CSA-Style Seafood Deliveries Benefit Fish Lovers, the Ocean and the Fish
For Alan Lovewell, the ocean sustains, inspires and defines him. It’s in his blood. Growing up on Martha’s Vineyard, descended from a Cape Cod fishing family with great-great-grandparents who were whaling captains, he absorbed the maritime culture. He learned to swim, dive, surf, sail and fish—for both fun and work. He also heard and witnessed the stories. Not just romantic tales of the fish that got away and adventures at sea, but stories of real fishermen struggling to make a living with an increasingly threatened way of life, as narrated by friends and his father, who made his living as a journalist covering the area’s waterfront.
“Fishermen are adaptive individuals. They adapt to the weather and all sorts of things. But the ever-decreasing prices of product and increasing costs of fishing made every year more difficult,” he says, recalling how he watched friends going bust and being forced to turn to other careers.
But Alan Lovewell has navigated a sea change, just as his forefathers did. He’s bringing sustainable, local catch to customers up and down our local coast, and educating people along the way.
Alan swapped the Atlantic for the Pacific coast to attend UC Santa Cruz and became a student of marine policy almost two decades ago. His venue changed, but tales of the tide of a dwindling numbers of fishermen in beloved coastal fishing communities did not. While working on the Sea of Cortez he witnessed the impact of illegal fishing practices by international trawlers that were threatening the livelihood of fishermen and their communities—and the environment.
Returning to California to earn his Master’s in International Environmental Policy, Alan set out to make a difference. His mission: to create a more equitable market for fishermen and consumers, as a means to help sustain the local fishing culture while simultaneously reconnecting people to the ocean in a more meaningful and sustainable way. In 2012, with that goal in mind, he founded Real Good Fish as a community-supported fishery (CSF) in Moss Landing.
Drawing on the community-supported agriculture (CSA) model, Real Good Fish offers members across Silicon Valley and the Bay Area weekly shares of a wide variety of fresh and sustainable seafood direct from local fishermen. Working with the area’s fishermen and drawing from 32 different local species, Real Good Fish focuses on local seasonal bounty, delivering seafood to 1,500 members weekly.
The catch ranges from big and expensive species to small and inexpensive ones: from wild salmon, black cod, rockfish, squid and shrimp to rare finds like jack mackerel and more obscure species such as Pacific grenadier. With Real Good Fish’s help, the latter species has gone from being “trash fish” (an unintended by-catch) to being promoted as a popular, sustainably caught alternative to cod and other mild white fish.
Contrasting the CSF’s offerings with the seafood selection available in the glass case of a typical grocery store, Alan notes, “You are lucky to see five or six species in the store, maybe one of which is U.S. wild and they are rarely local these days.” Underscoring the importance of the situation, he says: “If 90% of our seafood is imported, people have no relationship to the ocean.”
The catch of the week depends on many factors, including weather, season, regulation, market pricing and fishing vessel maintenance schedules. Alan wants people to think about that and connect to the harbors. “When it’s storming out, I want people to say ‘Probably no one’s fishing and we won’t get any local fish tomorrow.’ That’s an important connection.”
To deepen connections, Real Good Fish’s weekly Waterfront Newsletter to customers prominently features the details of who caught the fish, how it was caught, when and where. For example, the April newsletter highlighted rock crab claws from fisherman Greg Young. Customers learned the catch method: in a crab pot. When and where it was landed: 3/31 in Bodega Bay. When and where it was cooked: 4/1 in Bodega Bay. Then, when and where it was packaged: 4/2 in Watsonville. Delivery date: 4/3. Suggested eat or freeze by date: 4/5. “You can’t get much fresher unless you catch it yourself,” Alan says.
You can trace the catch to the personal stories and see portraits of some 25 of the fishermen behind Real Good Fish (ranging from Carl Azevedo “Bocci Boy” to Christian Zajac) on the website. They hail from ports up and down the coast: Monterey, Santa Cruz, Half Moon Bay and the San Francisco Bay. And people can take an even deeper dive into their fishing methods and explore the pros and cons of trolling, trap, purse seine, rod & reel, long-lining, gill nets and bottom trawling on the website. In partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program, Real Good Fish also provides the ratings of fish to create awareness about sustainability.
One imperative is to make unfamiliar fish less intimidating by educating people about the species and providing tips on techniques and flavorful preparations. Recipes are curated from top local chefs, including their own chef and fisherman Kevin Butler. Accompanying the rock crab claws were recipes for Crab with Herbed Avocado Sauce and Cioppino. Not a fan or allergic to crab? Not to worry, alternate selections abound. The April newsletter also featured Smoked Cod and California Calamari Sausage.
Testimonials from customers praise the service for turning their weekly delivery days into “fish nights” and allowing them to discover and enjoy many varieties of fish that they otherwise never would have thought to buy or try. There are 92 designated pickup locations, most located conveniently across the Bay Area with pickup days that vary by geography, but are generally Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.
“The main thing is we want people to think of seafood, and food in general, as a conduit to healthy living, healthy communities and healthy oceans,” Alan says. “As consumers, we need to have a stake in the resource and to be stewards for our kids and for what ocean health means to them. This is a connection to our community, to the ocean, to our food and each other for the greater health of all.”
