Our Sustainable Seafood: Diverse, Delicious, and Doing Well

Back in the early 2000s, when I was a young reporter covering ocean conservation, the outlook for seafood in the Santa Barbara Channel was rather grim. Rockfish and other telltale species were struggling, causing the government to create a network of no-fishing zones from Gaviota to the Channel Islands. That made already ornery fishermen angrier than usual and gave an especially salty war-zone vibe to the waterfront. 

It’s a brand-new world today. Though plenty still like to grumble — and there’s no shortage of challenges that make commercial fishing a tough career — the general sense is that these no-fishing zones are working. Fish species of all types are abundant throughout the Santa Barbara Channel, where a stunning array of edible seafoods can be responsibly harvested and enjoyed throughout the seasons. 

“That’s one of the fantastic things about the Santa Barbara Channel,” says Kim Selkoe, a marine scientist and co-founder of the community-supported fishery program Get Hooked. “Over 100 culinary species are landed at our port, so you can eat with the seasons and sample this great variety. That’s compared to other places in the country that just bring in one or two things.”

And it’s even true for the once-doomed rockfish. “They thought it would take 50 years to rebuild the rockfish stocks,” but it’s happening much quicker, Kim says. “It was an amazing good news story. Now the rockfish is underexploited. There are lots out there and not enough boats targeting it to make the most of the fishery.”

Though Kim was headed toward a life in academia after earning her doctorate in ecology, evolution, and marine biology, she’d started consulting with Santa Barbara chefs to help them make their seafood menus more sustainable, as understanding what’s properly harvested can be hard even for experts. That consulting work led to a job as the executive director of the Commercial Fisherman of Santa Barbara, where she still serves in a part-time role. From that experience — and with Victoria Voss, the daughter of well-known fisherman Chris Voss — Kim launched Get Hooked in 2018. 

The service delivers weekly packages of freshly caught and cleaned fish to more than 400 households from the Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Barbara to Ojai and even Los Angeles. Working with about 40 fishing boats in any given year — including the dozen who supply Get Hooked almost weekly, as well as some as far away as Moss Landing and San Diego — Kim’s team curates each order based on customer preferences. They also share updated information on the status of each fishery and publish multiple recipes for more than 30 of the species, from common ones like halibut and shrimp to more rare options like whelk and skate.

It’s really the best one-stop shop for supporting and appreciating the Santa Barbara Channel’s seafood scene. And despite the changing climate — which is negatively affecting some species, like urchin, though expanding the range of others, like bluefin — the future looks strong. 

“That’s the beauty of it: We should all be eating as much of it as we can, because it’s all really well managed,” Kim says. “There are a lot of abundant fisheries that are doing really well, either already very stable or on an upswing. All of the ecological indicators in the Santa Barbara Channel are that the coastal ecosystem is very healthy.”

For more information, visit gethookedseafood.com.