When you purchase Vital Choice Seafood you are not only helping yourself and your children to better health throughout life but you are also helping to support the wild salmon resource itself, along with all the branches of the ecosystem which are nourished by it. Some of these include wild grizzly bears, bald eagles, wolves, forests, and the coastal communities of responsible fisherfolk who sustainably manage it. It may seem like a contradiction, but to preserve the wild salmon you need to choose to purchase and consume sustainably harvested wild salmon instead of farmed salmon. Artificial fish farms spread to fulfill the growing demand for their fish and pose an increasing threat to the native wild populations. Be wise and choose VitalChoice, the "BeneFishAll" Choice.
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Wild salmon is nature's best source of the vitally important nutrients essential for optimal pregnancy, fetal development and life-long health. During pregnancy, omega-3 fatty acids contribute to the healthy development of the baby's eyes, brain and nervous system--if they are present in the mother's diet. There is also evidence that omega-3 fatty acids reduce the risk of premature and underweight births and the incidence of post-partum depression.It is important for pregnant and nursing mothers to keep up their store of omega-3 fatty acids, and leading health experts agree, wild salmon is a superior source of these vital nutrients.
Vital Choice is recommended by the country's leading authorities on maternal nutrition, including "America's Baby Doctor", Dr. William Sears.
The Naming of Vital Choice
The founders of Vital choice in USA named their company Vital Choice after learning of the profound importance of the nutrients in wild salmon for pregnant and nursing women and their babies. After all, they realised whatchoice could be more vitalthan one that may impact the lifelong health of a child? While omega-3 fatty acids are important to everyone, they decided to be especially committed to providing mums and mums-to-be with reliable access to the foods they need for a happy healthy pregnancy and optimally developed baby.
The Experts Agree
"Vital Choice is my preferred source for wild Alaskan salmon—a rich source of omega-3 fatty acids, particularly important for optimum brain and neurological system function. All Vital Choice salmon is naturally organic and free of antibiotics, growth hormones, and artificial coloring. " Dr. Northrup, Specialist in Women's Health
"When maternal blood is rich in oxygen and nutrients, the unborn child can thrive. But thousands of research studies document the consequences when maternal blood is deficient…." Andrew Stoll, MD, The Omega-3 Connection
For further information about the benefits for Mothers and their Children see our Health For Lifepage and our Link & Learn page.
Medical and nutrition experts from around the world promote the health benefits of eating salmon. Nearly every new diet book sold cites its benefits and The American Heart Association now recommends eating omega-3 rich fish at least twice weekly. Heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, obesity and mood disorders are just some of the adverse health conditions linked in clinical studies to the widespread deficiency of these essential nutrients. Vital Choice is proud to have won the endorsement of such highly regarded health advocates as Dr. Nicholas Perricone, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Joseph Mercola and others.
"Let food be your medicine" --Hippocrates
Vital Choice Wild Pacific Salmon is a pure and natural source of essential omega-3 fatty acids and powerful biological antioxidants. Each 100gram serving of our Alaskan sockeye contains a minimum of 1.2 grams of EPA & DHA, vital nutrients proven in clinical studies to promote optimal health and to prevent or ameliorate numerous adverse health conditions.
The Experts Speak
“Omega-3 fatty acids have so many biological roles because they are a primary element of health for virtually every cell and organ system in the body. Along with their partners, the omega-6 fatty acids, they keep our bodies in balance, modulating such basic physiological functions as inflammation, cell signaling, blood pressure, immune response, and the electrical excitability of heart and brain cells." Andrew Stoll, Faculty, Harvard Medical School
"By far, the best type of omega-3 fats are those found in fish. That's because the omega-3 in fish is high in two fatty acids crucial to human health, DHA and EPA. These two fatty acids are pivotal in preventing heart disease, cancer, and many other diseases. The human brain is also highly dependent on DHA, and maintaining high DHA levels can help deter depression, schizophrenia, memory loss, and Alzheimer's. Omega-3 is also very important for pregnant women and children, as researchers are now also linking inadequate intake of omega-3 to premature birth and low birth weight, and to hyperactivity in children." Joseph Mercola, D.O., founder/director, The Optimal Wellness Center
“My anti-aging patients often start out eating fish two to three times a week. When they see how quickly their skin improves, they are quick to increase their intake to five to seven fish meals a week." Nicholas Perricone, M.D., Author, The Wrinkle Cure, The Perricone Prescription, The Acne Cure
“Foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids can stop arrhythmia before it triggers sudden death from heart attacks. That makes fish such as salmon as potentially potent as any high tech heart drug and considerably cheaper to stock up on.” Dr. Alexander Leaf, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University
For detailed information on the myriad of Health Benefits, see our Health For Life page and our Link & Learn page.
