Shameless Plug: Fish tale

Port Clyde Fresh Catch has one of those stories that makes me proud to be a Mainer. 

The “traditional” fishing model has been to go catch as much as you possibly can.  It follows that we now have certain species in steep decline, decimated groundfish habitat, and direct (sometimes ugly) competition between individual fishermen. 

The government, meanwhile, in an attempt to rein in the overfishing, has been piling on restrictions and limitations. 

Oh – also prices are down, and costs are higher than ever. 

(Depressed profits, tighter regulations, and fish populations in varying degrees of collapse:  hat trick!)

Faced with the seemingly inevitable demise of their livelihood, a few families down the peninsula – some of which have been fishing for a couple hundred years – formed a co-op.  All for one and one for all.  This is pretty radical; Mainers as a rule tend toward going it alone. 

The co-op sells directly to the consumer (local restaurants, at farmers’ markets and through CSF shares – like a CSA, except for fisheries).  The catch goes from the boat to the customer, often the very same day, via a co-op-owned processing facility. 

These days the Port Clyde fishermen are catching fewer fish but actually making more money, because they’re matching their take to customer demand and they’ve cut out the distribution middlemen.

The members are also doing some pretty innovative work with marine scientists and conservation organizations to develop gear and methods that go easier on the habitat and the fish themselves – for example, if you want to catch haddock but not cod, you design a very specific sort of net and you use it in a very specific way.  They also give certain species a periodic break. 

We’ve just finished up our second season as Port Clyde Fresh Catch CSF subscribers.  A full share gets us two or three or five pounds of fillets – hake, pollock, monkfish, flounder, cod, haddock, sole; whatever they’ve landed – every week for the duration of the season.

                

Is it the cheapest fish available?  No.  But it’s hands down the best.  And that eating-local-preserving-traditions-supporting-sustainability warm fuzzy feeling is, as they say, priceless.