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Ask / answer questions
May 5, 2012 | 12 Responses | Article under Forum | by admin
Ask questions and get answers! Also, be sure to look here for information on your weekly shares.
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My family loves seafood and I’d love to join, but the pricing makes no sense to me. $324 for 18 pounds of seafood works out to about $18/lb. The local fishermen sell fish, live crabs, mussels etc at the farmers market for a fraction of that price. I guess I’m missing something. Can you justify these prices?
Thx
David
Hi David,
Thanks for your question about pricing. First of all, the shares are not measured by pounds, but rather by the number of people it will feed. Therefore, when you signup for a weekly single share, you will get enough seafood to feed 2-3 people. This means that when the share is a fillet of fish, you’ll get 1.25 to 2 pounds, but when it’s live crab, you’ll get 7-8 lbs.
In terms of justifying the price…We just launched the pilot season, and for the first week, Backyard Bowls pickup subscribers got 1.5 lbs of black cod and Goodland Kitchen pickup subscribers got 1.25 lbs of king salmon. The poundage of the share was determined based on the retail price of the fish on the day that I ordered it. The retail price of black cod was $19.95/lb. So, by signing up with Community Seafood, my subscribers received a $2.93 discount on their share. Consequently, the retail price of king salmon (which is a higher value fishery) was $24.95/lb. Therefore, my Goodland Kitchen subscribers got 1.25 lbs, and saved $4.19. (If you’re the kind of person who frequents the Saturday Fishermen’s market and other Farmer’s Markets where local seafood is sold, then I applaud you! This program caters to people who want to eat sustainable seafood and support their local fishing community without doing the leg work. I think buying directly from the fishermen is always the best option!)
Another good thing to keep in mind is that one of the main goals of this CSF is to cut out unnecessary middle men that drive up the price of seafood every time it changes hands (i.e. fishermen to buyer to processor to distributor to market to customer). By doing this, we’re able to transfer the cost of your seafood directly to the fishermen who caught it, thereby accurately reflecting the value of the work that he or she does as well as supporting our local community! I hope this helps answer your questions. Please feel free to post again if you want more clarification!
p.s. I’m in the process of trying to implement a “fillet & whole fish” share type as well as an “only whole fish” share type. Both of these options will be less expensive than the current option.
Hi!
Thanks for posting the question and answer. It made me wonder if you prefer the seafood at one location over another, can you switch locations or make a request? Or is there some kind of an alternating schedule so we each get a variety?
Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. I can’t join just yet because I will be out of town too much this summer, but I look forward to signing up in the fall!
Sincerely,
Grace
Hi Grace,
Thanks for your question about switching pickup locations. At this time, switching pickup locations mid season would make coordination very difficult, and inevitably, shares would be miscounted and lost in shuffle. So, in answer to your question: No, you will not be able to switch pickup locations mid-season.
One of the benefits of a CSF is the “joy of discovery”! Yes, it’s true, you may not know what you’re going to get until 24 hours before your pickup time, but this allows you to experiment with seafood you’ve never tried before as well as providing some education about when different types of seafood are “in season.” We will be providing a wide diversity of locally caught seafood over the course of the season (so you don’t have to worry about variety!); but if you’re looking for a choice, we will be implementing a online store so you can sign into your personal membership account and select additional seafood items that are still fresh and local but not included in that week’s share. For example, if you know you’re going to get black cod in your share, but you’ve decided to throw a big block-party seafood feast, you can login and add additional pounds of black cod as well as a few pounds of local spot prawns to augment the meal! Let me know if this information was helpful. If not feel free to post again!
Looking forward to having you as part of our community!
Sarah
I’m concerned about mercury levels in fish, particularly for pregnant or nursing mothers. If the fish selected for a week is a high-mercury fish, is there the option of substituting something different?
Hi Ted,
Thank you for your question about mercury levels in fish! I’m sure a lot of people have this same concern, so it’s great to have an open dialog about it up on the Community Seafood website.
