Vendor Highlight: Mongr.net Salmon
Mongr.net Connects Lovers of Salmon to the Source
By Jan Heimlich
For many lovers of fish and other seafood, there seems to be an enormous black hole that exists between the oceans and rivers where they are sourced and the gorgeous broiled, blackened, and poached filets that appear on our plates.
At least that’s how Chris Mullen sees it. As the owner of the fishing company, mongr.net, he and two crew members spend every day of the summer aboard his 32-foot boat netting some of the world's highest quality, sustainable sockeye salmon.
“We’ve had some of the biggest salmon runs in history in the last five years,” says Chris.
Chris, who lives in Machias, grew up on Vinalhaven. His father, a lobsterman, inspired in him a love of working waterfronts. After graduating from a liberal arts college and traveling around a bit, Chris found himself in Alaska where he worked as a fisheries observer. When he tried his hand at salmon fishing, he was “hooked.”
“I had an experimental mindset after studying marine science, geology, and environmental issues,” said Chris, who’s now been fishing Alaskan rivers for some forty years. “I love the environmental wilderness that’s part of salmon fishing and its culture.” And thanks for Alaska’s science-based regulatory practices, the salmon is plentiful,” says Chris.
This line of work takes a special kind of commitment. Chris travels to Alaska early in the summer and sets up his fishing operation at the mouth of a river in Bristol Bay. “I show up with the last snowdrifts melting when there’s no fish yet,” he explains. Then, later in June, the fish start to show up, followed by “an amazing run with literally millions of salmon coming back to the river where they hatched to spawn.”
Chris sells the fish he’s caught to a processor with a reputation for high quality. In October, it shipped to Chris 6,000 pounds of the processed fish. After that, he began delivering the product by freezer van to about twenty stores and coops around the state.
It’s uncertain how long the business can continue at this rate. Chris warns that the largest undeveloped deposit of copper in North America, known as the Pebble deposit, is in the Alaskan watershed where he fishes, and mining companies have been eager to get to it. If that were to happen, “it would be disastrous for this fishery which depends on a pristine environment,” he says.
But for now, consumers in Maine can enjoy an impressive bounty of salmon throughout the year.
Find mongr.net salmon in the frozen section at the Good Tern Co-op! Learn more about mongr.net by visiting their website, and following their Facebook page!