The Alaskan salmon fishing industry is the chief economic force behind the preservation of wild salmon. But in recent years it has been devastated by competition from the world-wide proliferation of cheap environmentally destructive farmed salmon. As paradoxical as it may seem, to save wild salmon, you must actively choose it over farmed salmon products.
Driven and Determined
The salmon is a fish of legendary perseverance and strength, travelling upstream at the rate of 150 kilometres. a day, leaping three metres past a raging waterfall, and digging a knee-deep river bottom nest with nothing more than a battered tailfin. It is a breathtakingly adaptable fish, tailoring its colour, size, diet and even its life span to the endlessly varying streams, tributaries, lakes, rivers, tidal flats, estuaries, straits, bays and oceans in which it swims. If salmon is a symbol of all that is wild in the Pacific Northwest, then the fittest symbol of all may be one particular species of salmon, the sockeye. While it's one of the smaller salmons, it's also among the most numerous, occurring in mind-boggling numbers without the help of hatcheries.
Wizard in the Water
The salmon is a remarkable fish. Like a magician, it transforms itself from the smooth-skinned fingerling of the freshwater stream into the silver-sided, hard-scaled adult of the saltwater sea. Then, in an astonishing biological reversal, it changes back, adapting once again to its riparian roots. As sockeye head upstream to their spawning grounds, they undergo a more dramatic skin color change than any other salmon, from blue-backed silver to a nearly solid scarlet and develop an elongated hook-like "snout". Armed with an acute sense of smell, guided perhaps by the electrical currents of the earth's magnetic field, the salmon migrates thousands of kilometres to the ocean, yet returns to spawn and in the same tree-shaded stream where it was born. This feat is only performed once, for it dies there, spawned and spent after its heroic journey battling the currents and fighting the rapids. Instinct dictates that it ends its life exactly where it began it.
Help Wild Salmon Survive the onslaught of Fish Farms - Choose "Free Range Fish"
As individuals we can help keep these amazing wild creatures flourishing in their natural habitats and help prevent them from being overrun by market competing farmed salmon by choosing to purchase wild salmon instead of their inferior farmed counterparts. Or perhaps we could call them counterfeits! Think of the difference between caged chickens and their free range relations. Which one do you think is happier and healthier? So it is with the caged and wild salmon. As we have just discussed, these fish in their normal wild life accomplish an incredible feat when they journey back to their natal streams to spawn. To deprive them of this instinctive behaviour can only have detrimental effects if you understand the intricate web in nature that strives to maintain a delicate balance when left unhindered and untampered with. Man's interference by trying to improve on nature and the pollution that results, has already reaped devastating consequences not only for the other inhabitants that we share this planet with but ultimately for ourseles since we are all interdependant and this is our mutual home. In looking after others, of both our own species and others we are in fact looking after oursleves. By purchasing sustainably harvested wild salmon such as Vital ChoiceWild SockeyeSalmon we voice our support for wild fish and all that the decision entails.
The salmon is a fish that symbolizes bounty, fertility, and the circle of life. Freshly harvested, it sustains entire food chains and powers major industries. In decay, it nourishes trees, plants, soils even its own young. It is a bellwether of ecological balance, and a harbinger of environmental decline. Until now, the salmon has survived over two million years of floods, droughts, disease, volcanic eruptions and ice ages. But, in little more than a century, overfishing, water diversion, habitat destruction and global climate change have driven the wild salmon almost to the point of extinction. When you buy sustainably harvested Vital Choice Seafood you not only help support the health and survival of the wild salmon but also the rest of the food chain which depends on them. If you trace the full circle of life that would also include you.
