It’s No Fish You’re Buying. It’s Men’s Lives.
Some experiences stay with you. Others quietly shape everything that comes after.
For Southstream Seafoods President Mark Soderstrom, summers spent unloading fishing boats at the Chatham Fish Pier on Cape Cod were among them. After college, Mark’s path eventually took him to a trading company. He spent four years there, gaining experience and meeting someone whose family had been in the fishing business in Iceland for generations.
That meeting mattered. It was the beginning of a partnership — and the beginning of Southstream.
From those early days, Mark had a clear belief about the seafood business: everything starts with the people at the source.
“We treated our vendors phenomenally well.”
Pay them fairly. Pay them on time. Build relationships that last. Mark often expresses that philosophy through an old saying from the fishing world:
“It’s not fish you’re buying. It’s men’s lives.”
A saying with its own history
The words have deep roots in Scotland’s fishing communities. Newhaven fishwives near Edinburgh were known to use the expression when dangerous weather made fishing particularly hazardous: the price reflected not simply the fish, but what fishermen had risked to bring it ashore.
Sir Walter Scott immortalised the idea in his 1816 novel The Antiquary. When a customer objects to the price of fish, Maggie defends the fishermen who have gone to sea in dangerous conditions:
“It’s no fish ye’re buying—it’s men’s lives.”
More than two centuries later, the words still capture something fundamental about Mark’s approach to Southstream. Respect for the people at the source goes hand in hand with respect for the product — where it comes from, how it’s produced and how it’s handled. And quality has a value.
“Our fish is not the cheapest and never will be the cheapest.”
As Mark says:
“It’s a value for what you’re getting.”
More than three decades after Southstream began, those principles remain remarkably simple:
Work with good people. Treat them well. Respect the product. Deliver something you’re proud to put in front of your customers.
That, perhaps, is the thread running all the way from a fish pier on Cape Cod to Southstream today.
