People who have been around San Diego for several decades will remember the familiar sight of scores of tuna boats docked along the Embarcadero.
But, by the 1980s, the industry had moved to the calmer waters of the western Pacific, and the tuna boats disappeared.
There is still a fishing industry in San Diego, and some fishermen here still catch tuna. But today it’s much more diverse.
“We got 150 to 200 boats in San Diego Harbor. We harvest about 50 species of fish, and we don’t have a really organized way of marketing it to the public," said Pete Halmay, the president of the San Diego Fishermen's Working Group, part of the San Diego Fishermen's Marketing Association.
Recently, the association started working with the San Diego Regional Policy and Innovation Center to secure a $300,000 grant from the U.S Department of Agriculture to boost the local fishing industry.
Halmay said the association had a two-part plan. The first part is getting organized “so, when we have a demand for some fish, that we’re able to fulfill it," he said. "Steady supply is needed. So, if we’ve got 30 or 40 fishermen and we make a list of what’s available ... we can put it out to the restaurants, and they can order."
The other part of the plan is to market the fish to the thousand or so restaurants in the county that currently get their fish from restaurant-supply companies — fish that usually aren't locally caught.
Halmay said part of the appeal of locally caught seafood was that you know it was caught under strict California sustainability standards and you know where it came from. In other words, Halmay's message was: Buy local.
“Let’s buy it from our guys, keep the expertise here, keep the money here in San Diego," he said.
Think of it like farm to table, except here it’s ocean to table — your table, or soon, one at a restaurant near you.
