I'm a 'fish sommelier' at a Hawaii resort who gets paid to recommend dishes to guests. Here's how I landed the job.

• Ryan Houser, 28, is a fish sommelier at Mina's Fish House at the Four Seasons Resort in O'ahu.
• He goes table to table each night to show guests fresh fish options and give recommendations.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ryan Hauser, a fish sommelier in Hawaii, about his job. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Much like a wine sommelier is tasked with pairing the best-suited wine to a corresponding dish, as a fish sommelier, my job is to match the right fish with the right person. In the simplest of terms, I'm a matchmaker.

I work five nights a week at Mina's Fish House at The Four Seasons Resort O'ahu at Ko Olina. I go from table to table, talking to guests about their seafood preferences and making recommendations based on a variety of factors such as texture, flavor, and preparation.

By guiding guests through all we have to offer, I'm often able to help them break out of their culinary comfort zones by recommending a type of fish they haven't tried before or a different style of preparation.

With all the amazing local fish Hawaii has available, we strive to offer fresh, locally-caught fish such as opakapaka, onaga, opah, kampachi, and swordfish whenever we can and typically never serve frozen fish.

When I arrive for my shift, the first thing I do is check and see what fish came in the night before or that very morning and determine the quantities we have on hand so we don't oversell anything. Then I gather ice and work on putting together my daily fish display, which I carry with me to showcase the daily catch and some of our popular offerings.

On a typical night, we serve approximately 250 to 300 dishes

Before dinner service begins, I attend a staff briefing, where we learn about any VIPs dining with us that evening, how many guests we're expecting, and what standards we may need to improve upon for that particular day, as well as review any allergens and available specialty cocktail and wine selections.

Then it's time to grab my display and begin my night's work.

Talking to people comes easy to me, and having spent my life around fish, it's a topic I'm passionate about, so I do my best to interact with as many guests as possible.

When I approach guests, one of the first questions I ask is if they're looking for family-style or individual dining, which determines whether I'll be suggesting whole or half-fish options versus smaller fish and market fish steaks.

From there we'll discuss their preferences and what they might be looking for in a fish.

Flavor and texture are key factors in the selection process for each guest

If a guest is interested in something firm and hearty, I might suggest swordfish, which has a steaklike quality to it along with a nice oil content that allows it to retain moisture pretty well.

Alternatively, if they're seeking something delicate and flaky with a medium texture and a nice moisture content, I might recommend opakapaka, which is a Hawaiian pink snapper.

Salmon is also a very beautiful fish with a nice medium texture and amazing moisture content when cooked correctly. The issue many people have with salmon is at one point or another they've had it served overcooked, which makes it dry and bitter at times, so now they avoid it. But when salmon is cooked to perfection like it is in our kitchen, it's delicious.

Personally, if I had to pick one fish to eat for the rest of my life, it'd be the scorpion fish called nohu, which has a similar texture to lobster.

I've been fishing and learning about fish since I was a kid

I actually wasn't always such a big fan of fish — as a 4-year-old living in Japan I was once served an oddly cooked fish that looked and tasted gross and it turned me off of fish for a while.

When I was around 5 or 6, I learned to fish alongside my dad and grandfather in Japan.

A few years later, my family moved back to Mililani, Hawaii, and when I was 12, a neighborhood kid's dad invited me to go spearfishing. I went and from that moment on, I was hooked.

To me, spearfishing is the most selective form of fishing because you choose exactly what you're going to harvest — I really enjoy the conscious aspect of it.

Since that time I've spent thousands of hours spearfishing, diving, and learning about all types of fish

I've learned everything from the origins of different fish to the best conditions to catch them to what they eat, which can affect how they taste.

Throughout high school, I worked at a retail fishing store called Hana Pa'a and after college, I did everything from auto-parts sales to construction, plumbing, and being a pool technician.

Later, I went into a series of hospitality roles ranging from being a Japanese-speaking recreational host at a local Disney property to working as a car valet.

In 2018, I was about to become a supervisor at the valet company where I worked when I got a call from my longtime friend, Jared Chang, who said he had the perfect job for me: replacing him at Mina's, where he was the original fish sommelier after the position was created by the restaurant's chef, Michael Mina.

Like most people, I'd never heard of a fish sommelier, but the more he told me about it, the more interested I became, so I took the job

These days, plenty of people have heard of a wine sommelier, and there are all sorts of schools and accreditations for the job, but being a fish sommelier is a relatively new thing, and my experience is limited to Chef Mina's restaurants.

While I certainly don't claim to know every type of fish in the world, I definitely know way more about them than the average person — and I love my job because I get to use that knowledge every single day and share it with others.