What is a Shelf Break?

Nutrient upwellings at the edge of the continental shelf bring life to the ocean. That edge is the Shelf Break; it inspires us to find the very best for our curated global collection of tinned seafood.

Seafood is one of our oldest sources of food. Eating tinned fish is a tasty and delightful way to get nature’s most important nutrients, vitamins, and minerals.

A love for Seafood born out of the recognition of Omega-3s as important to the human diet. Early in his career, Sam Wiley started in the Omega-3 industry selling supplements made from Wild Alaskan Fish Oil. A thought always occurred to him – he used to love eating canned sardines as a kid. And tuna fish sandwiches were a sack lunch staple as a child, still enjoyed in adulthood. While taking fish oil to fill those missing gaps in the diet is great (and research shows is needed unless you eat seafood literally every day), what about just eating more fish and seafood? Seafood has a lot of other scarce nutrients not typically found in land-based diets (even the recently trendy carnivore diet).

But canned seafood has often been looked down upon – thought to be lower quality, a staple stored in the dusty reaches of the household pantry, usually eaten only by the less fortunate who find themselves needing a bland, inexpensive protein to mix with easy Mac or minute rice.

But travel to other countries and ‘Oh My!’.

Take most grocery stores in Europe – Why is the canned fish section is full of interesting selections of many different types of canned seafood when Americans have rows and rows of the same basic tuna? It’s changing here to be sure, but the fact remains that most American grocery stores are full of bland, twice cooked tuna.

Supplements are great (and important) but we’d all be a little better off if we ate more seafood. Seafood is a great source of all sorts of important nutrient scarce in many land-based diets: long chain EPA & DHA Omega-3 fatty acids, choline,

US has lost the production of canned seafood – We still eat large amounts of canned seafood, but gone are the days of the California Monterrey Bay’s Cannery Row and the East coast canned seafood There are still a few microcanneries in the US. And a few large canneries that operate in Alaska to support the Salmon runs.

Even domestic US canned seafood production is in places like American Samoa in the South Pacific – a very long way away from the continental US or even Alaska & Hawaii.

Against that backdrop we give you Shelf Break – a curated global collection of seafood. Our intent is to find interesting canned seafood made both at home in the US and abroad (often commissioning unique offerings) and bring this often eclectic set of seafood products to your shelf (and plate).

To your good health and enjoyment,

Sam Wiley