LIFE :"Tis true, there's magic in the web of it..." - William Shakespeare 1564 - 1616
Salmon Undercurrents
The salmon close the intricate link between forest and ocean. The Pacific coastline is teaming with sea lions, porpoises and seals and orcas, humpbacks and grey whales all feed in these rich coastal waters.The salmon feed in these waters too and when they are ready to reproduce they swim up the coastal freshwater streams where they were born with flashes of brilliant spawning colour. These salmon provide an energy rich food source to many inhabitants of the rainforest. Salmon are believed to supplement the diet of bears, adding layers of fat to see them through winter hibernation. Rainforest wolves also catch salmon, and research indicates that the nutrients provided increases the survival of young wolf pups when compared to their interior landlocked cousins. Salmon are the mainstay food source for the migrating bald eagles that visit each winter. Bald Eagles eat many fish, especially spawned salmon, which they pick up from stream-sides. Eagle numbers peak late December about 2 weeks after the peak of the salmon run. Great blue herons and trout eat them in the rivers - orcas at sea.The salmon also provide a critical flush of natural fertilizer to the forests by bringing elements such as nitrogen from the oceans to the land in their muscles, skin and bones which are left to decay after spawning.
Dead Salmon Still Migrate __________________
Intro: The millions of salmon that each year die after spawning in Alaska's lakes and rivers might seem to be wasted. But not so, scientists say. The rotting carcasses of salmon release nitrogen into the water that nourishes the next generation of salmon. And now, scientists have discovered that those same nutrients make their way to other important parts of the ecosystem as well. Doug Schneider has more, next on Arctic Science Journeys.
Story: On a cool summer day somewhere in Southeast Alaska, a marten prowls the shore looking for an easy meal. Its efforts are soon rewarded with a spawned-out pink salmon. Dragging the salmon up the bank and into the woods, the marten finds shelter under an upturned tree and begins feasting on its catch. It would appear the migration of this salmon has come to an end. But as ecologist Merav Ben-David of the University of Alaska Fairbanks has learned, the migration has in one sense only just begun.
Ben-David: "The rest of the carcass, what's left over, decomposes and the nitrogen is released into the soil. Plants pick that nitrogen up. And that's what I found. I found evidence of marine-derived nitrogen in plants up to 1,000 meters away from the stream, in sites of carnivore activity."
Nitrogen is an element essential to the growth of plants and animals. In research described recently in the journal Nature, Merav Ben-David traced the migration of nitrogen from decaying salmon into the ecosystem. She was at first surprised to find in plants and trees high levels of Nitrogen 15--a type of nitrogen more commonly found in ocean food webs. She didn't have to look far to see how it got there.
Ben-David: "You put in the river otters, the mink and the marten and suddenly you have a system of transporting the nutrients much further from the stream than otherwise."
With each salmon containing about 74 grams of nitrogen, the tens of millions of salmon that die each summer in Alaska leave behind a lot of nitrogen. Exactly how all that nitrogen gets used, and which plants and trees rely on it the most, is the subject of future research.
For now, Merav Ben-David says her research underscores the importance of both salmon and predators to a healthy ecosystem. Take either out of the picture, and the system begins to fall apart.
Outro: For Arctic Science Journeys, this is Doug Schneider, reporting from Fairbanks, Alaska.
A River Never Sleeps
To read: "The Sacred Link - Bears, Salmon and Ancient Forests "Click Here!
For further information about Environment and Sustainability issues see our True To Nature page and our Link & Learn page.
"Contributing positively to our fishers, their families and communities and the environment is so important to Vital Choice it is listed as a guiding principle of the company’s mission. We are strongly committed to helping promote a sustainable social, ecological, and economic model for the production and trade of wild harvest salmon." - Vital ChoiceSeafood
Choosing Sustainably Harvested Wild Salmon Supports those who Care about the Salmon
Since the early tribal Indians began their annual harvests over 3000 years ago, the return of salmon has played a major role in the survival of the people who call the Alaskan Coast home.....Salmon, talk of salmon, and salmon fishing boats are the most vivid impressions of a visit to Alaska in addition to the staggering beauty of the land. In almost every port, trollers, seiners, and gill-netters crowd the waterfronts in summer. You cannot sail in Alaskan waters anywhere during the summer without encountering fishermen. Commercial fishing is the number one private employer in the State. In the month of July, when fishing is at its peak, a large majority of the resident's are employed in the fisheries. Salmon and the businesses it supports are Alaska's mainstay and have been since the time of the First Nation tribes. Proper management of this renewable resource is a collective responsibility today so that generations to come can also benefit from this pure resource far into the future. But it has not always been so.....The fate of the Alaska salmon fishery was associated with the struggle of the people to gain control of their resource. Large-scale corporate enterprise used their political power to stop any controls on their over harvest activities.....In the late 90's fishermen were waking up to the reality that commodity prices were at historic lows and might never return to "normal" as farmed salmon poured on the global markets. Canneries were closing their doors, and fishermen began leaving the industry. When you purchase Vital Choice sustainably harvested wild salmon you are contributing to the health of the communties that help preserve this precious natural resource.
