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“What we’ve done is set up a supply chain that lets the independent fisherman get on with it and [that] opens up the restaurant world to the products of the Arctic.” — Chris Colombo
WILD ARCTIC CHAR FROM BAFFIN ISLAND FOR FIRST FISH Winter harvest, when you’re an Inuit fisherman supplying fish to First Fish, means you travel more than 200 kilometres by snowmobile in –50C to a remote lake on Baffin Island in Nunavut. You drill down through ice up to eight feet thick to set a net. You gut and behead the fish before it freezes (no need for a freezer). Then, six days and several harvests later, you drive back home to Qikiqtarjuaq, a community of 525 people on Broughton Island, just off the southeast coast of Baffin, to load the fish onto a plane. In a proud Inuit community struggling with poverty, the fishermen are in the driver’s seat of their own sustainable fisheries development,
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making a decent living and using their traditional knowledge to catch wild Arctic char with the help of non-profit group First Fish, which assists in delivering the coveted fish to the southern market. First Fish was launched in 2017 by a group of Ontario-based social entrepreneurs in collaboration with Qikiqtarjuak fishermen. “What we’ve done is set up a supply chain that lets the independent fisherman get on with it and [that] opens up the restaurant world to the products of the Arctic,” says Chris Colombo, president of First Fish. “Everybody wins.” For now, Arctic char is mostly available in Toronto. The highly prized fish is “unbeatable…sashimiquality,” notes chef Wayne Morris, a co-owner of Boralia restaurant on Ossington Street.
Inuit fishermen from the community of Qikiqtarjuaq travel to remote lakes on Baffin Island in Nunavut to catch Arctic char. Their collaboration with the non-profit group First Fish makes it possible to deliver the highly coveted fish to southern markets in Canada.
Colombo is especially excited about the fall season and reports that there will be “delicious” sea-caught wild char, flown fresh to market, and a high-calcium fish stock made from filleting offcuts. Soon, the list at First Fish will include Arctic turbot and, eventually, shrimp, clams, mussels and whelks — wonderful wild seafood that benefits those who harvest it and those who dine on it. firstfish.ca