COAST RIVER BUSINESS JOURNAL
FISHING BUSINESS
APRIL 2018 | 13
NOAA PHOTO
This giant Pacific octopus was photographed at a depth of
about 200 feet off the California coast.
Smart & delicious
At the Ekone processing facility, oysters are graded, shucked and packaged. The shuckers are paid per oyster. “The faster
guys can make $300 a day,” Parkins said.
into the soft mud loosened by burrowing shrimp.
“There’s a lot more labor involved, you have to string
each individual oyster on the line, but you don’t have as
much of a problem with the mud shrimp,” Parkins said.
He estimated that 80 percent of what the farm grows is
off-bottom.
“We have one large bed that we dredge,” he said. They
also purchase from other farms on Willapa Bay, which
ideal for farming oysters.
“We have the best bay,” Parkins explained.
“Every tide it empties out and you get a new surge of
ocean water. In some places in the Puget Sound, it can
take months for the water to recycle. We have clean, cold
water that helps us grow a nicer oyster here.”
Octopus processing
Monday is the unofficial octopus day at Ekone Oyster
Company. Shipments arrive sporadically, the unintention-
al bycatch from other fisheries, and staff start the process
early in the week.
“We get an odd amount. Often it’s one or two octopus
— sometimes it’s four,” Parkins said standing over a fro-
zen 37-pound block containing two giant Pacific octopus,
the most recent arrival from Trident Seafood. The octopus
is cleaned and cut into smaller pieces with the unwanted
parts discarded. Daniel Hemmer then cooks the octopus
for about an hour before it’s divided into 3.5 ounce cans,
brushed with organic olive oil and loaded — up to 800 at
a time — into a commercial pressure retort.
“It’s like a giant pressure cooker,” Parkins said. “It
runs steam just like you would canning jars, just bigger.”
Ekone Oyster Company
378 Bay Center Rd, Bay Center, WA
360-875-5494 • ekoneoyster.com
The cans are then individually labeled by hand, a task
that will soon be replaced by an automatic labeler.
Growing product line
The first shipment of canned octopus are just arriving
on distributer doorsteps, but quantities are limited and re-
leased sporadically, as supply dictates.
“It takes a full day to do a basket (800 cans),” Parkins
said. “If we’re selling more than 1000 cans a week, it will
be tough to keep up.”
The idea of octopus being canned and sold commer-
cially started with the Ekone employees, who couldn’t
seem to get enough of the cephalopod as a snack during
breaks.
“Our workers are now buying more of it than anything
else,” Parkins said.
The canned octopus joins five varieties of smoked
oysters — original, habanero, terijaki, lemon, barbecue
— and three flavors of tuna — original, lemon and premi-
um smoked — plus mussels.
Octopus are unlikely to be the last addition to the
firm’s product lineup.
“We’ll probably do some smoked scallops at some
point,” Parkins said. “We’re going to continue to grow.”
Giant Pacific octopus are known to grow up to 156
pounds, though those canned in Pacific County are typical-
ly much smaller. They live in coastal waters all along the
northern Pacific Rim, from California north to Alaska and
across to eastern Russia, northern Japan and Korea.
Their abundance is unknown, but they aren’t protected
by international conservation laws. Giant Pacific octopus
are protected by the Washington Department of Fish and
Wildlife at seven sites in Puget Sound, after public outcry
about the controversial sport harvest of one near Alki Point
in West Seattle about five years ago.
Giant Pacific octopus have relatively long lives com-
pared to many other octopus species — they live three or
four years, compared to one or two years for most other
species.
They are popular food for many other animals, includ-
ing humans. They are particularly popular in Asian cul-
tures, but have a growing fan club in the Pacific Northwest.
Although their evolutionary lines split away from those
of humans, dolphins and other high-order mammals hun-
dreds of millions of years ago, octopus independently
evolved relatively advanced intelligence, even displaying
signs of individual personalities. Their level of intelligence
has sometimes been compared to that of domestic house
cats.
“Giant Pacific octopuses are commonly kept on display
at aquariums due to their size and interesting physiology,
and have demonstrated the ability to recognize humans
that they frequently come in contact with,” according to
the Wikipedia entry concerning them. “These responses
include jetting water, changing body texture, and other be-
haviors that are consistently demonstrated to specific indi-
viduals. They have the ability to solve simple puzzles, open
childproof bottles and use ‘tools.’ The octopus brain has
folded lobes (a distinct characteristic of complexity), visual
and tactile memory centers. They have about 300 million
neurons. They have been known to open tank valves, dis-
assemble expensive equipment, and generally wreak havoc
in labs and aquaria. Some researchers even claim that they
are capable of motor play and having personalities.”
They eat crab, clams and other commercially raised
shellfish in Willapa Bay, Puget Sound and other U.S. wa-
ters. Those canned by Ekone are harvested by accident by
another company.