Producer
St. Jude Tuna
Contact: Joseph and Joyce Malley
Address: 11628 se 48th st. Bellevue, WA, 98006
County: King
Phone: 425-223-7286
Website: https://www.tunatuna.com/
About Us
The Malleys are a family business based in Seattle. Joe Malley started out salmon trolling in Sitka, Alaska in 1978. From salmon trolling he moved into longlining, pursuing halibut, blackcod and Pacific cod around the Gulf of Alaska.
Presently Joe owns the 95-foot fishing vessel St. Jude, which trolls soley for Albacore tuna in the North and South Pacific.
Joe and his wife, Joyce, fished and lived aboard the St. Jude for 12 years until they started a family and decided to market their own catch.
Presently Joe owns the 95-foot fishing vessel St. Jude, which trolls soley for Albacore tuna in the North and South Pacific.
Joe and his wife, Joyce, fished and lived aboard the St. Jude for 12 years until they started a family and decided to market their own catch.
Practices
The St. Jude participates exclusively in the troll fishery for albacore. One beauty of this fishing method is that our impact on the ocean’s food chain is very targeted. I would estimate that our catch of other species while trolling for albacore averages about two fish per thousand albacore caught. None of the fish we catch is wasted, most provide a welcome change of diet to the crew.
In my personal experience in thousands of hours trolling, we never had a marine mammal encounter, we never killed a shark, we once gave a thrill ride to a three pound green turtle when he got tangled up with a jig line but he was released uninjured after we took a few pictures. We do occasionally hook seabirds. The birds are very light and they are easy to retrieve to the boat , we release them immediately and generally they show no ill effects.
When we use the phrase sustainable fishery, I feel we are perhaps overestimating our own understanding of how the ocean’s food chain functions. In the case of albacore, is a fishery sustainable if the target species (albacore) can support the harvest but another non target species in population decline is impacted? There may be some who feel that the service of providing food to an increasingly hungry world defends wasteful, unsupportable methods. I think it is an enormous mistake of pride to treat the ocean as though it exists for our needs.
In my personal experience in thousands of hours trolling, we never had a marine mammal encounter, we never killed a shark, we once gave a thrill ride to a three pound green turtle when he got tangled up with a jig line but he was released uninjured after we took a few pictures. We do occasionally hook seabirds. The birds are very light and they are easy to retrieve to the boat , we release them immediately and generally they show no ill effects.
When we use the phrase sustainable fishery, I feel we are perhaps overestimating our own understanding of how the ocean’s food chain functions. In the case of albacore, is a fishery sustainable if the target species (albacore) can support the harvest but another non target species in population decline is impacted? There may be some who feel that the service of providing food to an increasingly hungry world defends wasteful, unsupportable methods. I think it is an enormous mistake of pride to treat the ocean as though it exists for our needs.