San Diego’s fishing industry is attracting more customers

People who have been in San Diego for several decades will remember the familiar sight of dozens of tuna boats anchored along the Embarcadero.

But by the 1980s, the industry had moved to the calmer waters of the western Pacific, and the tuna boats had disappeared.

There is still a fishing industry in San Diego, and some fishermen here still catch tuna. But today it has become more diverse.

Courtesy of the Maritime Museum of San Diego

“We have between 150 and 200 boats in San Diego Harbor. We harvest about 50 species of fish, and we don’t have a really organized way to market them,” said Pete Halmay, president of the San Diego Fishermen’s Action Group, part of the San Diego Fishermen’s Marketing Association. “to the public.”

Most recently, the association began working with the San Diego Regional Center for Policy and Innovation to secure a $300,000 grant from the USDA to boost the local fishing industry.

Halmay said the association has a two-part plan. The first part is regulation “so when we have demand for certain fish, we are able to meet it,” he said. “There needs to be a constant supply. So, if we have 30 or 40 fishermen and we make a list of what’s available…we can give it to restaurants, and they can order it.”

Another part of the plan is to market the fish to the nearly 1,000 restaurants in the county that currently get their fish from restaurant supply companies — fish that isn’t typically caught locally.

Part of the appeal of locally caught seafood is that you know it was caught under California’s strict sustainability standards and you know where it came from, Halmay said. In other words, Halmay’s message was: buy local.

“Let’s buy it from our own guys, keep the experience here, and 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.