Report: Northwest 'seafood guru' Jon Rowley dead at 74

Veteran Seattle restaurant and food consultant Jon Rowley has died at 74 years old, according to a Seattle Times report.

Restaurant leaders and enthusiasts call Rowley a "seafood guru" and credit him as "the grandfather of the Copper River craze."

According to The Seattle Times, he died at his Vashon Island home surrounded by loved ones on Tuesday.

KIRO 7 spoke with Rowley earlier this year when Copper River salmon arrived in Seattle.Back in the 1980s no one had heard of Copper River salmon. n fact, the fish was so undervalued, it was being canned or frozen and exported to Japan, where it sold for so little many fishermen were throwing in the towel.

“The fish was canned so it got retorted. They didn’t have to take care of their fish and the handling the fishery was just not very good,” he said.

He was looking for something special for a handful of Seattle restaurants including Ray’s Boathouse. And he figured if they could offer the first and the best king salmon of the season, it could be something special.

Rowley had learned of the then virtually unknown Copper River from a friend who owned the old Port Chatham cannery. Rowley loved the big, fatty canned salmon, jerky, and other products – and the owner told him where it came from.

So he traveled to Alaska, where he found the boats weren’t up to snuff. His first challenge was convincing the fishermen they needed to upgrade.

“Their boats were small and their decks weren’t set up to do things right. Initially, they told me they couldn’t do it. And then when they got close to the season they said ‘yeah, we’d like to try this,'” Rowley recounted.

They did, quickly catching and then packing up a single box and shipping it to Seattle and the four restaurants without much fanfare.

But as soon as they served it, it was clear they had a hit on their hands.

MyNorthwest contributed to this story.

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