8:31am Kenai, AK
Guess who got to sleep in this morning? I slept in til 5:50am and lounged in bed til 6:07am! Usually I'm at work by 6...it was awesome. We are a 24hr plant so people are always working. Everyone who needs a coffee pot for their night shift has one so i figured 'why not' I'm gonna sleep in. I've had 14hr days for the past 2 days. The first day i didn't take a lunch...yesterday i had to...so that i wouldn't punch anyone in the throat. After i clocked out yesterday and subsequently had to clock back in because the beach pad was hopping with fish, I had to check myself because when i have greatly reduced my student loans all of the extra time will be worth it.
They started processing at 6pm yesterday. They only had a few totes of fish to process but more were on the way. Fisherman kept pulling up with totes in their trucks. The dock crew would sort 'em, put them on fresh ice and drive them around with the fork lift to the growing stack of totes in processing. From there a different fork lift driver takes the totes, dumps them in the hopper, which then sends them down the conveyor belts so that they can get slit open, the guts pulled out, scrapped free of any residual guts or blood (i had the pleasure of seeing this step yesterday when i went to find out when they were going on break so that i could be ready) and then rinsed, weighed, sorted further and put on more ice. We go through a lot of ice. I actually got to go up and see the ice room. I am going to try and get a picture...it's awesome. It is a large metal room filled with ice chips. The ice gets made and sent through a fan of sorts which chips it and rains it down into the ice room. After processing, roe gets their hands on the fish and they take the eggs out. (random fact: not sure if i told you the other day...apparently halibut cheeks are quite a delicacy. who knew? they are about the size of a scallop but super tasty...if you like that sort of thing...and super expensive. if we happen to get in any halibut we make sure to take out the cheeks before the unwanted parts go in the grinder for the seagulls.) Once roe does their voodoo the fish get refrigerated for a while then glazed and cased up.
I may have explained some of this before but i keep learning and seeing more and want to make sure that i am giving you all of the information that i have because it is so interesting.
All right. I have a date with 30 fitted sheets. It's at that point where i have things i want to get done and it takes me a few days sometimes to get to them because so many other things keep coming up.