More than just a filet of fish

Pledging to use the whole fish, from Iceland to Leland

By Dan Wanschura

Sun contributor

This story was adapted from Points North, a podcast by Interlochen Public Radio. Listen to it here.

It’s early April, and Jim VerSnyder is sitting at a big stainless-steel table that’s covered in fish blood. He’s got a long, sharp knife in one hand, and with the other, he reaches into a bin filled with ice, pulls out a fish, and plops it on a cutting board.

“Here’s how you filet one if you want to learn how,” he says. “They’re big fish, and they’re kind of hard to cut because I’m out of shape, to tell you the truth.

VerSnyder is 76 years old, a big guy in bright yellow, waterproof bibs, with a blue bandana tied around his head. He slices through a fresh fish with the dexterity of a surgeon.

“Well, you should have seen me when I was 30. I was a machine,” he says, laughing. “These guys got me down here fileting when I should be retired.”

VerSnyder is part of a small assembly line of workers at Carlson’s Fishery in one of the historic Fishtown shanties in Leland. Carlson’s is a shop that sells directly to customers. And today, a local fisherman just brought in the first catch of the year: about 1,700 pounds of Lake Michigan whitefish.

“They are gorgeous,” comments VerSnyder. “You’re not going to find anything much better looking than this. It was swimming this morning.”

After he finishes fileting the whitefish, VerSnyder tosses it on a pile in the middle of the table. Then, he slides the rest of the carcass—about half of the fish—into a big rubber garbage bin. Just a few years ago, Carlson’s Fishery was dumping all those fish scraps in a landfill. Thousands and thousands of pounds of fish biomass. Basically, if it wasn’t a filet—it was thrown away.

But that’s a whole lot of wasted potential, especially at a time when the Great Lakes commercial fishing industry has been declining for years.

Right now, the value of an average Great Lakes whitefish is around $15. But there’s a project that’s trying to double—even triple that amount in the next several years. And it does that by finding ways to use parts of the fish that are often thrown away. This project is based on a success story in Iceland.

The land of fire and ice (and fish)

Erla Pétursdóttir grew up in the small fishing town of Grindavík, Iceland. Her grandfather started a fishing business there in 1965. It was a tough way to make a living.

“He was just trying very hard for his family to thrive,” said Pétursdóttir. “And that was quite a struggle for him and … no one was really making a lot of money. It was always trying to fish more and more.”

In other words, too many boats fishing too few fish. In 2000, Pétursdóttir’s father took over the business, and it was all hands on deck. She remembers starting to work in the fishing industry when she was 12 years old. She said some kids even took off school or worked night shifts when the fishing season got really busy. It’s just what people did. But Pétursdóttir just couldn’t imagine a future in her family fishing business.

“People used to say, ‘Oh, you need to go to school. Otherwise, you’ll just end up in the fishing industry,’” she recalled. “Like, cause it was only unskilled positions, or no chance of moving up.”

So, when she was 16, she moved away from her family to go to school in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik. From there she went to Minnesota for college where she double majored in computer science and economics. After graduating, Erla got a job at an energy consulting firm in downtown Minneapolis. Working in Iceland’s fishing industry was the farthest thing from her mind.

From $15 to $5,000

One of the fish Erla Pétursdóttir’s family relied on was Atlantic cod. In fact, she didn’t grow up eating cod because it was so valuable. Instead, they ate haddock.

Cod is Iceland’s most iconic fish and the lifeblood of the island’s economy. But due to overfishing, the population began to plummet. By the 1980s, the Icelandic government put in fishing quotas – strict regulations that limited the number of fish caught. And that meant Iceland’s commercial fishery started looking for more ways to increase the value of their catch.

The filet of a typical cod is around 40-50% of the entire fish, and for many in the industry, not much thought was given to that other part of the fish.

“Fifty percent were thrown away,” said Thor Sigfusson, who was born and raised in Iceland.

Around that time the commercial fishery zeroed in on a few things that were going to waste: the fish skin, the bones, the liver, and the bladder, to name a few. Those were generally parts of the fish that had not been utilized previously.

First, they went to products like animal feed. Not necessarily a ton of value there, but still, better than throwing it away.

When Thor was working on his PhD at the University of Iceland, he decided he wanted to build on that innovation. And he had this crazy idea: to find ways to use 100% of each fish caught.

“So, I thought to myself, we need to establish some kind of community that connects … fishermen with the scientists, with the startup world, and with other parties that can help,” said Sigfusson.

He said at first, some people were skeptical about his idea. Why focus on the fishing industry? It’s not exactly a cutting-edge field.

