Future of Fish

Who We Are | Swimming Upstream

  • Ed Backus : Portland, Oregon

    Vice president of community ecosystem services at Ecotrust, and founder of the $6 million North Pacific Fisheries Trust

  • Dune Lankard : Cordova, Alaska

    Native Athabaskan Eyak fisherman from the Alaskan Copper River Delta and founder of Copper River Wild Salmon

  • Steve Vilnit : Annapolis, MD

    Director of Fisheries Marketing at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, a state-run program that helps watermen increase the value of their harvest through grassroots marketing efforts.

  • Jerry Knecht : Bali, Indonesia

    Founder and president of North Atlantic, Inc., a primary processor, importer, and distributor of fresh and frozen seafood, and sustainability pioneer

  • Richard Boot : Fort Collins, Colorado

    Founder and president of FishChoice Inc., an online matching service for buyers and suppliers of sustainable fish

  • Jared Auerbach : Boston, MA

    Owner and CEO of Red’s Best, an innovative technology and logistics platform that builds efficiency and traceability in order to support small fishing fleets and ensure maximum freshness.

  • Barton Seaver : Washington, DC

    Chef, speaker, National Geographic Fellow, and author of the sustainable seafood cookbook For Cod and Country

  • Shannon McDiarmid : San Francisco, CA

    President and Director of Safety & Sustainability at Royal Hawaiian Seafood, a premiere Bay Area seafood distributor focused on high-caliber and responsibly produced fresh and live seafood.

  • Sean & Michael Dimin : Brooklyn, NY

    Founders of Sea to Table, a business that overnights fresh fish caught by small-scale sustainable fishermen around the world to top restaurants

  • Miguel Jorge : Washington, DC

    Director of the National Geographic Society’s Ocean Initiative working with an array of partners to restore ocean health and productivity

  • Village Fishmonger : New York, NY

    Founders of Village Fishmonger are in the process of launching a seafood retail business selling locally sourced sustainable seafood a la carte or by seasonal subscription.

  • Kristofor Lofgren : Portland, Oregon

    Ecopreneur and founder of the nation’s first MSC certified sustainable sushi restaurant, Bamboo Sushi

  • Thomas Kraft : Seattle, Washington

    Founder of Norpac Fisheries Export, a successful processing and distribution business dedicated to accountability, responsibility, traceability & sustainability

  • Robert Terry : Palo Alto, CA / Newport, OR

    Founder and CTO of Smart Catch LLC, a startup that‘s developing cost-effective, innovative trawl-net fishing gear that will help fishermen increase efficiency and reduce by-catch.

Richard Boot

Richard is founder and president of FishChoice Inc., which creates tools to assist commercial seafood buyers in procuring sustainable seafood products. In late 2009, the Fort Collins, Colorado-based FishChoice launched an online matching service for buyers and suppliers of sustainable fish.

What were your first experiences with seafood?
I grew up on the California coast and had always been in love with the ocean. When I was living in Steamboat Springs, I worked as an executive chef and store manager for Charthouse Corporation. We were buying and selling thousands of pounds of seafood every week. I’ll never forget when tilapia hit the scene. Every night I’d have 10 to 15 people want to try it.

Looking back at those experiences makes me realize that when I was buying and selling the seafood, I knew very little about its origins. I didn’t know much about the fishermen who were catching it, or the impacts the farms were having. Now we expect our chefs to know so much more.

How did you start FishChoice?
I’d been working with FishWise and we saw a huge disconnect between conservation efforts and the people who were buying and selling seafood. We created a program to help retailers understand and profit from the environmental work going on. One of the big questions the buyers we worked with kept asking was, “Where do I get this product?” They needed quick, simple answers that fit with their business plans.

FishChoice came about as a streamlined service to help buyers find companies that supplied seafood products approved by the environmental community. We work with environmental groups that make recommendations, whether it’s a rating or a certification, and then find suppliers that meet the criteria. Then we deliver that information to buyers across the country via our online database.

What is FishChoice’s definition of sustainable seafood?
Each environmental organization has a similar but slightly different definition of sustainability. At FishChoice it’s important not to be defining sustainability ourselves. We aim to be a conduit for accurate and efficient information.

We’re working on an educational platform that lets buyers learn about purchases being made from an aggregated environmental perspective. We’ve partnered with a lot of different organizations to present the information on a species basis rather than an organizational one.

How has FishChoice been going?
Since launching, the number of registered users and the site usage has gone up. In the beginning we explained how important it was for suppliers to be involved in the environmental community. Now they’re coming to us saying, “Look what we’re doing differently. Help us get in front of the buyers that want us.” We’re seeing an increase in demand from both sides.

What do you envision FishChoice’s role in the Future of Fish project as well as in the more general future of fish?
FishChoice is a platform to connect people. We can help investors see where the markets are for a given product, that fish that were caught or farmed in a certain way, and we can help the fishermen and farmers know about investment possibilities. When changes happen on the water and a company improves its practices, FishChoice is an excellent way of connecting that company with buyers.