Captain Steve on Wise Traditions Podcast: The Last Wild Protein
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Our founder, Captain Steve Kurian, sat down with Kendall Nelson for the Weston A. Price Foundation's Wise Traditions podcast and spoke for an hour on Bristol Bay, wild food, and why he has spent more than twenty summers going back.
It is a good listen if you have ever wondered what is actually behind the fillet in your freezer.
Steve talks about the summer in 2002 that redirected his whole career: a college kid who left a state job to go fish, living out of a plywood cabin on the beach, working by the tides and the daylight instead of a clock. He came home at the end of it with a cooler of fillets for family and friends and that, more or less, is where the business started.
From there the conversation gets into the parts we do not always have room in quick content:
- What a day on the water really looks like: the tides, a short window to fish, a couple of hours of sleep in between, weather that can turn serious in a hurry.
- Why he is proud of the science behind this fishery: biologists counting the run in real time and opening or closing the fishing so that enough salmon always make it upriver to spawn.
- What separates a fish that was bled, chilled, and frozen within a day of coming aboard from one that was not.
- And why he will happily argue the wild-versus-farmed question with anyone who wants to have it.
He also gets into the part that has nothing to do with commerce: the bears and eagles and everything else in that watershed that eats because the salmon come back, the neighbors in Naknek who still eat much the way their grandparents did, and the long effort to keep a hard-rock mine out of the headwaters. Captain Steve's companies have put roughly $250,000 toward that effort over the past several years through 1% for the Planet, directed to the Bristol Bay chapter of Trout Unlimited.
Kendall closes by asking what one thing a person could do for their health. His answer is about as Steve as it gets: eat wild — fish, game, greens, whatever you can get — and get closer to where your food comes from.
Wise Traditions, Episode 577 — "The Last Wild Protein," released May 4, 2026.
Listen to the podcast:
Read to the full episode transcript on the Weston A. Price Foundation site
When you are ready to put some in your freezer, the 2026 catch is available now. Grab a case of wild sockeye salmon here and we will ship it straight to your door.