Salmon Sustainability

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Salmon Sustainability

Species We Sell:

Sockeye Salmon

Pink Salmon

Keta Salmon

Atlantic Salmon

Images by Timothy Knepp, US Fish & Wildlife Service

Sustainable Salmon at a Glance:

The majority of our salmon is wild-caught from Alaskan fisheries, which have been a model of sustainable management since the 1960s and are certified by the third-party UN FAO Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM).
Our salmon products are traceable back to the fishing vessel they were caught on.
We are exploring more sustainable sources for our farmed Atlantic salmon, although it constitutes a very small amount of the product we sell.

Alaska Seafood

Sustainable fishing is so important to Alaska that it has been written into the state’s constitution since 1959. Their stringent harvest practices protect against overfishing, habitat damage, and pollution in all of their fisheries.

Salmon was the first Alaskan fishery to be certified sustainable by the UN FAO’s Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM) program since it was adapted by the state in 2010.

Alaskan fisheries were Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified until 2012, when the state decided to switch to the RFM program because it is the “most well known internationally-agreed set of principles for responsible fisheries management”. Read more here.

Here is an example of salmon sustainability measures, taken from the Alaska Seafood website:

“…before fishing is opened, state biologists make sure ample numbers [of salmon] have already passed upstream to lay eggs. A variety of methods are used to ensure ample escapement. One of those methods is stationing state fishery workers in towers above the water to count individual salmon as they swim up current. When biologists ascertain that the quota for a particular run has escaped, word goes out by radio to boats waiting beyond the river mouth. And so, in-season harvest decisions are made on local rivers by personnel who know the fishery best.”

(Source: http://sustainability.alaskaseafood.org/)

Atlantic Salmon

Clover Leaf’s Atlantic Salmon is currently sourced from fish farms in Poland. It is free of antibiotics and additives. Fish farming involves raising fish commercially in tanks or enclosures, usually for food. It offers a solution to the emerging challenge of providing adequate protein to our world’s growing population.

Atlantic Salmon constitutes less than 1% of the total product Clover Leaf sells by volume, so we do not possess the market power to effect change towards sustainability in this case as we do for tuna, for example. As such, we are currently exploring sourcing from Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) certified farms. The challenge we currently face is to source Atlantic Salmon that has the lowest environmental impact yet remains affordable for our customers.