At Seafood Producers Cooperative, we are tracing the fish back to each boat that caught it. We work with a fleet of small boats, each of which frequently catches multiples species on any given trip out to the ocean. So, keeping tracking of the source of each individual fish from all of the small boats we work with is not an easy feat.
In this video, our Inventory Manager Greg McGuire talks about how we keep track of which boat caught each fish and why that's important. Greg comes to Sitka, Alaska from South Carolina, and began his career with our co-op, crewing and eventually captaining the salmon tender the Sea Lion. With his highly analytical mind, Greg went from the wheelhouse to the office where he works on keeping tabs on reports of fish being delivered by our fishermen every day. This video is really the beginning of documenting how your fish gets to your table--give it a watch and celebrate the hard work Greg is doing behind the scenes!
As an anecdote to illustrate this effort, some of our customers recently noted that they received Stingray in their orders, as they saw it marked on the labels. But note that it's not stingray, but Captain Ivan Grutter's boat the F/V Stingray that is indicated on the label as he caught the black cod in the package. Here Ivan talks about the Stingray in this video.
There are other boats with fun names in our co-op's fleet--the Orca, the Silver Lady, the Brat (Greg's uncle's boat). These boats and the families that fish them are essentially who we are. When we put the name of the boat that caught the fish you eat, this means each fisherman puts extra pride into the work they did to make sure you have a fantastic meal.
An important component of sustainable seafood is knowing the source of the fish--that way an end consumer can decide if they feel comfortable about the source or not. Did the fish come from an illegal fishery? A dirty fishery?
It's important to know the source of your fish to know it's coming from a source you trust. Sustainable seafood for us is fishing in a way that our grandchildren can fish in the same way and enjoy the same lifestyle. Sustainable seafood is harvested in a way that ensures the long-term health and prodcutivity of fish populations and they ecosytems they inhabit. This includes minimizing negative impacts on the environment and ensuring that future generations can enjoy that seafood. In our case, fishery quotas are set by treaties and using biological surveys of fish stocks. Our traceable fish make for sustainable seafood.
Putting the name of of the boat that caught each fish on the label for each portion has been a project we've been working on for years. (Note that with salmon, we are able to trace the fish back to the hour landed and a list of hoats deliverying in that hour, but we do not put the boat name on the label, as with the small deliveries in a condensed season with multiple species in each delivery, it is difficult to pinpoint the specific boat that caught each fish.)
See more about how our traceable seafood works in this video.
