Bill Carvalho was used to slugging it out on the fish docks with the big processors in the Pacific Northwest, offloading tuna and Dungeness crab, sometimes working on margins as slim as a penny a pound. He tried operating a processing plant once, but that turned out to be a very expensive exercise. There had to be a better way to make money in the fish business; something a little less wild and a little more sustainable. 

Instead of flipping albacore to canners, Carvalho decided to develop his own label and make higher quality and sustainability the key selling points. In 2005, he rounded up some of his fishermen and got them to invest in his new company, Wild Planet. But to gear up and do a decent job of marketing required a significant amount of capital. So he made a successful pitch to Sea Change Management, a private-equity firm funded by the Packard Foundation that invests in seafood companies that are committed to sustainability. 

Today, Wild Planet's canned seafood is found in some 6,000 stores throughout the United States. Pole and troll caught albacore tuna remains the company's flagship product, but the line also includes products from other "Best Choice" fisheries such as Alaska salmon and Oregon shrimp. The company has also rolled out four California sardine products. The sardine products have been well received in part because more "consumers want to eat lower on the food chain," says Carvalho, who points out that 10 of the company's products are on the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Super Green" list. 

Getting consumers to pay a premium (Wild Planet tuna can cost twice as much as imported albacore) has been a challenge, but the combination of a better tasting product that is produced from a sustainable fishery is paying off. "Increasingly, consumers want to choose sustainability with their shopping dollars," he says. To take advantage of that trend, Wild Planet plans to expand into a line of frozen seafood products. "I believe wholeheartedly that we can properly use and protect the ecological integrity of our oceans and their resources at the same time."

Click here to view Wild Planet Food's products and remember to tell them you found them on FishChoice.com when you contact them.