Garibaldi Cannery specializes in ‘taking care of the fisherman’

Published 5:00 pm Monday, June 30, 2008

Kelly Barnett claims he was “kidnapped” and forced to work in a fish processing plant. But 21 years later, he is happily ensconced in a new business: the Garibaldi Cannery.

Barnett and business partner, Dave Smith, recently opened the retail cannery on the Garibaldi dock. There, they offer fresh seafood, including crab, ling cod, sea trout, shrimp, tuna and sea bass.

“We bring in nothing but whole fish,” Barnett said. “We specialize in live seafood.”

Sometimes, even after it has been filleted and packaged, it’s “so fresh it’s still moving in the bag,” he added.

They also offer other services: filleting, vacuum sealing and overnight freezing of freshly caught fish. For sport fishers who have the catch of a lifetime, they will hoist the fish off the boat onto the deck. Soon, Barnett and Smith will add canning to their list of services. “We specialize in taking care of the fishermen,” Barnett said.

The cannery acts as a buying station for Pacific Coast Seafoods, which owns the dock. Because a ban has been placed on salmon fishing south of Garibaldi this season, the cannery is the “last buyer” for salmon in Oregon, Barnett noted.

Barnett has worked in the fish processing business for 21 years, and Smith has fished commercially for over 30 years. Smith’s nickname is “Deepwater Dave,” while Barnett goes by “Blade” because of his filleting expertise.

“The fisherman and the processor: We know what’s good,” Barnett said.

Fish processing has been part of Barnett’s life since he was eight years old; that’s when his family moved to Garibaldi and his father started trawling for salmon.

In 1987, as an adult and temporarily out of work after a trip to Europe, Barnett was visiting his sister at the Oregon coast.

“My sister wakes me up at 5 in the morning and says, “We’re going to work. She kidnapped me.”

She took him to a fish processing center in Warrenton, where he began learning the business. He worked for several fish-packing companies until his wife died three years ago. After deciding he needed to “continue to move forward,” he went to work for Smith, unloading his crab boat. Barnett also set up a filleting table on Smith’s dock.

Barnett’s experience with filleting goes back to watching his father perform the task. Barnett took up the practice and filleted for charter boats.

Being a good fish filleter requires confidence working with the knife. “You have to feel what the knife is doing inside the fish. A lot of it is doing what you can’t see,” Barnett said.

An older filleter once told Barnett that “God has put all the instructions on the outside of the fish.”

At first, Barnett didn’t understand. But as he gained more experience, he understood that each fish has certain markings to indicate the angles that should be cut around the head, along the spine and around the rib cage.

“Ten years later, I realized that old filleter was right,” Barnett said. “There are lots of secrets to it.”

Garibaldi Cannery

Address: 606 Commercial St.

Phone: (503) 322-3344

Hours: 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., 7 days/week

Web site: None available