Translating water science into everyday culinary decisions — with clarity, care, and confidence.
Most Americans know fish is healthy.
Most have also heard it might not be safe.
What almost no one knows is how to hold those two ideas at the same time.
People aren’t reckless about fish.
They’re disoriented — caught between health advice, environmental warnings, and lived experience without translation.
That gap is where Water to Table begins.
This work isn’t a list of safe versus unsafe fish, and it isn’t regulatory advice. It’s a translation layer — helping people make sense of what they’ve heard without fear, denial, or nostalgia blindness.
If this tension feels familiar, you’re exactly who this work is for.
Safer Catch is working toward a shared, public framework that connects water science to everyday food decisions — consistently, clearly, and across communities.
We’re aligning advisory data, contaminant testing, and lived culinary practice into tools people can trust, use, and return to over time.
We synthesize advisories, contaminant testing, and species biology into guidance that reflects how people actually eat.
Science only works if people can use it. We design tools for kitchens, homes, schools, and clinics.
Four simple actions that turn water data into everyday decisions — from lake to kitchen to table.
Check current advisories for your water, species, and audience.
Choose species, sizes, and portions that fit the season and the people you’re feeding.
Trim skin and fatty tissue where contaminants concentrate.
Use technique, flavor, and story to transform safety into celebration.
A concise, two-page brief outlining the problem, the framework, what exists today, and how Safer Catch scales chef-led public-health translation across communities.
Designed for external review · Public-interest framing · Non-technical
Across agencies, states, and borders, the science exists — but the guidance fractures before it reaches the kitchen.
Fish safety guidance lives across agencies, formats, and assumptions. Each source is technically correct. Together, they are unusable.
Same water. Same fish.
Different rules, thresholds, and warnings — depending on where you look.
“Tell the truth clearly, and people will act wisely.”
Each partnership, pilot, and contribution helps turn fragmented advisories into shared understanding.
Support Safer CatchThis is what we translate.
This list represents only the visible surface. Beneath it sit hundreds of PDFs, maps, tables, and jurisdiction‑specific rules. Safer Catch exists to translate across them — not replace them.
A long-form essay on how advisories fractured, how Michigan rebuilt trust through translation, and why chefs belong in public health conversations.
Read the Essay (PDF)Safer Catch is a public-interest initiative translating water science into everyday food decisions — clearly, calmly, and without fear.
Contributions support:
This work is intentionally practical. Support doesn’t fund overhead or abstraction — it funds clarity, access, and trust at the point where water becomes food.
Your support helps keep this work independent, accessible, and grounded in public trust.
Water to Table: The Safer Catch Initiative is the narrative foundation of this work.