Profiles on Fishers & Growers

Who brings your seafood to you? An interview with Jesse Holden, fisherman, shellfish farmer and geoduck diver

April 4, 2025

By Alison Lorenz, WSG Communications Project Coordinator

One of the first questions to ask in a fisherman profile is what all the fisherman catches. Many fishermen specialize in one or two species, but some target several. With Jesse Holden, the answer was: everything.

“Crabbing, shrimping, gilnetting, diving, pretty much anything,” Holden lists, explaining what he can do off the boat he recently purchased, his largest yet. He crabs for Dungeness, catches prawns, gillnets for salmon, and dives for geoduck, sea ...

4
APR

0

Who brings your seafood to you? An interview with Julia Richfield, food service director at Boistford School

November 26, 2024

By Alison Lorenz, WSG Communications Project Coordinator

For Julia Richfield, 2022 was a year of new things. She moved to a new place–Chehalis, Washington–and got a new job in a new field. With some front-of-house experience in restaurants and zero professional cooking experience, Richfield became the food service director at Boistford School. She went from having never cooked professionally to doing all of the ingredient ordering, menu writing, cooking and serving for the school’s 90 students, preparing breakfast and ...

26
NOV

0

Who brings your seafood to you? An interview with Joe Malley, fisherman and owner of St Jude Tuna

October 28, 2024

By Jess Davis, WSG Science Communication Fellow

Prior to his life as a commercial albacore tuna fisher, Joe Malley was a graduate student and mathematics scholar teaching at the University of Oregon. The academic job market at the time left something to be desired. After the Vietnam War, student enrollment rates nationwide were dwindling. As Malley explains it, he realized that his prospects upon getting his PhD amounted to “getting a non-tenure track job at a no-name ...

28
OCT

0

Who brings your seafood to you? An interview with Maggie Michaels of the High School Seafood Butchery program

September 6, 2024

By Brian McGreal, WSG Science Communications Fellow

In the spring of 2024, students at high schools up and down the Oregon coast engaged with a different sort of education. Armed with sharpened knives and fish scalers, high school students learned to debone albacore, filet salmon and shuck oysters under the auspices of the Oregon Coast Visitors Association’s newly launched Seafood Butchery Pilot Program. Designed to increase young people’s awareness and interest in jobs in the ...

6
SEP

0

Who brings your seafood to you? An interview with Rob Seitz, fisherman, poet and business owner

July 24, 2024

By Brian McGreal, WSG Science Communications Fellow

Recently, Rob Seitz’s sister wished him a happy 31st wedding anniversary and asked what he and his wife Tiffani would be doing to celebrate. “I told her, ‘We’re working with our family serving fish to our community in a business we built together.’”

From Seitz’s upbringing in Alaska to working through the Pacific groundfish collapse of the 2000s to operating his own vessel in Oregon and California, fishing has always been ...

24
JUL

0

Who brings your seafood to you? An interview with Roger Bain, fisherman of the Makah Tribe

July 10, 2024

By Jess Davis, WSG Science Communications Fellow

Growing up in Washington state and a member of the Makah Tribe, Roger Bain’s ancestral and more-recent family history might suggest that he was destined to become a fisherman. The Makah people refer to themselves as qʷidiččaʔa·tx̌, which translates approximately to “The People who live near the Rocks and the Seagulls.” Aquatic organisms are integral to the Makah way of life, and they fish everything from whales to salmon ...

10
JUL

0

Who brings your seafood to you? An interview with Nick Mendoza, founder of a seafood snack company

June 27, 2024

By Alison Lorenz, WSG Science Writer

To friends and family, Nick Mendoza has always been “the fish guy.” From what he describes as an “uncanny obsession” with fish in his youth to his work as a marine scientist, a love of the ocean is as inherent to Mendoza as his entrepreneurial spirit. Perhaps these traits explain why, amid constant texts from loved ones asking how to eat more, and more sustainable, seafood, Mendoza saw not a challenge, ...

