Tag Archives: Thanks for all the fish

Thanks for All the Fish: Pollock, salmon and global warming: The tricky questions of sustainability

October 2, 2013   North Pacific

Editor’s note: Seattle’s $5 billion commercial fishing industry has defined and sustained this city from its founding. Earlier this week, writer Daniel Jack Chasan looked at the local fleet’s key role in the world’s largest single fishery, the walleye pollock off Alaska’s coast and in the eastern Bering Sea. Today, he concludes the examination of the pollock’s sustainability and we wrap up our Thanks for All the Fish series. more@crosscut 09:57

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Thanks for all the fish: Julia Child’s play – The Master Chef put Port Chatham’s Nova smoked king salmon on the map.

September 13, 2013   North Pacific, Pacific

A long time ago, when I was young, springy and inveterately unemployed, a chef named Francois Kissel asked me to help out on the heavy lifting for a benefit bash he was catering for the ladies of St. Mark’s Cathedral. The heavy part entailed opening a couple dozen dozen oysters, but they were only the baseline for the event. The big featured dish was fresh-caught Alaska King crab, flown in live and cooked on the spot. (For some reason this was illegal at the time; maybe it still is.) more@crosscut 11:58

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Thanks for all the fish – Part III – ‘There’s fish in them thar waters!’

September 11, 2013   North Pacific, Pacific

Today, we take it for granted that Seattle is homeport to a large Alaska fishing fleet and a related multi-billion dollar fish and maritime industry. TV shows like the Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch” have made people more aware of what goes on in the Northern Pacific and the lucrative dangers of the Bering Sea fishery. But that industry wouldn’t have happened for us Americans if it weren’t for the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 — and that transaction might not have occurred without a nudge from Washington’s own pioneers. It is little remembered today, but Seward’s Folly, as the Alaska annexation was called, happened when it did in part because of a prod from the legislature in Olympia. Yes, sometimes they get it right. more@crosscut  14:47

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