Ten years ago, Reid Ten Kley was selling wild salmon from his family's fishery in Alaska and shipping it to upscale grocery stores in New York City. It worked, but it didn't feel right. "We had 56 orders for New York one day. We said this is ridiculous. We're a city of a million people. There's got to be enough people here who can eat all this fish."

“This month, hundreds of city dwellers will troop to cold-storage warehouses in Southeast Portland and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, armed with coolers and tote bags, to claim fish harvested in a place where the lumberjack look is worn without irony. The Iliamna Fish Company bases its hopes on these self-motivated consumers, in a variation on the now familiar community supported agriculture (CSA) model.”

“One longtime supporter is David Shea, co-owner and chef at Applewood in Brooklyn, N.Y. “We don't use frozen anything and would never think of salmon because it is not local and it is a cliche. And then we met Christopher,” Shea says. “Philosophically, he is just like all of the growers we use. He catches, freezes, ships it himself. The fish is sashimi quality.”

“Now, members of Dancing Roots Farm — Sirkin's CSA — also can preorder Alaskan sockeye salmon from Bristol Bay. Carley Shaut, 31, of Parkrose jumped at the chance. “Shari sent out an e-mail a month ahead of time — it was a pretty easy decision for us to make.” The offer was 20-plus pounds of sockeye — filleted, flash-frozen and vacuum packed — from a sustainable Bristol Bay fishery.”

For close to a century, Mr. Nicolson’s big extended family has fished each summer in Bristol Bay, home to the largest red-salmon fishery on the planet. His grandmother, who is Athabascan, was born in the region. His brother used to joke that the family were like fish themselves, drawn by instinct to the mouth of the granite-colored Kvichak River, year after year.

“It’s from here — where there are rusted canning vessels, broken boardwalks and literal human skulls poking out of the ground — that a group of fishermen are helping to change what it means to catch fish in Bristol Bay.”