Seafood’s wise man

Credit: C Restaurant

As the founding chef of Ocean Wise, a Vancouver Aquarium program aimed at reducing reliance on seafood from questionable sources, chef Robert Clark is not only inspiring change in the Vancouver dining industry, but is spurring a sustainability movement with high hopes.

Growing up on the Gaspé Peninsula, Clark developed an appreciation for the quality – as well as the fallibility – of fresh fish while harvesting the salmon-laden banks of the York River with his father. “Fish were always important to the old man,” Clark notes. “You never took more than you needed.”

Clark has risen to the top of the West Coast seafood game, as the executive chef of Vancouver’s heralded C Restaurant, but his passion and awareness for sustainability have never wavered.

And Clark isn’t concerned that the trend could be a flash in the pan. “Eventually, if things go the way they are going, the only seafood that will be available will be sustainable seafood, because all the foods that aren’t sustainable won’t be there. So the very meaning of the movement in itself guarantees sustainability.”