Ward Van De Water ’19 made waves in Alaska as a teardown technician for PeterPan Seafoods, where he helped package and manufacture salmon.

The policy management major worked seventeen hours a day in Dillingham, Alaska for six weeks.

Working as a technician, Van De Water sealed cans with micrometers and knives, checking to assure the salmon was ready for shipment.

“I worked from 7 a.m. until midnight, seven days a week, for six straight weeks. I had no social life, no internet and no real way of being contacted,” said Van De Water.

These circumstances did not keep him from meeting interesting people through his work, however, reports Van De Water.

“The only thing on anyone’s mind is fishing, it’s a way of life, it’s what keeps people moving in Alaska. I met people who had been working on the same dock for twenty years and they never complained,” said Van De Water.

Van De Water received a minimum wage salary of $9.75 per hour for his work. Over the course of his six week stay, he earned roughly $7000.

“The money is what got me through my time in Alaska. I never really had any breaks, the mental labor was brutal and I was losing weight quickly,” said Van De Water.

Located 600 miles west of Anchorage, PeterPan Seafoods owns more than half the land in Dillingham, Alaska. It houses nearly six hundred employees on site. With two giant dockyards, and various storage units, PeterPan produces roughly 250,000 pounds of salmon per day.

Van De Water described Dillingham as a “desolate” town, consisting of a super market, gas station and a rundown bar.

The rigors of the salmon industry gave Van De Water a first-hand look into the work fishermen have to do to make money.

“Meeting people who were so invested in fishing gave me a different type of perspective,” said Van De Water. “It opened my eyes to what the lives of those people are really like.”

While his time in Alaska was hard, said Van De Water, he still cherishes his time there.

“It was a humbling experience for me. Life changing in many ways. Having a sense of independence, working long hours, I definitely feel like I got a sense of the real world. I wouldn’t change my time there for anything.”