Fish are our business and when it comes to taking care of them the whole building at Salty’s gets involved. Our keen purchasing department orders our fish from the finest local suppliers, like Taylor Shellfish Farms. We take great care to be sure that we are buying the freshest fish in its prime season, 52 weeks a year. When it arrives it is inspected then accepted into our kitchens where our chefs go to great lengths to tend to the fish with loving care, storing, cutting and preparing it perfectly. Then we cook it for you just the way you like it using the most delicious and exciting recipes so that you can enjoy seafood at its unbeatable best. So many parts of the restaurant get involved in taking care of our fish.

There is another part of our building that has an effect on sea life that you probably wouldn’t guess, and that is our over-water deck. Our banquet space at our Alki location has a generous sea-level deck for guests to enjoy. Structures such as this perched over the nearshore are in sensitive areas for the aquatic environment; shoreline structures affect the shoreline ecology. There is an ecosystem working hard right below our building. It is a cycle of substrate → producers → and converters. The substrate is the sand, rock, mud and water, and it is the foundation providing the growth of the → producers such as algae, eelgrass and phytoplankton which provides the food for the → converters such as fishes, aquatic invertebrates and bacteria. Around and around it goes. (See the chart Simplified Conceptual Model of the Puget Sound Nearshore Ecosystem.)

This cycle is effected and enhanced by light. “Changes to light affect the behavior of salmon. Salmon fry have been seen avoiding travel under docks and piers during daylight hours. As they move away from the shore, they become subject to attack by larger predators that typically stay in deeper waters. The amount of light also affects salmon feeding, with less light, they eat less.” (See Shoreline Master Program at http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/sea/shorelines/smp/Handbook/index.html.)

So many parts of the restaurant get involved in taking care of our fish.

So to be eco-friendly to our marine environment, our deck has been transformed into a light-giving, life-giving transparent grated deck (with solid walkways) which allows the light to reach the water. If there is light there is growth of vegetation; if there is vegetation there will be small fishes; if there are small fishes there will be bigger fish to eat them; and voila we have a sustainable ecosystem. We know that you, our guests, are sensitive to your environment too so we have added a sustaining bonus for you as well, the glass fence has been lowered to the same height as our Redondo and Columbia locations so our guests can now feel a part of the beautiful view, the marine waters and the happy sustained sea life below. Voila!