Indie Albacore Earns Local Respect at St. Jude Market

One of the great American seafood sins of our times pertains to albacore tuna, specifically that we view this truly beautiful and delicious fish as essentially canned cat food. Shockingly few Pacific Northwest denizens are even aware that the waters off our coast are a notable seasonal albacore fishery, one rated Best Choice by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch List no less. Sometimes you just need to hit the docks of Fishermen’s Terminal to learn the truth. Enter Joe Malley, captain and owner of 95’ fishing vessel St. Jude.

Capt. Joe Malley of St. Jude

The Evergreen Echo

“I have a certain amount of empathy for the fish,” says Malley from his seat around the galley table. It’s a sunny, crisp October afternoon for a Seattle dockside sale. The quick-to-smile South Pacific Islander crew are relaxed on deck, rousing when a customer approaches to buy their catch. Frozen loins and flavored cans are popular; steak medallions and even whole fish offered.

“They [fish] are good creatures,” says Malley. “And they are food. We figure we have a right to food. I guess that’s true. But when you catch a fish, I consider it a moral responsibility to optimize the utilization of that fish.”

If St. Jude rings a bell, you’ve probably seen their table at the Ballard Farmer’s Market or posts on social media announcing an incoming dockside sale. When in town, St. Jude sells their sushi-grade albacore directly to the public in addition to partnerships with whomever wants—and pays for—their topline product. James Beard-award chefs Maria Hines and John Sundstrom have been particular tuna customers with Seattle-area retailers like Whole Foods, QFC, Town & Country Market, and more.

“In the case of albacore tuna, there wasn’t any albacore tuna being sold in restaurants in America,” says Malley. But one need only look to the Japanese sushi and sashimi scene or the ceviche of Central and South America to realize this is an odd outlook on the fish. Abroad, albacore is a real prize.

“You wonder, is it the fish’s fault?” ponders Malley. “Well, it’s not the fish’s fault. It’s really because for years and years, the albacore fleet fished for the StarKist and Van de Camps and they produced a fish that really only belonged in a can. So now that that has changed and we do know how to make a sushi grade albacore, why don’t we try and put it on somebody’s plate and serve it at a first-class restaurant?”

Going indie isn’t just for hip urbane landlubbers. This regional ethos of cutting out as many big corporate middlemen as possible between the people and our food is as Cascadian as it comes. For Malley, it’s been a decades-long career of defying corporate practices since he bought St. Jude in 1990. This was the era of the “Chicken of the Sea” taglines and “Where’s Charlie?” jingles.

“We know all those stories and all of that marketing money was spent basically to convince people to eat their canned tuna,” says Malley. “And their canned tuna is… well… it’s a very inferior product to what can be made of albacore.”

The conventional, big business process for canning tuna is hot pack canning. As much tuna as possible is delivered from the sea to a cannery, usually at 20º above zero—frozen but not cold by Captain Malley’s sushi-grade standards. These fish tend to be the fully grown, larger adults that have less of the fatty goodness of the “lazy teenagers” Malley targets in the six- to twenty-pound range. The tuna are transported to a massive oven where they are cooked until white. At this point, the fish have essentially been steam boiled. A lot of those healthy and delicious oils and fats are toast.

Canned albacore for sale at the St. Jude Market / The Evergreen Echo

“How much flavor is left in this fish? Is it still a tuna? Or is it now a maraschino cherry?” wonders Malley. After a cooldown rinse and meat removal, the tuna is put into the cans. “Essentially flavored vegetable broth that they wanted us to think tuna tasted like” is squirted into each can. According to Malley, there have been incidents of these industrial broths containing sulfides to which people are allergic. The cans are then cooked again.

Why do things this way?

“It's all about the money,” says Malley simply. But he knew something was up even as a new tuna boat captain doing what everyone else was doing in the “bad old days”.

“We just, out of I guess orneriness, bled all our fish for no compensation,” explains Malley of the early years. He did this even at a cost considering the blood is real weight that contributes to pay in the big business structure of doing things. Bleeding and braining may sound gruesome, but the quick dispatch method is the most humane while also increasing the quality of the meat. He upgraded the freezer system to Japanese sushi standards in the 2000s and tweaked his methodology. The game was no longer about loading up as many fish as possible.

A good day now is capped at around 500 fish so the freezing can keep pace. All those hot bodies raise the fish hold from the 25-below-zero goal to closer to 15- or 10-below. Additionally, all tuna are hung by the tail, maximizing the frozen air exposure for more rapid freezing. This also ensures the fish freeze solid in an easily cut, non-twisty form.

St. Jude also cans some of their catch, but they are doing it with brained, bled, and flash frozen young albacore delivered at 35º below to local cannery Pelican Packers. The raw fish is added to the cans plain, in olive oil, or with desired St. Jude flavors like garlic or dill. The sealed cans are then cooked in essentially a pressure cooker. If this sounds a lot like old school home canning methods, that’s because it is.

“That’s where the process came from,” says Malley. “It used to be like a fisherman secret. You want to taste some really good albacore? Can your own and you’ll get something special.”

St. Jude fishing boat docked at Fisherman’s Terminal / The Evergreen Echo

The Pacific “outside” albacore fishery is an open water adventure made up of three regional seasons that shift clockwise with the year. St. Jude begins the year with a New Zealand December, the vessel hunting eastward sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles. That season ends and St. Jude moves to the western Pacific after a break in Hawaii, often refueling in Pago Pago, American Samoa. This season is called the Midway Fishery, even though Midway Island has little to do with it.

The vast blue expanse hides its most interesting landscape features—massive sea life attracting seamounts like the Emperor Seamounts. Another break, then it’s off to the North Pacific and waters off our coast from roughly July to October. Normally St. Jude runs down to Samoa for a break before getting back down to New Zealand for December to start the whole thing over again.

Malley is proud that troll-caught Pacific albacore fishing is almost completely bycatch-free. “A good tuna trip we might catch 10,000 fish,” he explains. “Out of 10,000 fish, on the average, we might catch four yellowfin, which is Hamachi. We might catch one or two ono. We might catch two or three mahi. And you know what? They never make it past the BBQ. That’s our food, that’s what we eat.”

Ultimately, what’s the takeaway from an afternoon at St. Jude? I fork over the $50 for a 10ish pound whole fish, determined to attempt my own tuna processing. What should I do with the head? The crew recommends throwing it in a soup the Fijian way.

“As a fisherman, I consider it to be a matter of integrity that if I take a fish’s life, I have to optimize the utilization of that fish,” says Malley. “It’s just wrong to kill fish for a less-than-ideal utilization. Yet, that’s a lot of what goes on in the seafood industry.” At the end of the day, knowledge is power. Captain Malley encourages people to maintain curiosity, do their research, and make up their own minds.

“My message to the world is try and learn about fish,” says Malley. “Learn about bycatch. Learn about method of catch. Learn about the proper handling techniques for a frozen at sea product. And be very demanding, be sure to get the right fish. That’s really the message. You’re either doing it right or doing it wrong.”