Having grown up watching Jacque Cousteau, Henry Lovejoy developed a deep respect for the ocean and its inhabitants. Before starting EcoFish in 1999, Lovejoy and his wife, Lisa, owned a seafood exporting company. They traveled to Europe and Asia to visit seafood exchanges, which Lovejoy described as “massive rats’ nests of huge warehouses that literally, every night, fill up with seafood.”

But, many of the fish they were seeing seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. “We saw tuna the size of a football,” Lovejoy said. He and Lisa concluded that “man’s ability to remove seafood from the ocean far outstripped the ocean’s ability to replenish itself.” That’s when the couple decided: “We really should come up with a business solution for the problems we saw with the seafood industry.” 

EcoFish is a distributor of sustainably harvested and all natural seafood. They get fresh fish into the hands of top chefs and provide almost 2,500 grocery stores with frozen and canned retail brand seafood. EcoFish started by infiltrating natural food stores, like Whole Foods and local health stores. But, as the market for natural and organic food continued to expand, big retailers like Shaw’s Supermarket and Market Basket have started to carry EcoFish products. Locally, EcoFish products can be found at Philbrick’s Fresh Market and Shaw’s. 

“It’s unbelievable how far the market has evolved,” Lovejoy said. He was on his way to a natural products trade show in Baltimore when The Wire caught up with him. He estimates that the show will draw around 40,000 visitors and 3,000 vendors. Although the show is fairly dominated by food purveyors, there are also distributors of clothing, cleaning supplies, beauty products and other natural wares. “We used to go to them and it would be a select group of buyers. Now we’re seeing buyers from huge retailers, like Wal-Mart and Target,” Lovejoy said.

EcoFish offers a unique business model, especially for the seafood industry. In an effort to offer the most sustainable seafood, the Lovejoys formed an advisory board of representatives from top marine conservation organizations across the country. Long considered the enemy of commercial fishing, organizations like Environmental Defense and The Monterey Bay Aquarium have lent their environmental credentials to the Dover-based company. The advisory board oversees all EcoFish products and tracks which fisheries are sustainable and which ones should be avoided.

“There were already some really good marine conservation efforts underway, and we found that our business model would be really complimentary. That is what has made EcoFish so novel. A lot of those organizations were about educating consumers, but consumers didn’t have the ability to go find that seafood that was being recommended. We represent the missing link between the education and the consumer. Our whole business model is built around our partnership with the marine conservation organizations,” Lovejoy said.  

Their products come from all over the world. EcoFish sells salmon from Alaska and shrimp from Ecuador. Many of the products are found through the Marine Stewardship Council, a London-based nonprofit that provides certification for environmentally sound seafood. But Lovejoy prefers to source the seafood himself. “We want to meet the fishermen and go out on the boat or go to the farm. We buy it directly from them when we can. It’s the best way to know we’re getting the quality we demand,” he said.

Although commercial fishing provides livelihoods for many people, irresponsible methods have had a devastating effect on the marine environment. According to Lovejoy, one third of all marine life caught by commercial fishermen is considered “bycatch” and returned to the ocean dead. EcoFish products come from fisheries whose methods ensure zero bycatch. “We support fisheries that don’t destruct the environment,” Lovejoy said.

A major determinant of whether seafood is sustainable is the harvesting technology used to extract it from the ocean. “There are a number of different ways to catch the same fish,” Lovejoy said. One method is net dragging, which Lovejoy compared to harvesting corn with a bulldozer. You get the corn, but you destroy the environment needed for growing more corn. 

Farm-raised fish present a separate set of issues, the biggest of which is pollution. The use of chemicals, antibiotics and hormones is necessary to protect fish from disease when they are living in close proximity. These chemicals often slip into the ocean and affect other marine life. Another problem arises when genetically modified farm-raised fish escape into the wild. They interbreed with wild species, which decreases the genetic diversity of marine life. Biodiversity is the cornerstone of any healthy ecosystem.

Shrimp offer a perfect example of how destructive farm-raised seafood can be. Shrimp farming occurs along the shoreline in tropical waters, a prime habitat for mangrove swamps. The United Nations Environment Program estimates that a quarter of all mangrove destruction stems from shrimp farming, which uses antibiotics and pesticides to keep the shrimp healthy. According to Lovejoy, Americans eat more shrimp than any other seafood. 

Contamination is another important seafood issue. With the threat of mercury poisoning on the rise, more people are starting to question what chemicals are in their salmon, swordfish or tuna. EcoFish tests all its products for more than 200 industrial contaminants. They also created a Web site, www.seafoodsafe.com, which rates the contamination level of different fish populations and recommends them accordingly. 

Wild Alaskan salmon is the healthiest and most environmentally safe fish population right now, according to Lovejoy. At the opposite end of the quality spectrum is Chilean sea bass. “It’s the poster child of an over fished fishery,” Lovejoy said. But Alaskan salmon is abundant, low in contaminants, high in omega-threes and well managed. It’s also really expensive.  
All natural, sustainable seafood has the same markup price as other natural, organic proteins, Lovejoy said. He estimates that these products have a 20 percent premium over non-sustainable, non-natural products. But part of what you pay for is quality. EcoFish has a second advisory board made up of several celebrity chefs who help gauge the quality and taste of each product.

By purchasing from fishermen who use sustainable practices, EcoFish is reinforcing the viability of such operations. By ensuring a value-added market for its high quality products, EcoFish encourages commercial fishermen to abandon reckless methods and adopt more environmentally sound practices. This model only works if consumers demand more sustainable products.

For more information on EcoFish, visit www.ecofish.com.