If some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, I was born with a silver salmon in mine. It was a no-brainer that I’d work in fishing. It’s the heart and soul of my family—my dad, uncles, grandparents, they all started out as slimers at the Bristol Bay Sockeye Fishery. It’s messy work, cleaning and gutting fish, but it’s what we do. I’ve been at Bristol Bay for 12 years, straight out of high school. I never thought of going to college since I could have a stable, good-paying job without it. Plus, no one in my family had gone to college. That was something other people did. We pride ourselves as smart with our hands.
With a steady job, my life was plugging along—got married, started a family, bought a house. But then the fishery began automating, replacing manual labor with machines. My skills as a processor would soon be irrelevant and I was sure I’d be laid off. Plus, all of us saw the writing on the wall for fishing in general. Current practices weren’t sustainable.
Not surprising, I was anxious and didn’t know what to do, especially with two young kids and my wife pregnant with our third. I’d stay up at night thinking about mouths to feed and mortgage payments. My ego was taking a beating too since my entire identity was in fishing.
Then Bristol Bay announced a new program between the fishery and UA to work with employees to imagine new jobs in the industry. The program was part of UA’s Center for the Blue Ocean Economy. While my manual job phased out, I developed a personalized AA in Process Technology, working alongside experts in computer science. And I didn’t have to pay for it either. Since the fishery was having a hard time finding people trained in automation, the Alaska Permanent Capital Institute was happy to invest, especially in people like me who have years of related experience. UA made it really easy for me to fit classes, most of them online, into the flow of my busy life, rather than me having to fit into the university’s schedule.
Now at the fishery I’m responsible for programming and maintaining the computerized processes that clean and process our fish. I never thought I could make the leap from manual work to tech, but I took to it like a fish to water. Before going to UA I was anti-automation. It was the enemy. But during my education I learned how tech is creating new jobs. While some people, like my uncles, haven’t moved ahead, most of my friends are exploring cool new fishing-related work because of their education at UA: one works with the Regenerative Policy Institute using drones to reseed rivers; another uses software to monitor illegal and non-ecological fishing.
I love my job and will always be grateful for the opportunity to learn new skills, advance my life, and provide security for my family. Being the first person in my lineage to go to college means I get to be a role model for my kids, so they know they can do anything they set their minds to, and that sometimes you have to be flexible enough to pivot when necessary. I’m really glad I did.