Block Pan for Freezing Fish
date: label: date made
content: 2000-2005
label: Associated Date
content: 2007
notes: label: Description
content: This shallow, metal pan was used for freezing processed fish aboard the factory trawler <I>Alaska Ocean</I>. Operating in the North Pacific and the Bering Sea, the <I>Alaska Ocean</I> is one vessel in the fleet that catches and processes pollock, hake, and whiting.
label: Description
content: In the factory the fish are gutted and filleted by German-made filleting machines, which can be calibrated to remove the bones and skin according to a customer’s preference. Onboard engineers adjust the angles of the knives within a quarter of a millimeter to provide a product with a small amount of fat, or no fat at all, depending on the customer’s specifications.
label: Description
content: After the initial filleting, workers in the factory load pans like this with fish fillets, fish roe, or minced fish. A conveyor belt carries the filled pans to other workers who load them into plate freezers. After about two hours, when the freezing is complete, the pans are unloaded from the freezer, and the blocks of frozen fish are removed and packed for shipment. The packed blocks of product are stacked in the ship’s large freezer hold until they can be offloaded ashore.
label: Description
content: The <I>Alaska Ocean</I> carries two sizes of pans, a block pan like this and a slightly larger size for <I>surimi</I>, a type of fish paste used in making imitation crabmeat. The vessel carries a total of 2800 pans, 1400 of each size. The factory has 16 plate freezers aboard, 8 for single pans and 8 for doubles. A single-pan plate freezer can hold 102 <I>surimi </I>pans and 119 block pans at a time.
label: Description
content: The wax lining in this pan facilitates removing the frozen product. This one is marked “M” for mince, a ground fish product used in making fish sticks and fish fingers.
place: label: Associated Place
content: United States: Pacific Coast
label: Associated Place
content: United States: Alaska
label: Associated Place
content: North Pacific
label: Associated Place
content: Bering Sea
label: Associated Place
content: United States: Washington
topic: label: Subject
content: Fishing
label: related event
content: Contemporary United States
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Maritime
label: See more items in
content: Food
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content: Work
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content: Industry & Manufacturing
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content: Natural Resources
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content: On the Water exhibit
label: Exhibition
content: On the Water
label: Exhibition Location
content: National Museum of American History
publisher: label: Related Publication
content: National Museum of American History. On the Water exhibition website
label: Related Web Publication
content: http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthewater
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Alaska Ocean thru Jeff Hendricks
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2007.0178.29
label: catalog number
content: 2007.0178.29
label: accession number
content: 2007.0178
objectType: label: Object Name
content: pan
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: aluminum (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 2 3/8 in x 20 3/4 in x 11 3/4 in; 6.0325 cm x 52.705 cm x 29.845 cm