Family Line: Sena Wheeler draws from her family's fishing past to build Sena Sea's future
By Cheryl Baehr
Sena Wheeler’s official line is that she’s the third generation of her family in the fishing business. Actually, her roots run much deeper – and are not as they might appear.
“We say I’m the third generation because of my grandfather, who immigrated from Norway and got hooked up here with a boat,” Wheeler says. “Really, the joke is that it’s probably more like 300 generations. What’s interesting, though, is that people automatically assume it’s passed down from my dad’s side, but actually, it’s three generations of fishing wives. The industry has been passed down through the sons-in-law. When I think about it, I often think of my grandmother who was home with four kids nine months out of the year while my grandfather fished from Alaska to Mexico.”
If anyone was destined to go into the seafood business, it was Wheeler. Growing up in Washington state near Seattle, she was immersed in her town’s fishing culture and spent her high school and college summers on her dad’s boat fishing the waters of Alaska. However, just like her fishing lineage suggests, it wasn’t only her father’s influence that helped guide her path. Her mom owned a health food store and instilled in Wheeler the importance of healthful eating; it was a natural complement to the wholesome, cream-of-the-crop seafood from her dad that filled the family’s table.
It was natural that Wheeler would draw from her parents’ experiences as she set out on her own career path. In college, she studied nutrition and food science, and received her Master’s degree in food science with an emphasis in fish. Dubbed “the Fish Queen” by her classmates, Wheeler concentrated her research on correlating the way fish is handled on boats with its taste, texture and other sensory indicators of quality, something she would come back to when it would be time to found Sena Sea.
Wheeler did not take a direct path to launching her own seafood company, and instead worked as a food science researcher for a national company for eight years before leaving to raise her children. She did not leave her passion for food science behind at the lab, however, and instead transferred that energy into thinking about how much on-board handling impacts fish quality. As she and her husband, Rich, often discussed, there were significant differences in how catches are treated from boat to boat, but once the fish hit the docks and were sold to commercial processors, everything got mixed together, diluting the efforts of those who adhered to higher standards. It gave them pause.
“I had this background in onboard handling techniques, so we were aware that fisherman could do things in a way and be really quality-oriented or not,” Wheeler says. “Fishing, for instance salmon, is independent; it’s one or two guys on small boat, and there is a big discrepancy in how fish is handled on those boats. I’d been whispering this in Rich’s ear, so we invested in refrigerated tanks and not letting fish flop on the boat to bring in the highest quality seafood, but we were doing that and selling it, and it was going into same pot with everyone else’s.”
The Wheelers knew they had the best quality product around, but they could not shake their dismay at the fact that, in the end, that didn’t matter. There was no way to differentiate themselves from less quality-minded boats, which meant that the end consumer was not benefiting from their efforts. They knew that, if they wanted to get quality product into people’s hands, they would have to find another way.
The Wheelers started Sena Sea in 2014 as way to guarantee that consumers could enjoy the same high-quality seafood that was regularly on their own dinner table. By selling directly to their customers, rather than to large processors, the Wheelers can guarantee their product’s traceability – the Sena Sea fish people purchase has their brand name on it, so the people buying it can rest assured they are reaping the benefits of their enhanced quality efforts.
“When processors are big, they can’t differentiate, because everything gets processed together,” Wheeler explains. “As much as they would love to pull out the good stuff, they are really only as good as their worst fish. Because we put our name on every piece of fish we sell, people know how it is caught and handled. We know we have a special product and are willing to go the extra mile. We know there are people out there who care about that, and we want it to be available to them.”
Now in its sixth fishing season, Sena Sea has made a name for itself as a top purveyor of premium quality fish. Using a flash freezing process on the boat, then wrapping their catch in parchment paper before vacuum sealing it, the Wheelers are confident that Sena Sea’s salmon, black cod and halibut are up to the same high standards that they, themselves, serve at home.
“Our goal is to bring the high-quality fish we are spoiled with and accustomed to all year round to people that may have never had a chance to have it,” Wheeler says. “We’re lucky; we get it fresh off the boat – we feel good that we are giving people that same quality.”
In 2016, the Wheelers took their commitment to getting the best seafood to their customers one step further, purchasing the small processing facility they had been using since founding Sena Sea. With the support of the local fisherman and community at large, they are proud that their facility, 60° North Seafoods, is not only offering their company a place to do business, but that they are also servicing like-minded fisherman. To the Wheelers, they are not competitors, but are fellow business owners who are doing their part to raise the overall quality of seafood available to consumers with methods that preserve their precious resources – something Wheeler has dedicated her life to doing.
“For me, this really feels full-circle,” Wheeler says. “Sometimes, when you just follow your gut and instincts, you don’t know why, but it leads you where you are supposed to go. I feel good about what we are doing. To that nutrition side of me, this is the best thing you can eat on the planet, and the food science of how to bring that premium quality feeds the science side of me. I couldn’t imagine we’d be here, but I couldn’t imagine anything we’d rather be doing.”