Brian Hagenbuch

Contributing Editor reporting from Seattle, USA

Brian Hagenbuch spent a decade in South America, where he was a journalist for Reuters and Time Out in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. He now lives in Seattle and works as a freelance writer and translator, as well as a commercial fisherman in Bristol Bay. 

Published on
June 8, 2017

Despite living in the heart of red meat country, consumers in the Midwest United States are embracing a sustainable seafood campaign at Hy-Vee grocery stores, a chain with more than 240 employee-owned supermarkets throughout the Midwestern United States. 

Speaking at a session on business models that support small-scale fishing on Wednesday, 7 June at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington, Brett Bremser, Hy-Vee’s executive

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Published on
June 7, 2017

The Seafood Stewardship Index is set to begin work on a new two-year project that will benchmark the world’s largest seafood companies against the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

Bas Geerts, a lead at the Seafood Stewardship Index, said the benchmarking will be in the methodology phase for the next year, with reports expected to be released in the second half of 2019.

“The index will consist not

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Published on
June 6, 2017

Diverse funders discussed ways to draw capital into the seafood industry in ways that promote sustainability, highlighting a need for smaller-scale investments that tend to perpetuate sustainable fishing practices.

Speaking at a plenary session on Tuesday, 6 June at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., Hoyt Peckham, president of SmartFish Group, an enterprise that incentivizes sustainable artisanal fishing in Mexico, said

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Published on
June 6, 2017

Major growth in aquaculture – also known as the “blue revolution” – will depend heavily on a paradigm shift from competition to cooperation, a panel of industry experts asserted on Monday, 5 June at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

Pre-competitive collaboration was the buzz phrase at an afternoon plenary that featured talks by Avrim Lazar of the Global Salmon Initiative (GSI) and Jason Clay, senior

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Published on
May 17, 2017

Bristol Bay, Alaska is primed for yet another above-average run this season in the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon fishery, but a portion of the industry’s energy this season may again be redirected to a fight the Pebble Mine, a massive copper, silver and gold mine proposed for location at the headwaters of Bristol Bay.

The administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama had stalled permits for the extraction site under a

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Published on
May 15, 2017

What started out as a thesis project to build bridges in the seafood industry in Iceland is quickly spreading across the United States.

The Iceland Ocean Cluster — an organization designed to bring together disparate industry players — grew out of founder and CEO Thor Sigfusson’s Ph.D. dissertation, completed in 2011, on the effectiveness of clusters.

Sigfusson launched his project with a simple act: He gathered people in a

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Published on
May 1, 2017

What started as a simple search for a cedar plank upon which to cook salmon has grown into a business that sold more than 250,000 planks last year. Now Fire & Flavor co-owner Davis Knox calls business for his specialty cedar planks “booming.”

Knox, an Athens, Georgia, U.S.A. native, founded Fire & Flavor in 2003 with his wife Gena, who got the idea for the business after she read about the Native American technique of

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Published on
April 24, 2017

The business competition Fish 2.0, now in its third installment, is evolving into a nexus of communication that is helping fight fragmentation in the seafood industry, according to its founding director Monica Jain. 

Held every two years after an inaugural 2013 edition, Fish 2.0 is an open call for entrepreneurs and business owners in the seafood industry to propose their projects and get feedback from investors and industry professionals,

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Published on
March 27, 2017

Crab fisheries up and down Alaska’s coast are registering higher than average prices, a trend spurred by strong demand on lower quotas.

Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) slashed the total allowable catch (TAC) for Bering Sea snow crab by 50 percent for 2016/17 from the previous season to 21.57 million pounds, the lowest in 45 years.

But, in a consoling development for fisherman, snow crab ex-vessel prices are between USD

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Published on
March 20, 2017

After nearly two decades off the market, a small, tasty scallop that was once a symbol of Puget Sound’s thriving and diverse seafood sector is making a comeback, albeit in small numbers.

The man behind the resurgence of the wild-caught pink scallop, Nick Jones, who raises shellfish and does land farming from his Jones Family Farms on Lopez Island, is hoping those small numbers will be a big marketing draw.

“We’re calling them the rarest

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