Making Cat Food

Traverse City has one of Michigan’s best kept secrets.  King and CoHo Salmon are processed into cat food at the Weir factory, located in the heart of the downtown warehouse district , along the Boardman River on Hall Street, by utilizing a river trap system.   20 – 30 lb. salmon swim into the river from Lake Michigan to spawn and eventually die as part of their normal life cycle.  To preserve the beautiful city beaches, the state allows the factory to harvest these fish in a series of troughs.  

But the big fun is watching the huge fish make their way, leap by leap, up the churning water of the fish ladder into the facility’s three holding bays, where they cruise back and forth like caged tigers and splash at people.  Each year, anywhere from 3,000 to 13,000 salmon are trapped and harvested at the Weir, while other species are returned to the water and allowed to continue their journey upstream.

It might not seem very sportsmanlike to catch huge salmon this way, but if the city did not harvest them, then each fall, as these fish swim into the river , the sandy Grand Traverse Bay beaches would be littered with smelly, dead fish.  It is a win-win situation.  The fish are going to die anyway, so their meat is turned into a tasty Tabby treat for ditch tigers across the U.S.A.

I found the trap system and the fish fascinating…but then my eye caught the sight of a real parking lot beauty…an old Airstream trailer which was converted and put into service as a food vendor.  Whoop-whoop!