Fishing to feed the poor.(The Goodness Of America)(Tuck Donnelly)

Tuck Donnelly was fishing for pollock on a boat off the coast of Alaska in 1991 when he became upset about the large quantities of fish he was forced to return to the sea. Because of limits imposed by governmental regulations, he was forced to throw any salmon "bycatch" (fish caught unintentionally) overboard.

"I was out there on the deck throwing these big, perfectly good fish--15-pound Chinook Salmon--over the rail," explained Donnelly. "It's nuts that we're throwing all of this fish away," he thought to himself.

Donnelly conceived an idea to find a way to use the fish "bycatch" to feed hungry people. Putting his plan into effect, however, was another matter. Donnelly spent many hours meeting with officials from the National Marine Fisheries Service, members of the commercial fishing industry, and representatives of environmental lobbying groups. He traveled from Alaska to the nation's capital selling his idea. He had a difficult time convincing all of these groups that his proposed plan to donate fish to food banks would not undermine the current fishing regulations.

After two years of battling government red tape, Donnelly obtained a special permit allowing him to keep the salmon and other fish he caught out of season and donate them to food banks. Leaving his job as a fisherman, Donnelly began lining up companies that would store, package, and deliver the fish at lower than prevailing rates to participating food banks. Donnelly made an arrangement with America's Second Harvest, the nation's largest food-bank network, to distribute the frozen fish steaks.

Donnelly originally launched his project under the name Terra Marine, but in 1994 he changed the name to Northwest Food Strategies. A July 1999 article in Seafood Star reported: "This year, 2 million pounds of seafood donations have been pledged to NFS--a significant increase over the ...