“Seafood is a system that has really lost the trust of the American consumer,” says Nicolaas Mink, founder of the seafood company Sitka Salmon Shares that delivers Alaskan seafood to the doorstep of its Midwestern customers.
Mink is from Wisconsin, and while living in Madison for college, he started learning about our broken food system and how industrialized food processing cares more about quantity over quality. But it wasn’t until he moved to Sitka, Ala., for a summer, that he saw firsthand how the commercial fishing industry was crushing small-scale fishermen. Motivated to change the story, he created a community-supported fishery program. Like CSA programs that support local farms, Mink’s “CSF” program supports small Alaskan fishermen by bypassing the supermarkets and bringing high-quality, sustainably caught fish directly to Midwest consumers. Thus, Sitka Salmon Shares was born.
When we buy seafood from a grocery store, about 75% of it is farm-raised and 25% is wild-caught. Some people assume that farm-raised seafood is better than wild-caught because it doesn’t target wild fish stocks, but most farms feed their fish with smaller wild-caught fish, also depleting ocean ecosystems. The vast majority of wild-caught fish in the United States comes from Alaska, which also exports seafood all over the world.
The industrial fishing industry has a history of causing destruction to bodies of water. Like Alaska, the Great Lakes used to have a massive fishing industry in the late-19th and early-20th century with Jones Island being one of the major ports in the region. But pollution, overfishing and an invasive species called the lamprey led to the steep decline of the Great Lakes fisheries and moved most commercial fishing in the U.S. to Alaska. Unfortunately, many of those destructive practices are still used in Alaska, which is what Mink is trying change.
Large-scale commercial fishermen often use hazardous fishing methods which involve massive boats dragging miles-long nets behind them. These nets pull anything and everything out of the water, destroying coral reefs and whole ecosystems. In contrast, Sitka Salmon works with small-scale fishermen who mostly use a hook and line to catch their fish. They keep at least eight out of 10 fish they catch, compared to the large boats that throw away about 50% of their catch because they only get paid for the species they’re actually targeting.
To combat this destructive system, Sitka Salmon has created a model where the consumer’s dollar goes directly to these small fisheries. They no longer have to compete with large fisheries because of this direct income. The small fisherman can now focus on safeguarding fish ecosystems and delivering high-quality product.
Hopeful for the future, Mink has seen growth in the number of small, environmentally conscious fishing businesses that are disrupting the commercial fishing market. “Slowly but surely, the big system is being challenged by a bunch of small guys who are trying to do things correctly,” he says. Mink’s journey into the seafood industry started with his desire to create change, and his ambitions only grow with the support of everyday consumers who join his cause.
Learn more at sitkasalmonshares.com. Read this article on the Shepherd Express, part of the column “Hero of the Week.”