Some of the new sustainably rated or certified products posted on FishChoice.com recently include:  

 

• Blue mussels from Prince Edward Island 
• Pacific oysters from Washington 
• Chinook salmon from British Columbia 
• Troll-caught yellowfin tuna from Hawaii 
• Rainbow trout from Wisconsin   

 

Please support FishChoice and mention us to the suppliers when you contact them regarding their product listings on the website.

Seafood Watch Updates: 

• Atlantic mackerel from the US and Canada (New) 
• Red grouper from the Gulf of Mexico (Updated) 
• Black grouper from the Gulf of Mexico (Updated) 
• Albacore tuna from the Indian Ocean / North Atlantic (Updated) 
• Swordfish from the North Atlantic (Updated) 
• Yellowfin tuna from Pacific regions / Hawaii (Updated)   

 

Blue Ocean Institute Updates: 

• Arctic char- farmed, worldwide (New)
• Corvina drum, worldwide (New)
• Silver hake, worldwide (New)
• Pompano, worldwide (New)
• European sardines from Europe (New) 
• Scup, worldwide (New)
• American shad from the North Atlantic (New)
• Shrimp- farmed, Asia & Latin America (Updated)
• Silk snapper, worldwide (New)
• Yellowstripe snapper from Hawaii (New) 

 

For full details and to view select products, click here.

Chinook Salmon    

This year's West Coast fishery for kings got off to its customary slow start April 15th, when the troll fishery off central Oregon opened. Fishing should pick up in May when the waters off Washington, where more than 50% of the total West Coast troll catch is landed, open.  Although the overall quotas are about the same as last year when West Coast trollers caught about 133,000 kings, California fishermen will get a small fishery after having their fishery closed the past two years to protect threatened Sacramento River stocks. Look for prices to come down in May, when the Washington fish start hitting the docks.. (Continued...)

• Conservation Notes 
• Buying Tips  

 

Summer Flounder  

Fishing for summer flounder, or fluke, got off to a quick start this spring as fishermen were eager to get started on a quota that is about a third higher than last year. The 2011 commercial fluke quota is almost 8,000 metric tons.  If the full quota is caught, which is highly likely, that would be the most fluke landed in more than 20 years. Fishermen in North Carolina and Virginia, which together have almost half of the summer flounder quota, were fishing hard this spring. By the end of April they had landed almost two-thirds of their quota. Further north, only about a third of the quota was landed. (Continued...)

• Conservation Notes 
• Buying Tips 

Bill Webber knows the Copper River flats as well as anybody. That's because he started fishing them with his dad when he was seven. Foreseeing a limited entry licensing system coming to Alaska's salmon fishery, his dad made sure Bill was fishing his own boat as soon as he could handle it. So Bill putted out to the flats on his own in a skiff and a small outboard. At the age of 11.  

 

Webber has seen a lot of changes in the 43 years he's been fishing kings, sockeyes and cohos in one of the more treacherous salmon fisheries in Alaska, where big breakers roll in from the Gulf of Alaska and break on the myriad bars. As a founding member of the Copper River Fisherman's Cooperative in the early 1980s, he helped put the name Copper River on the menus of restaurants around the country. Later, after the Coop floundered and closed in the early 1990s, he knew he wanted to do more than simply sell his salmon to canneries in Cordova.  

 

Selling to a cannery like everybody else offered little incentive to produce a top quality fish, since the cannery paid all fishermen the same price and sold all their fish for pretty much the same price, regardless of quality.  Webber knew he could produce a much better product. But if he wanted to get more money for it - and he was confident there were enough chefs who would pay for it - he would have to take his fish into his own hands and do it himself.  And he has. (Continued...)