Why Sustainability Matters

Corporate investors only care about one thing - the bottom line. In many cases that means short cuts in sustainability, traceability and handling of the seafood. Sustainability: Less sustainable sources of seafood are cheaper so corporate sellers will generally have less sustainably sourced seafood. Mislabeling: When you purchase seafood from a large corporation, that seafood has traded hands many times before it ends up on your table. Using genetic sampling nationwide, Oceana found that about 33% of seafood in the United States is mislabeled and 98% of the time it is mislabeled as a higher value species (such as farm-raised Atlantic salmon labeled as wild sockeye salmon). https://oceana.org/reports/oceana-study-reveals-seafood-fraud-nationwide/ Lower quality: Seafood is extremely sensitive to mishandling whether by temperature abuse or rough handling. Any temperature abuse or bruising will cause fish to become “fishy” tasting and/or mushy in texture. Most people who don’t think they like fish, just haven’t had high quality fish. Because of all the handling of corporate seafood (much of it overseas) it will always be of lower quality. As a fisher family and 100% owner of Net to Table Seafoods we don’t have to bend the knee to an investor group. We are committed to valuing every fish, every customer, every time.

Unlike other seafood box companies, we are a small, family run fishing operation. We own our own boats and know exactly where your fish comes from—whether it’s Bristol Bay or elsewhere in Alaska. Most other companies have to sell fish like pollock to hit volume pricing. But pollock are primarily caught by factory trawlers that wreck the ocean floor and kill millions of non-target species—king salmon, halibut, crab, even orcas. As former school teachers in rural Alaskan villages, we know how much the indigenous people and the whole ecosystem relies on this precious resource. We also know the immense nutrition that only comes from wild Alaskan seafood and want to share it with you and your family in the most responsible and sustainable manner so that it is there for us for generations to come.

Net to Table Seafoods founder and owner, Luke Owens, is a Bristol Bay salmon fisherman who depends on a healthy ocean for his livelihood. Alaskan pollock are primarily caught by trawl fishing, which causes immense harm to marine ecosystems by unintentionally killing millions of pounds of salmon, halibut, crab, herring, and even orcas each year. These species, caught as bycatch, are discarded dead, since they cannot legally be sold. As a small, fisherman-owned company, Net to Table Seafoods stands against the pressure to promote the sale of Alaskan pollock, choosing instead to focus on sustainable, responsible fishing that protects the ocean’s delicate balance and provides clean, wild-caught seafood.

Each order of wild Alaskan seafood from Net to Table arrives frozen at your door. Surprisingly, flash frozen fish can be the freshest option because it’s frozen right at the peak of its freshness. "Fresh" fish at the grocery store can be anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks old. Spoilage bacteria works that whole time to cause the "fishy" taste and mushy texture that makes people think they don't like seafood. By choosing us, you’re getting the highest-quality seafood that maintains its nutrition, texture, and taste.

For starters, during our Bristol Bay salmon season there is no day or night (although by the end of the season there are a couple hours of darkness every night). Or activities are determined by openers, closures, high tide and low tide. While we are on period fishing (usually an 8 hour period every tide and there are two tides every 25 hours), we usually get ready about an hour before the opener, fish the 8 hour period, deliver fish and come back to the cabin for about 1.5-2.5 hrs to eat and take a nap and then do that all over again. So when we are fishing two 8 hour periods per “day”, we get about 3-4 hours of sleep total broken up between the periods. Once we are on 24/7 fishing we can make our own schedule which is based on the tide cycles and how many fish are around.

We ship from our dedicated packing facility to guarantee the best results. The pristine, wild areas where we fish are far from major shipping hubs and dry ice supplies. Moving our catch through a climate-controlled interior route to the Midwest allows us to offer more reliable shipping times and much lower risk of thawing than shipping individual boxes across the entire continent.