“Every fisherman you talk to would have a story that could easily be turned into a movie or book,” says Alan Lovewell, co-founder of Local Catch Monterey Bay. “They’ve all had their scary encounters. They’ve all had that huge fish get away. They’ve all lost friends at sea, and they’ve all struggled.”
Lovewell, who grew up on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, started the Community Supported Fishery (CSF) to bring people closer to the fish they eat in a world where 90 percent of seafood is imported, and many local fishers make just enough money to scrape by.
SANTA CRUZ WEEKLY: Are you more of a fisherman or a businessman?
ALAN LOVEWELL: Businessman. But I come at it from fishing and working in policy. Starting Local Catch was a way for me to address some of the issues and the trends I was seeing. Fishing is on a six percent decline, and what we’re seeing is the greying of the fleet. We have all these fishermen, but they’re all about to retire. They’re all in their fifties, sixties. And when they retire, no one’s coming up the ranks to take on their job and their responsibilities and their crucial role in terms of our food system.
Reminds me of what farm activists say about the old farm generation retiring…
It’s the exact [same] thing. The CSA movement started in the eighties in New England, and the first CSF wasn’t until 2007. You’ve got this 27-year gap between what the agricultural movement did and the fisheries. The reason for that is fishers are for the most part solitary individuals who like to work hard and do it on their own. They’re out on the ocean and working alone on their boats. And when they come to shore, the last thing they want to do is get together with businessmen to talk about business planning.
What’s your favorite book about the ocean?
A book called Four Fish. It’s not an exciting book. It’s about our dependence on seafood and what it means. As a society, we really desire four different fish: salmon, tuna, sea bass and cod. So, his argument is that’s not sustainable for a lot of different reasons. We can’t just demand four fish in our society. We really need to broaden our horizons. We should be eating what’s in season. We should be eating small forage fish that other cultures really enjoy and that we have for some reason failed to integrate into our culinary endeavors.
