BBRSDA Plans a Second Year of Digitized Quality Monitoring in Bristol Bay

 Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association, Certified Quality Foods (DBA Seafood Analytics) and Digital Observers are teaming up for a second year to do digital quality monitoring of the 2021 Bristol Bay sockeye salmon season.

In 2020, pandemic challenges notwithstanding, quality measurements from over 6,000 sockeye salmon off 200 boats were taken by Digital Observers on five tenders throughout Bristol Bay. Certified Quality Foods cloud-based business intelligence platform analyzed the data and allowed for key takeaways around trendlines, comparisons between regions, seasons, boats, tenders and more.

Having a robust amount of data from the 2020 Bristol Bay sockeye season provides a valuable baseline for comparison of salmon quality and salmon fat content harvested each year, BBRSDA officials said.

This year, Quality Control technicians will work with 15 tenders throughout Bristol Bay to measure the quality of salmon at point of delivery using the noninvasive Certified Quality Reader a device using electrical currents to measure cell degradation of the fish. The 2021 program will also triple measurement capacity and expand from aper entry to digitized apps to do measure odor, visual, temperature and whether the fish has been bled.

Temperature is an important piece of the data, said Chuck Anderson, vice president of sales and marketing for Seafood Analytics. “We are curious to see the correlation between temperature (of the fish) and quality,” he said.

Data from the Certified Quality Foods cloud-based platform and digital forms will be automatically merged and available to customers upon uploading the data during or after the 2021 fishing season. The project will help determine better handling practices to continue to improve the quality of salmon harvested in Bristol Bay, Seafood Analytics have provided similar services to harvesters and processors of tuna and rockfish on the West Coast, as well as for Pacific cod. “We work with the whole supply chain,” said Anderson, whose company is also talking with others in the seafood industry about additional services this coming summer.