Environmentally Responsible Catch of the Day

Wild Alaska seafood grows in the clean icy-cold, glacier-fed waters of Alaska. This isolated environment produces the most wholesome, nutrient-rich fish and shrimp with brilliant natural colors, firm texture, and delicate, rich flavors.

Alaska salmon runs are the strongest, best managed salmon runs in the world. While other fishermen use large nets to harvest their catch, we troll—not trawl ( pdf ) using the environmentally safe hook-and-line method of salmon harvesting.

Power trolling is a method that harvests the salmon on their feeding grounds, in the healthiest conditions.

"As a cookbook author and cooking school teacher, on the road promoting my new book, Salmon, published by Chronicle Books, I have cooked literally hundreds of pounds of wild Alaskan salmon from Troller Point Fisheries this year. I am so impressed with the quality of the salmon being handled and processed by Troller Point. The Coho salmon arrives in pristine shape because it has been frozen at sea within an hour of catch. Once thawed, the fillets are fresh smelling and tasting, there is no moisture loss because the meaty fillets are carefully and quickly handled, and the flavor and texture is unsurpassed. Year-round I keep my freezer stocked with Troller Point Fisheries salmon. —Diane Morgan, author "Salmon: A Cookbook"; a New York Times notable summer selection

Our salmon are beautiful and feisty with chrome sides and brilliant blue/green back scales.

Trolling involves seeking out the fish in ocean valleys as deep as 360 feet and around rocky underwater mountains and reefs as shallow as 12 feet.

At Troller Point Fisheries, we longline for halibut, sablefish and codfish. This involves setting out hooks baited with herring on a sinking line at 25 feet intervals for up to one mile at a time. This type of fishing is often tricky as it is challenging to land the line on underwater plateaus, in valleys and along rocky cliff edges sometimes as deep as 3600 feet.

These fish also come aboard alive, one at a time. They are bled in totes of circulating seawater, cleaned and placed into the fish hold where they receive the same gentle care as the salmon.

We catch prawns and shrimp in specially designed pots that are launched off the boat and onto rocky underwater shelves and cliffs as deep as 700 feet. The prawns and shrimp are brought aboard alive, placed into totes with circulating seawater, tailed, sorted by size, rinsed and weighed. They are then frozen, glazed and bagged.

Our method of harvest, care in cleaning, pressure bleeding and quick freezing within the hour of landing are unequaled. This process cannot be matched by any net fishery or farm/pen raised seafood. Our family is proud of producing seafood that is among the finest in the world!

Why eat Wild Alaska Salmon?

The health benefits:

• Wild salmon are high in beneficial omega-3 fatty acids. Medical professionals, including Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Barry Sears (The Zone Diet), recommend eating wild salmon, which has much more omega-3 than farmed salmon.

• Clean water = clean fish. Alaska is thousands of miles from large sources of pollution that can contaminate the human food supply in other parts of the world. This distance, combined with our planet's pattern of circulation of water and air, and Alaska's own low population density and lack of heavy industry, help ensure that Alaska's waters are among the cleanest in the world. Repeated studies conducted by government and university scientists have demonstrated that Alaska seafood is pure and clean.

• Wild salmon swim free in their natural habitat in the cold, clean waters of the north Pacific. They eat only natural foods like shrimp, herring, and squid. Farm raised fish, on the other hand, are raised in crowded pens in conditions ripe for the spread of disease. Salmon farmers combat this threat with vaccines, antibiotics, and other chemicals.
  

• The flesh of wild salmon is naturally a brilliant red color. Farm raised salmon, on the other hand, are fed synthetic carotenoids to color their flesh.

"I was vacationing in Outerbanks North Carolina and had the pleasure of purchasing your salmon from Tommies Meat Market. Being a former commercial fisherman out of Nushagak Point in Bristol Bay, I am picky about salmon and yours was by far the best I have ever purchased in the lower 48." —John Ferneyhough

The ecological benefits:

• Salmon farming, as it is currently practiced is not ecologically sound, and in fact threatens the health of wild salmon runs. Conservation organizations including the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club recommend eating wild salmon and avoiding farm-raised salmon.
  

• Farmed salmon routinely escape from their pens. These escaped fish compete with wild salmon for food and spawning habitat. Escaped farm salmon can spread disease to wild salmon, and may interbreed with wild salmon, thereby reducing the latter’s fitness.

• Fecal wastes, uneaten food, and chemicals flow from the fish pens directly into the coastal waters. This degrades water quality and destroys nursery areas that support wild ocean fisheries.

• Farmed salmon are fed fish oil and fish meal extracted from wild-caught fish. It takes roughly 3 pounds of wild fish for feed to produce one pound of farmed Atlantic salmon. Therefore, salmon aquaculture depletes, rather than augments, fisheries resources.

• But aren't wild salmon endangered? While it is true that certain local runs of fish, primarily in Washington and Oregon, are in jeopardy due to habitat destruction, the five species of wild Pacific salmon are thriving. In Alaska, there is a healthy abundance of salmon.

Why Alaska Salmon?

• Alaska is the only State in the nation whose constitution explicitly mandates that all fish, including salmon, shall be utilized, developed, and maintained on the sustained yield principle.

• Since Alaska became a State in 1959 and took over management of its fisheries, fish populations have increased steadily to their current levels of healthy abundance. Alaska has led the way world-wide with its successful salmon management.

• In Alaska, all human uses of the salmon are subordinate to the principle that sufficient numbers of salmon are allowed to return to and spawn in the rivers, thus maintaining the long-term health of the salmon stocks