“And they were all thinking like … ‘this is a part of our past—this is part of our history,’” said Sigfusson. “‘We’re proud of that history, but I’m not going to become a fisherman or a fish processor.’”

So, Thor Sigfusson created the Iceland Ocean Cluster, an innovation hub that brings people from different industries together. Their main goal is to figure out how to use 100% of each fish and make more money doing it.

Pretty quickly all these ideas popped up. Like how fish enzymes in the cod’s guts could be used for skin and beauty products. Nutraceutical proteins could be gathered from fish heads. Highly specialized skin graft bandages could be made from fish skin. Fish skin could also be used to make gelatin and collagen, and one of the most durable types of leather.

Now, there’s the dock value of a fish, and then there’s the amount of money you get from all the products that come from that one fish. Thor says, in the past, a 10-pound cod typically generated about $15—that was just for the filet. But now, with all these new markets, that same fish can generate over $5,000 worth of products.

Sigfusson said it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how much more the fishermen are getting per fish, but he says it’s increased considerably too. Overall, the 100% Fish Project has been a huge success.

“Young people are not that excited about being fishermen,” he said, “but they may be really excited to do some marketing of these products.”

And that success is attracting people like Erla Pétursdóttir. After working in Minneapolis, Erla felt the call to return home to Iceland, and to her family’s fishing business.

“You need the engineers and the software designers, and you need the marketing people, and you need the biotechnicians,” said Pétursdóttir. “So, there’s just—there’s so much going on in industry that that’s what called me back.”

Today, she heads up Marine Collagen—a joint business made up of her father’s fishing business and a few others. They make collagen and gelatin from fish skin.

“The trend in Iceland has sort of always been to use as much as we can, to using everything, to not just using everything to getting the highest value out of everything,” said Pétursdóttir.

Could it work for the Great Lakes?

A guy from the Great Lakes learned all about this by accident. His name is Dave Naftzger, and he’s the executive director of the Conference of Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers. It’s basically a Great Lakes intergovernmental organization. About five years ago, Naftzger had a long layover in Iceland and decided to make the most of it.

“So, I did some research about different things that were going on in and around Reykjavik, the capital,” he recalled. “And learned about the Iceland Ocean Cluster.”

Thor Sigfusson’s innovation hub was trying to use 100% of the fish. Dave saw a ton of parallels between what happened to cod in Iceland in the ’80s and what was happening in the Great Lakes fishery with whitefish today. So, he set up a meeting with Sigfusson.

“Walked into his office, he had a fish skin, fish leather lamp that was a piece of art hanging,” Naftzger said. “And he had a table with all these different products that were being made from parts of the Icelandic cod that used to be put in landfill. So, it really was inspirational.”

Naftzger took that inspiration, brought it back to the Great Lakes, started the Great Lakes 100% Fish Pledge, and came up with an action plan. His team began by sending whitefish to Iceland for biotechnical testing. Basically, to see what other products whitefish might be used for. Some of the findings were a lot like cod.

“They identified things like fish leather from the skin, collagen that could be made from the skin and from the scales, fish meal and oil that can be made from the viscera or the guts, and a couple of other products as well,” explained Naftzger.

Right now, for Great Lakes whitefish, the product value is between $10-$15. And that’s coming entirely from the filet –what’s being sold. While it might not be realistic to expect the same increase as cod, Naftzger hopes the project doubles, even triples the value generated from a Great Lakes whitefish in the near future, which is no small thing.

He said they’ve done similar testing with other Great Lakes fish, like walleye, lake trout, yellow perch and white sucker. They’ve got big goals for them too.

A game changer for Great Lakes’ fishery? 

Back in Carlson’s Fishery in Leland, co-owner Mike Burda is at the end of the fish filet assembly line. He’s spraying down the fresh filets with water, to get any blood off.

Carlson’s hasn’t been bringing fish scraps to the landfill for a couple years now. Instead, they bring it to the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians for composting. It’s putting the rest of the fish to good use, but a use Carlson’s isn’t currently getting any money from. Burda hopes the 100% Great Lakes Fish Pledge changes that.

“I hope that it allows us to be able to be successful with a little less work than we’re currently doing,” he explained. “Obviously, to make use of all of this natural resource is a big thing. And then I hope it’s lucrative. I hope it brings in new revenue that allows you to make money a little bit easier.”

Carlson’s might catch an initial break on that. The Grand Traverse Band is talking about developing a liquid fertilizer with the fish parts. They could sell it, and Carlson’s would be a part of that revenue stream.

So far, about 25 businesses in the Great Lakes have signed on to the 100% Fish Pledge. The goal for these businesses is to find ways to use 100% of the fish by 2025—next year.