End of One Season Beginning of Another...

As we get close to the end of the fall CSF season, I am going to do some housecleaning here in the CAFC Blog.

First of all, we want and need salespeople! And our best salespeople are share-members who love the CSF. PLEASE help us get the word out about CAFC to fish loving friends. Write a letter to your local paper, put up a flyer at your church, cafe, CSA Newsletter or community center. This is after all a COMMUNITY SUPPORTED fishery, so we hope you all can help us continue the program's success by pitching in and spreading the word.

Another item that I want to highlight is that CAFC works really hard to listen to sharemembers. Some complaints that we've addressed recently are a lack of diversity and the problem of too much fish for some folks. We are trying out an every-other-week share now to better accommodate those who feel an entire share is just too much fish. Please help us spread the word!

We've also really upped the ante on the variety. In general, many of the species we get in the temperate months tend to move to deeper water as the weather cools, and other species migrate out of the area entirely. This typically means less variety, however it also means that we'll be getting closer to Dec 1, which is the beginning of Gulf of Maine Shrimp season, which is one of my favorites.

And lastly a quick update on the fishing regulations. The scuttlebutt on the docks is and has been the same for a few months now, "There's plenty of fish, but no one is fishing." A lot of this has to do with fishermen not wanting to squander their quota too soon in the fishing year and/or spread their fishing out over the year. Some are also trying to time their fishing to coincide with higher fish prices around the holidays. The problem with trying to time fish prices is a lot like trying to time the stock market. There are too many variables to fish prices to reliably predict the daily price.

The price of market Cod today for example is $2.54/lb, which is relatively high for this time of year. However since the implementation of sectors prices have been higher than in years past. We did have some concern that prices and availability of fish might be an issue for CAFC. High prices may be a challenge in the coming months, but for now it looks like the fishermen will not be shut down because of 'choke species' or because they have fished out their quotas.