Fish Lure

Commercially caught Great Lakes whitefish can be worth up to $3,500 per fish if they’re fully utilized.
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Winter fishing for whitefish off the ice.
Stock Photo

Commercially caught Great Lakes whitefish can be worth up to $3,500 per fish if they’re fully utilized, according to a new resource drive launched in September by the Chicago-based Conference of Great Lakes St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers.

The so-called 100% Whitefish Initiative is intended to demonstrate how an entire whitefish can be used for different purposes beyond just food. The effort builds on the success with cod in Iceland and with other species elsewhere around the globe.

For example, high-value byproducts such as skin and collagen can be processed into a variety of food and non-food products, raising the value of each fish to $3,500 from about $12. In 2020, whitefish accounted for nearly 90 percent of Michigan’s commercial fishing harvest. 

The Conference of Great Lakes St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers says it believes that a 100-percent fish strategy holds “tremendous promise” for the Great Lakes’ St. Lawrence region to drive greater economic returns, create jobs, and help develop rural economies.

Current uses for commercially caught whitefish, almost exclusively filets for human consumption, capture about 40 percent of the full potential value of each fish, says David Naftzger, executive director of the conference. “Overall, the Great Lakes commercial fishery is a tremendously undervalued and underutilized asset,” he says.

In Iceland, multiple business sectors work to maximize the use of the entire Icelandic cod, increasing its usage rate from 40 percent to more than 90 percent.