The Zadras started their own business 11 years ago. They market salmon under the name Wild by Nature. They spend the winters in Colorado Springs marketing the product on the Front Range, but Dennis spends fully eight months of the year in Alaska. He fishes by day and processes the fish on the boat the following evening. Seafood that is flash frozen fresh right on the boat offers a high level of quality and convenience for customers back in Colorado, he says.

I asked him about what it means to use the term “sustainably fished.” He explained to me that he and other fishermen are limited to a certain number of hours a week they can fish. There are literally hundreds of channels in the local watershed for the salmon. However, a sonar counter is positioned in the main channel to collect information on fish populations. Historical data is used to determine how many fish need to go up the main channel to insure future runs. Based on that, limits are set, which can later be relaxed if further readings warrant it. “A lot of science goes into it,” he says. “There’s fishermen who will catch the last fish and retrofit their boats to go fish for something else, the old rape and pillage mentality. But most of the fishermen who are left in this business do it because they like to fish, and they want to sustain it.”

Dennis reports that the Alaskan fishing industry is thriving, due in part to more consumer awareness. Country-of-origin labeling laws, enacted on all seafood sold at retail in 2004, require retailers to label where their seafood comes from, but even more importantly, whether it is wild or farmed, and if artificial color is added. “I have seen prices higher than ever before in 18 years of fishing,” he says.

At one time, the Zadras sold their catch to Whole Foods supermarkets. Dennis says the seafood managers loved the product. But as the company grew, they lost that market to what he calls the “larger corporate distribution scheme,” an issue Whole Foods has been criticized for by author Michael Pollan and others. Even after the sales relationship ended, his photos and story were still on display at Whole Foods stores, Dennis says.

“The consumer tends to like the idea that suppliers are a small family-run business with a USA product,” he says. Because of what he calls “the Wal-Mart mentality,” however, Dennis says he has had to “find smaller markets on the Front Range that don’t have stores scattered all over the country.”

It’s a challenge, but he’s pleased with how things are going. Though the hey-day of fishing back when he started might well be over for good, prices are recovering after bottoming out in the mid-1990s.