Greetings,

I’m Randy Hartnell, founder of Vital Choice Seafood. My relationship with wild salmon first began more than 20 years ago when I went to Alaska and landed a summer job on a fishing boat to finance my way through Berkeley. By the time I finished school several years later, these summer sojourns had become much more than a job. Fishing in Alaska had become a part of me. Rather than continuing on to grad school as planned, I bought a boat and spent the next twenty summers riding twenty-foot tides and becoming intimately familiar with the wild sockeye salmon. Every season on the water was a satisfying immersion in nature accompanied by long days, hard work, close friends, plentiful salmon and fruitful wages for the labor of harvesting them.

But a few years ago things began to change. Large scale industrial fish farming began to carve its way into the traditional markets for our salmon, and it has had a devastating effect. Thousands of independent fishermen, who had for decades relied upon the annual salmon harvest to support their families, are now unable to do so. Alaskan salmon are an abundant renewable resource and considered one of the finest natural foods left on earth, yet markets for the fish have crashed and the value of boats and other related assets have followed. A healthy, productive and cherished way of life for thousands has been decimated. Out of desperation, coastal fishing communities, stripped of their revenue base, have begun courting the tourism, oil and mining industries for economic relief. The tragedy of it all is that the primary culprit is a nutritionally inferior, environmentally destructive imposter: the factory-farmed salmon.

I came to realize that the best hope for resurrecting our industry was in educating consumers about the profound differences between wild salmon and its distant farmed-raised cousin. In 2000, after returning from Alaska with empty pockets, I was invited to join a proactive fisherman friend on trips he was making to grocery stores around the country. Over the following months, in places like Nashville, Boulder and Kalamazoo we served Alaskan sockeye salmon to hundreds of people and told our story to any who would listen. We told them of the far-reaching consequences of their choice in salmon—to their own well being, to the environment, to the wild salmon resource and to the dying industry that has been its strongest political advocate. We were pleased to find an extremely receptive audience. It was during this time that Vital Choice Seafood was conceived.

Because wild salmon is such a fundamentally good product, the Vital Choice formula is simple: bring benefit to both our customers and producers by procuring the very best fish and delivering them in prime condition at a fair price. As a result of my many years in the Alaskan salmon industry and the many close relationships I enjoy with fishers and processors, I know when, where, how and from whom to procure the best fish. I’m confident you will find no purveyor more passionate about his product or more committed to your satisfaction.

I hope you will come to view me as your reliable connection to one of the healthiest naturally organic foods remaining on earth. When you choose sustainably harvested wild salmon, you are choosing much more than just a fine meal. You are promoting your health, the health of coastal fishing communities, the environment and the precious wild salmon it sustains. In short, you really are making a Vital Choice.

Best regards,

Randy Hartnell
Founder
Vital Choice Seafood