27
JUN

0

Who brings your seafood to you? An interview with Riley Starks, fisherman and co-founder of the Salish Center

June 3, 2024

By Alison Lorenz, WSG Science Writer

Riley Starks had never fished a day in his life and had rarely been on the water when he graduated college in 1972. But he had a whole year ahead of him before he started law school, he needed money, and a friend of his had just bought a boat. When his friend asked Riley to come crew with him that winter, Riley did. “And it was just one of those moments when ...

3
JUN

0

Who brings your seafood to you? An interview with Thomas Foster-Kibbler and Heather Auld of Foster Fisheries

January 24, 2024

By Alison Lorenz, WSG Science Writer

Before Thomas Foster-Kibbler got into commercial fishing, he wanted to be an EMT on a firefighting crew. He was living in sunny Los Angeles County, training to help others. The problem? He was spending all his spare time and cash sport fishing on charter boats and spending, as he says, “too much money to go fishing all the time.”

That’s when something clicked. Foster-Kibbler decided to try a career in fishing commercially, and found ...

24
JAN

0

Who brings your seafood to you? An interview with Dawn Ruquet of Taylor Shellfish Farms

September 6, 2023

A story of community, connection and, of course, oysters

By Katalin Plummer, WSG Science Communications Fellow

When I first sat down with Dawn Ruquet in the Taylor Shellfish restaurant located in Pioneer Square, Seattle, she assured me that her story was ordinary, nothing to write home about. I smiled and told her that we would see about that. As a beloved member of the Taylor Shellfish Farms team, I had a hunch Dawn’s ...

6
SEP

0

Who brings your seafood to you? An interview with John Alto and Amy Sharp, a couple who work on their own commercial salmon troller

January 26, 2023

The power couple reflected on how, for them, fishing is a craft that is passed down through generations and rooted in community

By Andrea Richter-Sanchez, WSG Science Communications Fellow

They say nothing brings people together better than good company over a warm home-cooked meal, and that story was no different for John Alto and Amy Sharp. John, a troller fisherman, one day got a call from a friend inviting him over to a troller family dinner. Troller vessels generally fit ...

26
JAN

0

Who Brings Your Seafood to You? An Interview with Steve Seymour of Drayton Harbor Oyster Company

September 27, 2022

Looking ahead to National Seafood Month in October, we are sharing this profile of a local seafood entrepreneur

By Olivia Horwedel, WSG Science Communications Fellow

Steve Seymour — a fisheries biologist-turned-oyster farmer — has always been passionate about the marine world. Prior to opening Drayton Harbor Oyster Company, Steve spent most of his career running salmon hatcheries for the Lummi Nation, working on fish enhancement projects throughout Washington State.

Throughout his career ...

27
SEP

0

Who Brings Your Seafood to You? An Interview with Mike Cornman of Westport Seafood

August 30, 2022

By Olivia Horwedel, WSG Science Communications Fellow

Mike Cornman, owner of Westport Seafood and Merino’s Seafood Market, was destined to work a career connected to the ocean. Cornman grew up in Westport, Washington — which at one point was known as the salmon capital of the world — and spent his summers working in his family’s fishing business that opened in 1985. While he left for several years to start his career ...

30
AUG

0

Who Brings Your Seafood to You? An Interview with Robert Sudar, Independent Salmon Distributor

July 25, 2022

By Maddie Hansen, WSG Science Communications Fellow

“I love salmon, they’re beautiful creatures,” says Robert Sudar, who currently works as a salmon distributor in Seattle. He has been involved in the fishing industry in one way or another for the past 50 years.

Robert began as a crewmember on boats in the San Juan Islands when he was ...

25
JUL

0

Who Brings Your Seafood to You? An Interview with Dan Sleavy from High Tide Seafoods

June 28, 2022

By Benjamin Haagen, Science Communications Fellow

Local seafood processors provide valuable services to their communities by supporting fishers, bringing consistent seasonal work to locals, and providing fresh seafood. Dan Sleavy manages one such processor based in Port Angeles, High Tide Seafoods, which has been a family-owned staple of the Olympic Peninsula since 1980.

High Tide Seafoods has the largest processing facility in the area, which can process up to 60 tons of fresh salmon per day and also sells live ...

28
JUN

0

Page 1 of 2 12