Senior’s ENCORE Class offers a view of Our Local Seafood Industry
ENCORE (Exploring New Concepts of Retirement Education) is a senior’s education group affiliated with Clatsop Community College. Each college term ENCORE offers classes to its members ranging from folk dancing, to science discussions, and philosophy. There are no exams and no grades; just the fun of learning and discussing new and interesting topics.
One of the exciting classes for the Winter 2017 term has been organized by one of ENCORE’s members. The class takes participants to varied organizations and businesses associated with the North Coast seafood industry. The class meets from 10:00 to 12:00 each Tuesday morning for 6 weeks beginning on January 17th.
The first class visited the OSU Seafood Research Lab at 2001 Marine Drive. The participants were greeted by the director, Dr. Christina DeWitt, who discussed the fish and shell fish that make up the catch for the Oregon fishing industry both in tonnage and in value. She also put the Oregon contribution into perspective compared to the catch from Alaska and the rest of the west coast and the larger U.S. They then visited the labs to see different research projects from the various people working there.
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The January 24th class included visits to the Skipanon Brand Cannery and to the Airport Crabpot Company, both in Warrenton. The participants learned about all the steps in the canning process and the types of fish that Skipanon smokes and cans. They then went to see the many labor intensive steps to the assembly of Airport Crab Pots in an informative tour with owner, Lisa Lamping.
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The January 31st class was a trip to the west end pier area of Astoria first to Bornstein Seafood processing to watch the steps in getting the whole fish or crab to the packaged and frozen state, and on to the consumers. Their next stop, they learned about all the gear, equipment, and other essentials needed in the seafood industry at Englund Marine and Industrial Supply. Then their February 7th class was a trip to J&H Boatworks where fishing boats are built, refurbished, and even enlarged to fit the needs of the fishermen.
The upcoming February 14th class will be back at the Seafood Research Lab building on Marine Drive, where Steve Meshke from Clatsop County Fisheries will talk about net pens for raising fish fry and Todd Jones from Redd Zone will talk about innovations in fish hatcheries.
The final class will take the participants to Fishhawk Fisheries to see crab processing and to Josephson’s Smokehouse to see the fish smoking process.
If you are 50 or better in age, you may want to join this class or other classes and become a member of ENCORE. To learn more, go to www.encorelearn.org.
Article by: Art Limbird, Organizer of “Our Local Seafood Industry” class