Concentration of a contaminant in the muscle tissue of fish and other seafood occurs the higher you move up a food chain. Organisms at the bottom on the food chain concentrate contaminants in imperceptible levels because they’re the first to come into contact with it. If you think about it, as you move up the food chain, organisms get bigger and eat more, and so the concentration of contaminants aggregate. All this being said, excessive mercury in oceans is caused by coal processing outputs, and all of that is done in China. All the people that I’ve talked to who claim they got mercury poisoning from fish, admit that they were eating tuna or some such seafood twice a day, every day. First of all, this is excessive to say the least! Secondly, the tuna family, and other large travelers, circumnavigate the globe, aggregating contaminants as they go. Seafood from the coastal waters of the US don’t have a direct connection to high mercury levels. Because all of our seafood is locally caught off the California coast, the chances of mercury poisoning are slim to none.
I’m not a prenatal expert. I can’t speak confidently about the safety issues associated with eating seafood while pregnant or nursing. I suggest you ask your doctor in detail about the potential hazards. Thanks again for your question and please let me know if this answer helped!
Hey Sarah,
Just a random question. I read in the newsletter that our Albacore Tuna this week is trawled and sourced from Monterey. Is trawling a sustainable fishing practice and shouldn’t the CSF stick to our local water? Not trying to be a thorn, just examining the process.
Hi Scott,
That’s not a “thorn” worthy question at all! These fish were caught by trolling….not trawling — two very different methods. Trawling involves dragging a funnel net behind a boat, usually on the bottom and has a pretty bad rep of tearing up the bottom ecosystem. Just to play devil’s advocate on that one (as most of our halibut and ridgeback shrimp are caught by trawling), there’s new research coming out that while trawls do destroy the bottom environment that they drag, they continually use the same areas over and over again, thereby containing the destruction. In Chile (where this research is being conducted) this trawled area only represents 3% of viable habitat for the trawled species. Trolling, on the other hand, involves dragging a baited line behind the boat that they pull up as they go and pull the fish off of it. It’s known for being a low by catch and more sustainable method than pelagic surface long lining which is how tuna are normally caught.
In terms of the localness of this week’s share, the winds have been blowing at gale force for a solid two weeks, and we’ve had a very limited selection of local fish coming into the harbor (even the fish market has experienced an uncharacteristic dearth)! We addressed the concern of the weather limiting our ability to source locally in the subscription contract that everyone signed, and stated that if weather prohibited local fishing, we’d source from the next best source. In this case, I was able to coordinate with the CSF people from Local Catch Monterey Bay, and get them to get the tuna from local fishermen there!
I hope this information helps. Feel free to talk to me about it more at the pickup!
hi sarah,
I just reupped for every other week. I have really been enjoying the surprise each week. We did eat the uni…. And I don’t think I need to do it again. But I am glad for the experience. I have been very impressed with your organization of everything and the quality and the freshness of the seafood. The recipes and how to have been great as well…..esp with the uni. (We used the spoon method. ) One suggestion/wish is to be able to order additional seafood after I find out what the seafood of the week is.
Thank you for starting this . Good job!
Hi Tina,
Thanks for your continued support of Community Seafood as we embark on our 2nd season! In terms of ordering extra of whatever the “catch of the week” is…we’re actually planning on moving in that direction anyway. As long as buying the seafood isn’t a last minute scramble (which, due to weather constraints, it sometimes is!), we should be able to accommodate extra orders. I will endeavor to inform Community Seafood subscribers about the catch as soon as possible and also indicate whether or not extra orders are an option each week in the newsletter. Alternatively, you could just signup for a double share, and automatically get extra seafood every week. Thanks for the feedback!
Sarah
Hi,
I want to sign up but since we’re already in the middle of the season I’m wondering if the rates listed on the signup page will be prorated?
Thanks!
Hi,
Thanks for your interest in Community Seafood! We do offer prorated prices after the beginning of the season. Unfortunately, at this time, our system isn’t advanced enough to make that happen automatically; but if you go through the regular signup process on our Join Now page, and choose the “pay by check” option at checkout, we will correct your balance and send you a confirmation email. If you have any questions, feel free to email our coordinator, Sarah, at [email protected].
Thanks!