Sustainability
At sea
Wild seafood Caught sustainably
North Pacific Frozen Goods
GoodFish is recognized by OceanWise and the Marine Stewardship Council for excellence in sustainability practices. Our business principles follow our personal values. We have built our company based on lessons from the fishers who came before us and our own twenty years in the industry. We know and understand that the practices of the past must evolve if we hope to have a fishful future. To this end, we stay on top of all of the latest research, policies and techniques. For example, our fishers operate exclusively with traps or hook and line. These minimal impact techniques allow us to target precise depths in cold-water areas which means that there is little-to-no bycatch for delicious mindfulness. We want to eat seafood for the rest of our lives and we know you do too!
Traceability
We’re giving you all the information you need to buy the seafood you want to support. Using an unparalleled traceability program from Vericatch, we apply each of our products with a QR code that you can scan to instantly reveal everything there is to know: which boat it came from, where it was fished, when and exactly how it was caught. Your purchase from us supports sustainable practices and fair relations.
Packaging
As fishers, we see firsthand the impact that floating debris has on the waters. Whether it’s close to the coast or way offshore, plastic and other waste are unfortunately too commonly seen on the water. The fact that the seafood industry—something so dependent on healthy oceans and everything that lives in them—relies on single-use items like vacuum pack plastic feels so contradictory to us. We knew we had to search for more viable options for our products.
Our work with
grounded packaging
This led us to Grounded Packaging, a sustainability-focused packaging company. We reached out to them, searching for just the right resource to fit our needs. We landed on their home compostable vacuum-sealed bags made with a completely biodegradable material. But no one had ever taken their product to the -40ºC temperatures that we need to safely freeze our seafood. So, we spent nearly two years in quality-testing trials and seeking approval from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The wait was more than worth it. In Spring 2023, we’re excited to start the transition to Grounded Packaging, and are proud to be one of the first companies to debut these home compostable vacuum-sealed bags to North America.
We use materials that are easiest on our oceans, and keep researching as new technology comes out. Beyond making our own offerings the best they can be, we want our peers to see what’s possible. If everyone else follows suit, we’d hope to reduce—and eventually eliminate—single-use items from the fishing industry.
Our Fishing MEthods
Circle Hook and Longline
Longlining is a low-impact method for catching groundfish like halibut, lingcod, rockfish and sablefish. We bait stainless-steel hooks snapped onto a weighted line, and set these in specified areas on the seafloor to make sure we only catch the species we’re looking for.
Trap
Our prawns, shrimp and crab are all caught using traps. Depending on the fishery and area, traps can either be set on a longline or as a single pot, which we check once a day. To eliminate the risk of “ghost fishing gear”, all of our traps have an escape panel that disintegrates, so if it gets lost to the water, it won’t collect more creatures, and any that have already been caught can break free.
Surface Troll
For this hook and line method, we tow 12 to 14 barbless, unbaited hooks across the ocean surface to catch our albacore tuna. The specific jigs and speed target albacore so there’s almost no bycatch. In any given season, we typically only have three individual cases of bycatch at most, all of which we release alive.
Gang Troll
Gang trolling is a slow and selective hook and line method of harvesting lingcod and rockfish. We sink trolling wire with a heavy lead weight so that it hovers just off the seafloor. A short distance above the weight, a long "gang" line with floats is clipped on the wire, from which we troll 5 to 15 hooks. We have 100% retention of all of our catch, so there are no wasted fish.
Traceability
We’re sharing information that consumers need to make informed decisions based on their values. Our unparalleled traceability program answers all the questions that lead back to the who, what, where and when—you know the why.