Off Lummi Island at the northeast edge of the San Juan archipelago, half a dozen small boats lie at anchor in a row across Legoe Bay. On board, eight chefs wait for their next meal. Any moment now, a school of salmon will swim through artificial reefs leading to nets strung between paired boats, where the chefs must scoop the fish from the water before the school flashes over the waiting mesh.

Men have fished these waters in this way for thousands of years. Until a few decades ago, the boats were dugout cedar canoes manned by the Lummi, Samish, Songhees, Semiahmoo, and other Northern Straits Salish people who developed the method, called reefnetting. Today, aluminum barges support tall lifeguard-like towers from which fishers, mostly men, most of them white, look out for the ripple of salmon.

Chef Seth Caswell, president of Seattle's Chefs Collaborative and developing his new restaurant, emmer, spent a couple of hours as a spotter atop one of the towers as part of a “Chefs in Raingear” adventure, in which a handful of chefs act as deckhands for a day, experiencing reefnet fishing, a sustainable fishery that harvests exceptionally tasty salmon.

The chefs set out by skiff with their host Riley Starks, reefnetter and owner of Nettles Farm and Willows Inn. They ride out to one of three “gears” – pairs of boats with a shared reef and net – that make up Lummi Island Wild, a cooperative organized by Starks and his partners to bring their reefnet-caught salmon to market. On the brief ride from shore to gear, the skiff burns the fishery’s only fossil fuel. The gears themselves remain in their position an entire season, waiting for fish, not chasing them. It’s a quiet operation. Once the noise of the skiff’s motor dies, hours may pass with no sound but a gentle wash of waves and rhythmic metallic clanking.

Caswell’s turn on the tower falls in one of these quiet spells. He hopes to spot sockeye swimming with the incoming tide toward his boat. Watching the water for fish, Caswell wears polarized sunglasses, a recent addition to reefnetting, to minimize glare. “Polarizing lenses make a big difference,” he says, “because otherwise you’re just looking at a reflection of the sky.” After seeing nothing but water for nearly two hours, Caswell gives up his position to Joe McGarry, of Bon Appétit Management Company. Shortly after the switch, eager shouts, cranking pulleys, and frantic fin-flapping break the lull.

A school has crossed the net’s headrope, having swum through a passage made of widely-spaced ropes (tied with plastic ribbons to resemble eelgrass-lined reefs), which narrows and becomes shallower to guide the fish toward the net. Once the school crosses the headrope, the reefnetters have mere seconds to raise the net before the fish escape. The spotter’s warning is critical.

After the spotter shouts, deckhands on each of the two boats below activate winches to lift the net. Powered by batteries that were once hauled back and forth to shore for charging but are now charged by solar panels out on the gears, the winches hoist the net by taking up its ropes – first the headrope, farthest from the boats; then the edges, or rimlines, so the fish can’t swim out the sides; and finally the midline, restricting the fish to a smaller, more manageable section at the net’s back, or “bunt”.

The crew on one of the two boats quickly gathers the net by hand to bring the fish to a point at the edge of the boat. They barely raise the fish from the water as they spill them splashing and plopping into the live well, between the pontoons in the center of the boat. From spotting to spilling, the haul takes only a minute. And then, more waiting.

Aboard the Lummi Island Wild gears, the chefs and reefnetters fill part of the wait by sorting and bleeding their catch. They handle each fish individually and return any protected or unwanted species to open water, resulting in almost zero bycatch. Reefnetting is the most selective commercial fishery in existence. The reefnetters return any Chinook to the water, since the catch is severely restricted in Washington (and banned entirely off California and most of Oregon for 2008 after a sudden, drastic decline of returning fish) but depending upon season, they will keep sockeye, pink, Coho, or chum salmon.

Lifting one fish at a time, Caswell and his mates hold a wanted fish “like a bowling ball," thumb and fingers on either side of the head. In one quick movement, they expose gills and detach them, then place the fish back in the center of the boat to swim to its death, rather than flopping in asphyxiation on deck.

“It’s not a natural death, obviously," acknowledges Caswell, “because you’re ripping the gills out. But as you’re assisting in the end of the life of this wonderful little fish, it’s nice to know that of all the alternatives, it’s one of the better ways to go.” It also makes for a better-flavored fish. As Starks points out, “blood is the first thing to go rancid,” so bleeding the fish prevents its having any “off, metallic, fishy flavor.” The cooperative’s reefnetters take pride in preserving the excellence of these salmon, which, like those from the Copper River, are prized for their flavor.

These salmon are on their way toward British Columbia’s Fraser River. Once they reach the river, they stop feeding. The fish need energy for their long freshwater journey, and as they round the southern edge of Vancouver Island, traveling through the San Juans and north past Point Roberts, that stored energy, in the form of fat, is at its peak. Salmon’s fat contributes to its texture, flavor and nutritional value. Tests show that Fraser River sockeye have a slightly higher proportion of fat than Copper River sockeye – approximately 14 percent to Copper River’s 12 percent. Lummi Island Wild emphasizes the characteristics of these fish, caught at this place, in this way. Starks hopes the cooperative will attract the rest of the world’s reefnetters, which number only eleven – all of them in the San Juan region, eight of them off Lummi. Most of those reefnetters currently focus on fishing and leave processing and marketing their catch to Trident Seafoods, which handles multiple species caught in the North Pacific without sorting based on the place or method of harvest. The cooperative, on the other hand, capitalizes on the particular elements of reefnetting that distinguish it for sustainability and quality, from solar power to selective harvest to careful handling.

After participating in the sustainable catch, Caswell and the rest of the chefs return to Lummi to appreciate its quality. Packing the fish into a slush of ice and seawater, which the cooperative’s reefnetters use to avoid the bruising and deterioration caused by layering fish in crushed ice, the chefs carry a selection of their catch to Willows Inn. They prepare a communal meal with ingredients harvested that day by the farmer from Starks’ Nettles Farm and by their own hands from Legoe Bay. “Being eight chefs,” Caswell says, “we cooked a fantastic meal.”

Online Resources
heritagefoodusa.com
seabear.com
vitalchoice.com
Join with other families to buy reefnet salmon in bulk: lummiislandwild.com

Grocery Stores
Ballard Market
Greenwood Market
Metropolitan Markets
Central Market in Shoreline, Mill Creek, and Poulsbo
Community Food Co-op in Bellingham
Haggen in Snohomish, Skagit, and Whatcom counties
Top Food & Drug in King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Thurston counties; also Wenatchee, Grays Harbor, and Yakima
Town & Country Market in Bainbridge
New Seasons Markets in the Portland area

Restaurants These Seattle-area restaurants serve reefnet salmon on occasion:
Anthony’s
The Herbfarm
Lark
Pike Pub & Brewery
Taste at Seattle Art Museum
Caswell is in the process of opening emmer, which will also serve reefnet salmon. Follow his progress on emmerrestaurant.blogspot.com

Jenni Pertuset writes about reading, parenting, and farming on her blog. She's working on a book about young farmers, and scheming to join the burgeoning agrarian revival. Jenni lives with her husband and daughter in Seattle.