Kevin Raheja on Seafood, Alaska, and Minnesota

Kevin Raheja is the Heavy Table’s business development guy, building relationships with potential commercial partners. As we’ve gotten to know him, it has become clear that he possesses a wealth of seafood knowledge built, in large part, on first-hand experience.

Raheja has worked extensively as a commercial fisherman in Alaska, serving as a deck hand and then deck boss on several different commercial boats with many different captains and hundreds of deck hands. He’s worked in some of the most dangerous and punishing conditions imaginable, seen death first-hand, and picked up a deep appreciation for one of the world’s most pure wilderness areas.  Below, some of his insights into seafood, from boat to table — plus local sushi and seafood restaurants worth frequenting.

What got you into fishing in Alaska?

In 2003, I went up to Alaska with a sleeping bag and some food and camped in the wilderness. During the days, I would go and walk the docks and see if anyone needed any help fishing. After only six or seven days of being there, I got a job fishing salmon.

I don’t know if it was luck or good timing… it worked out. I went salmon fishing for about four months in the summer. I liked it — it was lucrative. And then from there I did cod fishing… now with the popularity of The Deadliest Catch, they require you to do a season of cod fishing before you do crab because people who have never seen the ocean before come up and try to do crab fishing.

They require you to do a season of cod — it’s a little less dangerous. It’s not in the winter when it’s cold out and the decks freeze. I did cod, then I did crab, and I kept going with it.

What was the initial impetus, though? The problem I have with this story is I can never imagine myself saying: “OK, I’m gonna grab my sleeping bag, and go to Alaska, and fish.”

I didn’t want a desk job. The scariest thing to me… actually, there were two things. I had a fear of heights, and a fear of the ocean when I was younger. So I wanted to a) never have a desk job, and b) to tackle this fear I had of the ocean. And I always wanted to go to Alaska, so I thought, let’s just do it.

Alaska is like… I’ve been to many places in the world and Alaska is totally different. As pristine and untouched wilderness you can find in the world.

Tell me about Adam the Murderer.

Adam the Murderer… I met him in 2004. I’ve been fishing with him for years and years, and he’s probably the most colorful character I’ve met in my life. He actually went to jail for seven years — he stabbed somebody, and they died, in Arizona. He was 17 years old, so he spent seven or eight years in prison in Arizona.

To get away from everything, he moved up to Kodiak Island in Alaska. He’s been fishing for 15 or 20 years, so that’s his livelihood. He is very uneducated. An amazing worker, though, and if you know how to work with him, he’s great to work with, because he pushes himself. When you’re fishing up there, most of the people you’re fishing with have a felony, because people will head up there to escape the past, and escape the lower 48.

I was hitchhiking on an island called Adak in the Aleutian chain, and realized after the driver picked me up that she had a beer can in her hand. She’s drinking her beer and driving me down the street in Adak, and I’m thinking: “This isn’t good.” A cop drives the other way and she holds her beer up and salutes the cop, and he just waves to her… it really is lawless… totally different than any other state.

What was the most challenging part of the job?

Definitely was being away from family and friends. You take for granted things like a bed… sushi… man, I missed sushi a lot. I was eating really good crab and salmon, but Origami — I missed Origami a lot. And my bed.

As far as the physical things, it wasn’t that. It’s easy to push yourself because everyone’s doing it, and pushing themselves hard.

Someone lost his arm while you were fishing at one point?

We were salmon fishing and we were offloading our salmon to a tender boat in lieu of going to shore. So, he was on the tender. He was what’s called a greenhorn or rookie, and he… so, when you offload your fish to a tender boat, you tie the boats up with three or four lines going back and forth between the boats. And when the boats are together, there’s slack in the lines — when the waves come, the lines snap taut. The sea was calm and we were just chatting, and he had his arm near the slack line, just fiddling with it… and the line became taut and [his arm] just popped right off. We had to call the Coast Guard. They came in, we put his arm on ice, he was screaming the entire time… I never heard what happened after that, whether they managed to reattach it.

Was anyone ever killed during your time on ships?

We were fishing in really severe weather, and I’d always heard of people maybe breaking a leg or breaking an arm from a wave — which I thought was totally nuts.

