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Quick rundown of the process:
1. Relatively small boat goes out into ocean and (hopefully) catches a bunch of fish, which are stored in the boats holds with lots of ice (the ice making machines take up a lot of space on these boats.
2. Boat then takes fish to a cannery (either shore based or giant sea-based ships; see previously mentioned 400-foot ship) and the fish are pumped out of holds into new holding tanks at the cannery and kept in ice cold water. At this point the fish may be several days out of the ocean depending on where they were caught and how long it took to fill the holds.
3. When ready for them, the fish are pumped out of the tanks and into the processing line. This was my QA station, making sure that the fish coming out of the tank were still fresh (grab random ones, slice it open stem to stern and stick my nose in; many times I've tasted the innards of raw fish).
4. First step of the assembly line was through a machine that chopped off the heads, tales, fins, slit the stomachs and gave enough of a squeeze to extrude the organs.
5. Then they'd run through manual lines where (almost entirely Filipino) workers would clean up anything that should have been removed by the machine but wasn't.
6. Then it was into the chopping machine (called "chinks" but not for any ethnic reason) which would chop it all to pieces and provide it to the canning line (operated almost entirely by Chinese workers).
7. Coming out of the canning line cans would be put on pallets consisting of ten layers, each layer having 400 cans if I recall correctly.
8. Pallet goes into giant oven where it is all cooked.
9. Pallets are removed from ovens and allowed to cool, shrink wrapped, and shipped to distributors where they will be labeled for sale (different brands can be selling fish that came through the same cannery).
Step 7 was my second QA position. Every four hours they'd run 10 cans through the canning line empty and I'd have to go tear them down to make sure all the seals and seams were to specification. Step 9 was my third QA position. 10 random cans would get pulled from every pallet, documented and shipped to a lab where the cans would be opened and tested for contaminants.
(And finally, all of the bits cut off of fish were essentially flushed out of pipes under the cannery and back into the bay (which, ultimately is why the cannery reeks, not because of the fish being canned). Needless to say this free food was popular with the wildlife and sea lions were a constant presence. Which is how, late one night while peeing off the edge of the pier I looked down to realize I was peeing onto a sea lion.)
Thus concludes the salmon cannery detour. The door was opened a crack by me (though only in response to another diversion) but it is RStar's fault we went through the door.
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