Terry Shaff was a beloved and long-serving board member at SeaShare, President and CEO of the seafood company UniSea, and a former chairman of the Pacific Seafood Processors Association. When Terry passed away suddenly in late 2014, the seafood industry and community came together to recognize Terry’s leadership, his generosity, and his commitment to SeaShare’s mission to improve nutrition for the people served by food banks and feeding centers.

Terry’s peers and friends have honored his memory through the establishment of the Terry Shaff Memorial Fund. Through this fund SeaShare has developed a new project to send more donated seafood to western Alaska. We are obtaining cold storage equipment and developing distribution networks that will send frozen seafood to hub villages up and down the western coast of Alaska, and then out to remote villages. Seafood has dietary and cultural significance for western Alaskans, and yet many people do not have regular access to it.

We recently sent our first freezer container to Bristol Bay, filled with over 8,400 pounds of seafood for distribution in Dillingham and surrounding villages. Additional locations will be added later this year, and our goal is to set up cold storage equipment and distribution networks in at least four hub villages. This work would not be possible without the commitment and generosity of our partners, including the Dillingham City Harbor, Bristol Bay Native Association, Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation, the Food Bank of Alaska, Lynden, and generous seafood donors.

For over 20 years, SeaShare has worked with the seafood industry to donate high quality seafood to help feed hungry Americans. The Terry Shaff Memorial Fund is enabling more regular access to seafood and more efficient delivery in remote areas of western Alaska. We think Terry would be proud of this project, and we are so thankful to everyone who has supported this work in his honor.