To order fish for Fillet Fest, follow this link: http://www.offthehookcsf.ca/store/fillet-fest-2012, or click here. You can order fillets in one or five pound increments, or you can order whole fish.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Dave


Off the Hook Pickups: Fall 2012:

Halifax: Saturdays 10 am to 12 noon: Brewery Market 1496 Lower Water St, Halifax.

North End Halifax: Saturdays 10:15-12 am 2705 Fern Lane, Hfx. (Ecology Action Centre)

Wolfville Area: Saturdays 8-10 am Just Us! Coffee House Parking Lot: 11865 Highway 1 Grand Pre (Just off Exit 10 from Hwy 101)

Tantallon:  Saturdays  10:30-12 noon. Mariposa Picnic Area, 5229 St Margarets Bay Rd, Tant.

Bedford: Saturdays 12:30-2:30 pm.  59 Douglass Drive (Basinview Subdivision)

Dartmouth: Saturdays 10-12 am. 34 Russell St.

Lower Prospect: Saturdays 2-6 pm East Coast Outfitters 2017 Lower Prospect Road.

Tatamagouche: Saturdays 5-6. Home Hardware Parking lot, Tatamagouche.

The Islands:  Saturdays. This pickup is coordinated by Jenny and Beau Gillis.

Truro: Saturdays 3-4 pm. 23, Burnyeat St, Truro.

Musquodoboit Harbour: Sundays 10-12 am. Musquodoboit Harbour Farmers' Market.

Sign up for your share here.

Off the Hook Subscription Options:

Whole Fish: For the whole fish shares, you receive a weekly allotment of whole, dressed fish.  The fish is usually a mix of cod, haddock, or hake. Last season the fish averaged 2–3 lbs each.

We offer two sizes of whole fish shares:

One Fish:         $60 (4 deliveries of one 2-3 lb fish per delivery)

Two Fish:         $110 (4 deliveries of two 2-3 lb fish per delivery)

Whole/Filleted Fish: You will receive whole fish one week, and filleted fish the next. We are working with two processing facilities to fillet our fish while our fishermen wait nearby.  We have chosen processors who will guarantee that our fish is handled with utmost care to ensure top quality and to work within our targeted window of 24 hours from the ocean to you.

As with the whole fish shares, there are two share sizes for whole/filleted fish:

One Fish &  2 lb Fillets:       $85 (4 alternating deliveries: one 2-3 lb whole fish one week and 2 lbs fillets the next)

Two Fish & 2 lb Fillets:       $150 (4 alternating deliveries: two 2-3 lb whole fish one week and 4 lbs fillets the next)

Filleted Fish: Each delivery, you will receive a bag of fresh fillets packed ready to prepare or freeze. Each bag is labeled with the date landed and the name of the person who caught the fish.  We only work with processors who will guarantee that our fish is handled with utmost care to ensure top quality and to work within our targeted window of 24 hours from the ocean to you.

As with the other subsription types, there are two share sizes for the filleted fish option:

1 pound of Fillets:        $55 (4 deliveries of 1 lb of fillets)

2 pounds of Fillets:       $100 (4 deliveries of 2 lbs of fillets)

4 pounds of Fillets:       $185 (4 deliveries of 4 lbs of fillets)

How Much Fish Is In Each Share?

The “One Fish” shares are plenty of food for a couple to have at least one meal plus left-overs (fish tacos anyone?) each week. The “Two Fish” share is perfect for families or people who want to share with their friends or have dinner parties that are totally off the hook. 2 lbs of fillets is plenty for a meal for two plus leftovers. 4 lbs of fillets is plenty for a large chowder or a family meal.

Off the Hook's shares are easy to split with neighbours, family and friends. When you sign up, you can enter up to five contacts per subscription. This makes it easy to arrange biweekly pickups, for example, or to sign up as an office or small business. Be sure to check our matchmaker blog post to "hook up" with others looking for share-mates.

What is included in your subscription?

Fish from Off the Hook is bound to be more expensive than any other fish on the market. We can almost guarantee it.  So why get involved? By buying a subscription to Off the Hook, you get:

• Extremely fresh, sustainably caught fish- delivered weekly
• The chance to meet and get to know the fisherman who catch your fish
• Live updates from the fishing boats as they steam back to port with your catch, including alerts about special catches such as halibut and mackerel.
• Access to exclusive specials on items such as mussels & clams from our sustainable seafood partners.
• Filleting workshops, cooking tips, recipes and more
• The opportunity to use the whole fish- for stock, chowder, and ultimately for your compost.
• the opportunity to order extra fillets in advance
  

Pick up Locations:

We will be switching our main delivery days to Saturday this season, in order to make parking and traffic less of an issue. The main Halifax pickup will be at the Historic Farmers' Market (the same place as last year), from 10-12 on Saturday mornings starting July 7. Other deliveries have also been organized in:

Halifax: Saturdays 10 am to 12 noon: Brewery Market 1496 Lower Water St, Halifax

North End Halifax: Saturdays 10:15-12 am 2705 Fern Lane, Hfx. (Ecology Action Centre)

Wolfville Area: Saturdays 8-10 am Just Us! Coffee House Parking Lot: 11865 Highway 1 Grand Pre (Just off Exit 10 from Hwy 101)

Tantallon:  Saturdays  10:30-12 noon. Mariposa Picnic Area, 5229 St Margarets Bay Rd, Tant.

