There was a time not so long ago that when a commercial fisherman caught the wrong fish, he had to throw it away.

Although fishermen hated to do that, they understood the rationale — to remove any incentive for catching protected species.

“One of the fishermen on my boat said it’s nuts that we can’t give those fish to the food bank,” said Tuck Donnelly, a former commercial boat captain.

From that prod, Donnelly created a Bainbridge-based charity that is now national in scope. The seafood products it provides have become one of the leading sources of food nationwide for the needy.

The numbers tell the story. Donnelly’s organization, now called Northwest Food Strategies, donated 70,000 pounds of food in 1993. Last year, the total was 2.5 million pounds, and the project is growing

From its Ericksen Avenue offices, NWFS coordinates the industry-wide effort.

“The seafood industry has chosen hunger as its cause,” Donnelly said. “This is giving them the means to work together. I don’t have to hit them over the head and convince them that this is a good idea — they’re driving it.”

Most of the product comes from Alaska waters. Donnelly said every major carrier from Alaska to Seattle is an NWFS partner, as are most of the major producers and processors.

The effort got a huge boost in 1999 when the giant Kraft Foods decided to make NWFS one of its charity projects.

“They approached us and said they wanted to provide the dollars to build infrastructure to expand,” Donnelly said. “We’re at the early stages of putting Kraft money into processing machinery at various plants. Their target is to distribute 30 million pounds of product per year.”

Proper machinery has become an issue because of the increasing variety of fish that NWFS makes into portioned, packaged products. Salmon and halibut are made into steaks and fillets. Pollock products go into fish sticks. And NWFS is working with some producers in Iowa on products to be made from carp.

“Worldwide, carp supplies more protein than beef,” Donnelly said. “But it hasn’t really caught on here, in part because of the name.

“The machinery from Kraft allows us to create a blanched, minced product, so you can make things like carp chili, which actually has a nice taste and texture.”

Bye bye, by-catch

Donnelly’s original concept, spurred by his crewman’s question, was to supply food banks with so-called “by-catch” — fish that are caught accidentally while commercial fishermen are trying for something else.

His initial obstacle was to change the strict regulations that required disposal.

“There was some fear that we were going to legitimize by-catch fishing and undermine resource management,” Donnelly said. “We had to convince the agencies that we could keep the (by-catch) fish out of the market.”

He succeeded, and in 1993, he donated the first box of seafood to Helpline House.

He knew that distribution was going to be the key, so he linked up with America’s Second Harvest out of Chicago, which links into 200 food banks nationwide.

Those food banks, in turn, provide food to 50,000 community agencies nationwide, which feed 30 million people. And by-catch now makes up only a small fraction of the total food, with the rest being straight industry donation.

Though NWFS keeps a relatively low profile on Bainbridge, it has achieved increasing nationwide visibility. A New York Times article led to a People Magazine article, which in turn led to Donnelly’s appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show in 1999.

Perhaps the ultimate honor came in 2000, when Donnelly was named a national Environmental Hero, which comes complete with a congratulatory letter from then-Vice President Al Gore.

“It went full circle,” Donnelly said. “The award was presented at a conference of the same federal agency that had so many doubts about us originally. It took a long time to establish our credibility.”