Future of Fish

Who We Are | Swimming Upstream

  • Richard Boot : Fort Collins, Colorado

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

  • 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

  • Barton Seaver : Washington, DC

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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Thomas Kraft : Seattle, Washington

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

  • 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

  • Kristofor Lofgren : Portland, Oregon

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

Jerry Knecht

Jerry is founder and president of both North Atlantic, Inc. and P.T. Bali Seafood International. He directs overseas operations, manages Asian production, and leads the Lesser Sunda Sustainable Fisheries Initiative. North Atlantic, Inc., based on the Commercial Fish Pier in Portland, Maine, is a primary processor, importer, and distributor of both fresh and frozen seafood. They specialize in providing sustainable products for chain supermarkets and restaurants, and wholesale distributors.

Driving sustainability and improving fishers’ livelihoods
Under Jerry’s leadership, NAI has expanded to include owning and operating its own processing plant in Benoa, Indonesia. There it is helping rationalize the supply chain throughout the Indonesian archipelago. NAI works directly with fisheries in Indonesia and has developed an integrated plan that simultaneously improves livelihoods for local fishers, makes stock assessments of undocumented fisheries possible, creates local mini-processing plants that drive economic growth in the community, and establishes a reliable supply of sustainable fish to Jerry’s customers in North America.

Stabilizing the supply chain through transparency
The current lack of transparency and pricing information leads to instability and risk for businesses, and perpetuates an environment of fraud and misinformation in which it’s impossible to identify reliably where most fish comes from, let alone whether it meets sustainable criteria. Jerry is changing that. Working with retailers and local fishers on the East Coast, Jerry is introducing the concept of “cost-plus,” in which all players in the supply chain disclose their costs and profit margins with one another. Why is this necessary? Fish is the last mystery protein in the supermarket. While the margins and value chains for beef, chicken, pork and other commodity proteins are widely known, the seafood industry remains opaque. In part, this is due to the fact that the average fish is touched by 36 entities—from fishermen, to landing docks, to processors, brokers, distributors, and final sellers—before it winds up on your plate. Jerry’s introduction of advance pricing for fish leads to higher quality product, less waste and better practices on the water.

Potential impact
The possibility of creating new standards of information and, thus, eliminating the default of “mystery fish,” will allow a new marketplace to grow in which fish provenance is tracked and discussed by buyers ,and consumers can make informed choices based on fish with complete and accurate information. Fish information is now a luxury; Jerry can help us make it a default standard. The goal is to take his influence in creating a stable, information-rich supply chain and expand it substantially.