Why We're Matching Donations for a Game That Turns Waste Into Wonder

I want to tell you about an Alaskan I've come to admire for her entrepreneurial spirit, her tip-to-tail reverence for wild salmon, and for the sweet way she’s worked to share that knowledge with the next generation of salmon stewards. Her name is Sara Erickson, and she’s been building a homegrown project that I think deserves a much bigger spotlight.

Sara is the creator of Blue Salmon: 100% Fish, an educational board game designed to teach young people about wild salmon’s abundance and versatility — not just as a food, but as a multifaceted resource. Players move wild salmon through its entire lifecycle and beyond, discovering along the way how skins become leather, oil becomes skincare, frames become fertilizer. The game recasts the idea of waste as an opportunity to use more of the fish.

“It’s fun, competitive, and designed so that by the end of the game kids naturally start saying ‘That’s fish gold, not fish waste,’” Sara explained this summer in Homer, Alaska, as a group of WAC teammates and I gathered around a table for our first look at Blue Salmon: 100% Fish. Gameplay is lively: players sell fish parts at the market, weather environmental curveballs and everyday fishing realities, and race to use as much of the salmon as they can.

Sara has already run the game at AlaSkins Discovery kids’ camps on the Kenai Peninsula, alongside river walks, fish-skin art, and hands-on examples of how every part of the salmon can become something useful — food, leather, oil, fertilizer, and more. Her next step is getting printed copies of the game, along with simple lesson plans, into classrooms in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District — and, she hopes, into fishing communities well beyond Alaska.

Even at this early stage, the game is already sparking young stewards and inventors. One camper decided he wanted to turn fish oil into Alaska candles or lanterns. “That kind of spark is exactly why I made the game,” Sara said. “It made me so excited.”

To help extend the reach of Blue Salmon: 100% Fish, every donation made to AlasSkins Discovery until October 31st will be matched dollar-for-dollar by Wild Alaskan Company, up to a total of $5,000. Those funds will help turn the Blue Salmon: 100% Fish prototype into a finished game, paying for the final print run, building teacher kits, and the work of getting the game and its companion lesson plans into more Alaskan classrooms.

If you’d like to contribute, please donate here: AlaSkins Discovery Donation Link. Gifts go to AlaSkins Discovery, the nonprofit behind the game and camps, and are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. Every dollar that goes toward Blue Salmon: 100% Fish helps put the idea of using every part of the fish into the hands of the next generation of salmon stewards.

Live Wild,

Monica

Pictured above: Sara, pictured on the left, proudly holds a prototype of Blue Salmon: 100% Fish. Plus, a couple scenes of gameplay around the kitchen table.