its quality is assured. By our determined commitment to quality, full attention to every detail of processing and rapid freezing, we can achieve an equivalent frozen product. We provide added value to the consumer because we’ve done the work of tailing, freezing, and packaging the prawns so our customers can enjoy them at their convenience.
We built our 1500 sq. ft. facility in 2010 on the same property as our home at Pebble Beach in Powell River. The facility doubles as a retail outlet and registered cold storage facility. In-season, customers may be welcomed by live tanks full of active prawns. We use aquariums that are closed-loop, temperature-controlled, with biological filters. This system allows us to keep prawns alive during fishing season for customers whose preference is live seafood. -Some insist on it and won’t trust anything else.
Pebble Beach Prawns’ registered cold storage facility has two walk-in freezers to store our product. Our prawns are blast-frozen at sea or in a land-based plant, depending where we are fishing. The frozen storage section of Pebble Beach Prawns’ facility holds product at -25 degrees Fahrenheit, making it possible to offer top-quality frozen prawn tails year-round. Prawns processed and stored at these temperatures will keep perfectly – ‘well into the next fishing season. As we only freeze live prawns, (we return the small number of dead ones to the ocean to be part of the aquatic food chain), we’re able to make a commitment to offering only the highest quality of finished product; one we can proudly stand behind.
In Powell River, frozen Pebble Beach Prawns have earned their place in the same circle of quality as live prawns. Elsewhere, we may encounter skepticism based on cultural preference, or, because frankly there is a lot of inferior product that is frozen as an afterthought, which has left a poor impression on the customer. We’re proud to show our local friends and neighbors the difference that detail and diligence make, and to serve our repeat customers who now know just how fantastic frozen prawns should taste!