Longtime seafood sustainability advocate and fishing industry mainstay Zeke Grader passed away on 7 September in San Francisco at the age of 68 after battling pancreatic cancer.
Grader, the son of a Fort Bragg fish broker and loyal resident of Sausalito, Cali., served 40 years as the executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, a role he retired from this summer. He had also served as executive director for the Institute for Fisheries Resources since 1992.
One of Grader’s many crowning accomplishments includes his role in building an alliance between California environmentalists and blue-collar fishermen.
“There are a lot of guys who would say that there wouldn’t have been any small boat commercial salmon fishermen for 20 years at least if not for Zeke Grader,” said Tim Sloane, who assumed the role as head of the Federation of Fishermen’s Associations in Grader’s steed, to the Marin Independent Journal. “He built bridges between fishermen, policy folks, environmentalists and the scientific community. His ability to unite people around preserving the fisheries was unmatched.”
Grader had an early zeal for seafood sustainability, especially when it came to protecting wild salmon: “I think it was not so much a conscious decision of wanting to be a conservationist or an environmentalist; it was simply an economic necessity,” Grader explained in a past interview with the Seafood Choices Alliance. “It was pretty clear to myself and a number of others that it didn’t matter what government or others did. If you didn’t have fish, you didn’t have fishing.”
Grader’s efforts to protect the world’s waters were nothing short of renowned.
“Zeke was for decades a tireless fish warrior,” said William Stelle Jr., West Coast regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, to The Press Democrat. “Tough as nails, blunt spoken and full of life, he leaves us better, stronger and in a changed place because of his accomplishments.”
Before he fell ill, Grader had been working to form “a worldwide organization for fisheries, to fight for clean water and against pollution,” said his wife of 40 years, Lois Prentice, a Sausalito attorney, to the Marin Independent Journal. “As a result, it would have a lot of clout and get a lot more done,” she added.
After graduating from Sonoma State University with a degree in political science in 1969, Grader went on to earn a law degree from the University of San Francisco; he was also a Marine Corps veteran. He is survived by his wife, his mother, Geraldine Grader of Fort Bragg, sisters Allison Grader of Reston, Virginia, and Lindsay Grader of Sacramento, and brother, Samuel Grader of Fort Bragg.
