Skipper Otto

Skipper Otto’s Community Supported Fishery (CSF) creates a direct connection between local fishermen and consumers with the joint goal of protecting ocean resources and improving our local food system. This partnership fosters the protection of ocean resources while providing premium, wild, fairly-traded, Ocean Wise seafood. The CSF model ensures that independent, small-scale harvesters can continue to fish using the low impact practices their parents and grandparents used before them and still remain in an industry that is rapidly becoming dominated by big business and aquaculture. CSF members buy in before the season and receive a share of premium, wild, local, and sustainably caught seafood. Members have boat-to-fork transparency, knowing how, when, where and who caught their fish. Our primary fisherman, Otto Strobel, has been fishing the British Columbia coast since the 1960s. Since that time the number of independent fishermen like him has been reduced to a skeleton fleet. Skipper Otto’s CSF was started by Otto’s son and daughter-in-law (Shaun and Sonia Strobel) to make it possible for Otto and a few of the hold-out independents to remain fishing. Skipper Otto’s CSF was the first CSF in Canada, and among the first in the world. The CSF now supports a growing number of fishing families and provides an ever-growing number of sustainable, wild, local seafood products to customers across western Canada.