Alaska Coast Zoom In @ National Geographic Magazine

Alaska Coast

<< Back to Feature Page

View exclusive photographs and get the facts behind the frame.

Click to ZOOM IN >>

Click to ZOOM IN >>

Click to ZOOM IN >>

Click to ZOOM IN >>

Fish Factory
Photograph by Susie Post Rust

UniSea's fish-processing plant on Amaknak Island (known to area fishermen as Dutch Harbor) is one of the largest such facilities in the world, capable of processing 2.5 million pounds (one million kilograms) of walleye pollock a day. About half the plant's output is cooked and churned into surimi, a colorless, tasteless paste that's the prime ingredient of artificial crabmeat. The rest becomes fish filets, fish sticks, and fish patties. Pollock now accounts for a third of all fish landings in the U.S.—an estimated 230-million-dollar haul.

Camera: Nikon N90S
Film Type: Fujichrome Velvia 50
Lens: Nikon 55mm macro
Speed and F-Stop: 4 seconds @ f/8. This is a guess because I was bracketing, taking a few more slightly lighter and darker pictures to compensate for the fading light and to make sure that I got the best exposure.

Weather Conditions: The sun going down, but without a sunset
Time of Day: Close to midnight
Lighting Techniques: Available light
Special Equipment or Comments: In the summer in Dutch Harbor, the sun doesn't set until around midnight. I went up on this World War II gun encampment, hoping to get a beautiful sunset. Instead, the clouds came—which is the case most of the time in the Aleutians—and made a more muted scene.