Cleanfish: Winner of Eco-Ocean Award
by Food & Wine, Ratha Tep
August 2008
Will there be any fish in our future? As wild stocks become depleted and aquafarms reveal their limitations, our award winners are helping to make sustainable seafood.
Tim O’Shea and Dale Sims of CleanFish have figured out an ingenious way to aid tiny, eco-minded fisheries by helping them sell their seafood to prestigious restaurants and retailers.
CleanFish, founded in 2004, looks for excellent small aquafarms and wild fisheries, such as Loch Duart in Scourie, Scotland, which lets its sites sit fallow one out of every three years, allowing them to regenerate through tides and currents before being farmed again. CleanFish brought its salmon to the attention of chef Thomas Keller of Napa Valley’s French Laundry, who loved it. Today, Loch Duart salmon is the only kind served at the French Laundry.
CleanFish, which currently works with around two dozen aquafarms and wild fisheries, has become a valued resource for all kinds of environmental groups. “Folks from the David & Lucile Packard Foundation recently called us and said they know shrimpers in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez who want to become more sustainable but are afraid they won’t find customers who’ll care,” says O’Shea. Thanks to CleanFish, those shrimpers now sell their Fisherman’s Daughter brand of sustainable shrimp to restaurants like Akasha in Culver City, California.
www.CleanFish.com>Back