September 17, 2020 — Between 85% and 90% of all seafood is consumed in restaurants or purchased from retail stores. So when COVID-19 struck in March, the seafood industry went into shock.
Gone were the restaurants that bought millions of pounds of seafood, including our beloved salmon, a mainstay of Pacific Northwest good eating. In 2017, for instance, Washington state’s total commercial catch was 666 million pounds—and that’s just one state’s catch.
Into this desperate situation stepped Max Mossler, ’16, managing editor and developer of Sustainable Fisheries, an entity of the UW School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences that explains the science of sustainable seafood. Mossler developed a Fish Map from information he collated from hundreds of commercial fishing lists. The map is a way for commercial fishing companies to sell their products directly to consumers. Want some fresh fish? Visit the website and tap one of the balloons on the map to see the name of the fishing enterprise and the type of fish on the “menu.”