But we were all fishing, and a giant wave, maybe 35 or 40 feet crashed on the deck and we were all pushed to the opposite end of the deck. One guy — when we got up we realized that he was unconscious. I picked him up and took him to his bunk, and the captain came down and took his pulse, and he didn’t have one. That was the only time I encountered a death up there. That doesn’t happen too often, especially in that way.

The possibilities for mishaps are endless, though — I’ve fractured my knee, I’ve broken my hand… I’ve got cuts all over myself. Halibut scars all over…

You thought it was worth it, though.

My mom is obviously concerned about me, but I really enjoy it. I’ve always enjoyed being around and involved in seafood, in every aspect of it. I figured once I had a passion for seafood, it made me want to go back more and more. There’s a guy I really respect and used to work for — his name is Tim Lauer, and he’s the GM for Coastal Seafoods. He has a vast store of seafood knowledge. But I wanted to get a totally different aspect of seafood.

How long was a season?

The salmon season was the longest I fished — about four or five months. But we’re not out on the boat that long. Salmon fishing, you can offload to another boat called a tender boat; crab fish, you have to offload on the shore, so you’re back every three or four days.

The longest I’ve ever been out on the ocean at a time was a month and a half, two months.

My birthday went by and I didn’t even realize it until a few days later. You don’t really know anything… I didn’t bring a watch. The only thing you know is the position of the sun.

Salmon fishing was a relative vacation, 12-14 hours a day. My captain was an awesome guy and bought us kayaks, so we’d just go sea kayaking around at night.
But crab fishing, you’re working 30-50 hours shifts straight. Then maybe three, four hours of sleep if you’re lucky, then repeat… for three to four weeks.

It’s very easy to sleep on the boat when you’ve worked those shifts.

What was the best part of it for you?

Things that you see up there that you don’t see in the city. I’ve seen humpback whales with their babies swimming around the boat… a baby beluga whale once got caught in our net and we had to take the skiff and untangle the baby beluga by hand from the net. The natural aspects, that are totally foreign.

What’s the story behind your tattoos?

I got these in Alaska. This [left] is actually a Pacific Northwest Native American design. As for this one [on the right]… my mom gave me a copy of the Dhammapada, which is the religious text for Buddhism. It’s very peaceful, and provided a lot of relaxation and peace for me on the boat, and this was the cover of the Dhammapada.

What’s your take on the seafood scene in Minneapolis?

We can get great seafood here because the hub for Northwest is here — we can get great seafood direct from Alaska, from California, from the East Coast… hopefully that won’t change, with the merger. Atlanta, same thing, because they’ve got Delta there.

You can get better fish from the East Coast here in Minneapolis / St. Paul than you can at Pike Place [Seafood market] in Seattle.

Where should you eat seafood around here?

Rick Kimmes is great — Oceanaire is one of the best places. My favorite place is Sea Salt. They’ve got great fish and the atmosphere is fantastic.

What do you think of this new sustainable seafood restaurant concept — Sea Change at the Guthrie?

Tim McKee is amazing — Barrio, La Belle Vie, Solera — he does terrific restaurants, and he’s all about sustainability. I know where he gets his fish from, and he gets great quality seafood. I’m confident that it’s going to be awesome.

Is there any point to eating sushi around here?

The FDA has made it necessary to freeze the fish coming in from the coasts. It’s all pretty uniform. There are places like… well, I don’t want to say names, but there are places where it’ll sit in the display case for a day too long and you can taste the fishiness. I really like what Origami‘s doing, I like what Nami is doing… a great happy hour place is Koyi.

It’s easy to mislead people who aren’t well informed on seafood…

It’s easier to get away with selling mislabeled seafood here because of our distance from the ocean, and our limited knowledge of non-indigenous fish. I went to a farmers market and a vendor was selling what was clearly a farm-raised fish — you can tell from the coloration and the structure of the fish. And he was selling it as Alaskan Sockeye Salmon, which it absolutely was not. And that’s $3 or $4 difference (per pound) — it’s difficult for the consumer to tell.

I raised it with him, and the next three weekends I visited, he was labeling it correctly.

Read about all things seafood-related on Raheja’s blog, The Best Fish and Seafood Website in The World.