Economic, Social and Cultural Effects of the Restoration and Preservation of Salmon Stocks
Fishermen who care about harvesting fish sustainably are hard working folks who are very concerned about the health of the salmon resource, and who are appalled at how little consideration there historically has been for protecting that priceless resource.
Wild Salmon supports the livelihood of many families and nourishes many communities. As recently as 1988 there were an estimated 62,750 salmon-dependent jobs in the Pacific Northwest (Pacific Rivers Council, 1992) in the commercial, recreational and Tribal fisheries combined, all of which generated about $1.25 billion to the regional economy. When societal negligence allows this precious resource to be threatened by allowing fish farms to multiply thus polluting their habitat and pushing prices so low that people are thrown out of work, unemployment puts a greater strain on local public resources, and the tax base which supports local schools, libraries and public services shrivels. More important, these disruptions put strains on families which cause increased rates of family breakdown, which in turn leads to excessive drinking and the breakdown of the social fabric which holds communities together. Some once prosperous fishing communities have suffered unemployment rates in excess of 50%. Loss of salmon dollars from the economy cascades through the whole economy -- fishermen who cannot fish cannot buy fuel, gear or supplies; they cannot deliver food to markets; they cannot afford new purchases for the families; ultimately they can no longer afford to own homes and may have to leave the communities they grew up in merely to survive. Whole fishing dependent communities can and have spiraled downward into despair and decline.
When salmon are protected and restored, the reverse process results in an upward spiral toward greater prosperity. Families can make a living, buy local products, spend money on local merchants, afford decent educations for their kids, and in general remain productive members of a supportive community.
Thus salmon mean the economic and cultural support of local fishing-dependent communities and additional taxes to support local public services. For many people salmon fishing is much more than just a livelihood -- it is their way of life. Vital Choice only sells sustainably harvested wild seafood which makes a positive contribution to these communities.
Salmon Farms Pose Significant Threat To Salmon Fisheries
The growing popularity of farm-raised salmon has plunged the commercial fishing industry in the Pacific Northwest into a state of crisis, according to a new report by Stanford University researchers.
Writing in the October issue of ENVIRONMENT magazine, the research team found that, since the late 1980s, worldwide production of farm salmon has increased fivefold, while the market share of wild-caught salmon from Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state has steadily declined.
"Farm salmon represents one of the fastest-growing and most lucrative segments of the global aquaculture industry," said Josh Eagle, director of the Stanford Fisheries Policy Project and co-author of the ENVIRONMENT report. "In 1980, commercial fisheries produced more than 99 percent of salmon consumed worldwide. Today, they catch less than 40 percent."
The impact has been particularly devastating in Alaska, where 10 percent of the workforce is employed in some aspect of the salmon fishing industry, noted Rosamond L. Naylor, the Julie Wrigley Senior Fellow at Stanford's Center for Environmental Science and Policy (CESP) and lead author of the report.
"Wild salmon capture historically has played an important economic role by providing employment and incomes to a vast number of Native American and non-native communities along the coast," Naylor said. However, Alaska's share of the global salmon market declined from 40 to 50 percent in the early 1980s to less than 20 percent in 2000 - mainly because of competition from salmon farms in Chile, Norway, the United Kingdom and other countries, she said."
Caring for Coastal Waterways and Fishing Communities
Click Here! to read the statement of opposition of the United Fishermen of Alaska and the Alsaka Trollers Association against the proposed lifting of the moratorium on new salmon farm sites in British Columbia, Canada and what it means to them.
For further information about Economical and Sustainability issues see our True to Nature page and our Link & Learn page.
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