Bedford: Saturdays 12:15-3:15 am.  59 Douglass Drive (Basinview Subdivision)

Dartmouth: Saturdays 10-12 am. 34 Russell St. (near the MacDonald Bridge).

Lower Prospect: Saturdays 2-6 pm East Coast Outfitters 2017 Lower Prospect Road.

Tatamagouche: Saturdays 4:30-5:30 Home Hardware Parking lot, Tatamagouche.

The Islands: If you live on Brier Island or Long Island, it only makes sense that you should be able to buy fish directly from your neighbors. Fish will be delivered to your door on Saturdays. This pickup is coordinated by Jenny and Beau Gillis. If you sign up for this pickup, you are eligible for a locals discount. Please contact us for the coupon code.

If you are interested in organizing a delivery in your community, please get in touch with me. We need 10 subscribers at each delivery location to make it work.

Sign up for your share here.

Explore these recipes and tips. Learn to fillet with this great video, courtesy of Port Clyde Fresh Catch.

Shares that are not picked up will be donated for use in hot meals at Hope Cottage.

Because you sign on to share both the bounty and risk of the fishing season, in case of bad weather or bad luck on the water, there may be a week with no delivery. On the other hand, there may be weeks where you get extra fish. In the unlikely event of a missed week of deliveries, every effort will be made to tack a week onto the end of the delivery schedule.

Beau was back on the water in the Bay of Fundy this week and did a great job catching all of the fish for tomorrow's CSF delivery, as well as the Seafood Throwdown we are hosting as part of the Tall Ship Festival on the Halifax waterfront. Film-maker Kevin Moynihan was on the boat with him yesterday and sent us some screen grabs from his footage:

Tommorrow's CSF Deliveries

All deliveries are expected to run on time tomorrow- thanks to everyone for being patient with last week's late deliveries at some of our pickup spots. If you signed up for an alternating share of whole fish/fillets, tomorrow is a fillet day, so plan accordingly. As a reminder, here are your pickup details:

Halifax: Saturdays 10 am to 12 noon: Brewery Market 1496 Lower Water St, Halifax. Contact: Dave 456-9353

North End Halifax: Saturdays 10-12 am 2705 Fern Lane, Hfx. (Ecology Action Centre) Contact Heather: 449-7640

Wolfville Area: Saturdays 8-10 am Just Us! Coffee House Parking Lot: 11865 Highway 1 Grand Pre (Just off Exit 10 from Hwy 101) Contact: Carla and Justin today 691-7066

Tantallon:  Saturdays  10:30-12 noon. Mariposa Picnic Area, 5229 St Margarets Bay Rd, Tant. Contact: Ron or Joan 852-2425

Bedford: Saturdays 10-12 am.  59 Douglass Drive (Basinview Subdivision) Contact: Sandra 469-0719

Dartmouth: Saturdays 10-12 am. 34 Russell St. (near the MacDonald Bridge). Contact: Brenda 404-4481

Lower Prospect: Saturdays 2-6 pm East Coast Outfitters 2017 Lower Prospect Road. Contact ECO: 852-2567

***Note: Lower Prospect fish will be at 5 pm tomorrow

Tatamagouche: Saturdays 5-6. Home Hardware Parking lot, Tatamagouche. Contact: Jackie 324-2584

The Islands:  Saturdays. This pickup is coordinated by Jenny and Beau Gillis. Contact: Jenny 839-2003

Truro: Saturdays 3-4 pm. 23, Burnyeat St, Truro. Contact: Mike 956-8299

Musquodoboit Harbour: Sundays 10-12 am. Musquodoboit Harbour Farmers' Market. Contact Kelty: 220-9114

Off the Hook Seafood Throwdown!

If you happen to be on the Halifax waterfront tomorrow for Tall Ships, come see us at the Select NS/Catch Seafood festival Culinary Stage between 11:30 and 12:30 for the Off the Hook Seafood Throwdown.

What's a Seafood Throwdown? Good question.

Seafood Throwdowns were pioneered by the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (www.namanet.org). A Throwdown promotes local, sustainable small scale fishing and farming by pitting two local chefs against each other on stage in front of a crowd. The chefs (Renee Lavallee and Colin Stone) will be presented with a mystery fish caught by Off the Hook, and given 20 minutes to shop at the Brewery Market with $30 each. hen they'll head to the stage and prepare a dish for our judges (Stephanie Johns from the Coast, and Lia Rinaldo from the Atlantic Film Festival, and one Peoples' Judge chosen from the crowd). They'll hit the market shortley after 11, and they'll head for the stage at 11:30. We'll be live tweeting from the event at #SeafoodThrowdown. The event is free, and there will be tasty samples of Off the Hook haddock afterwards. If you're in the area, come to the Throwdown!

Enjoy the fish tomorrow, and thanks for supporting Off the Hook.

Dave

.

We believe that healthy, prosperous fishing communities are vital to the economic, cultural and environmental resilience of our province. We believe that the future of our communities depends upon diverse local economies that work to enhance the “triple bottom line.” The triple bottom line refers to the  idea that nature, society and economies are interconnected. We feel that long-term solutions must recognize and nurture all three of these aspects together. (To explore this concept further, visit Ecology Action Centre’s “Green Economy" page and EcoTrust’s “Reliable Prosperity” portal.) 

Recently, the momentum of local food movements, along with growing demand for sustainable seafood has helped open doors for small-scale fishers to direct marketing opportunities. As a new study has demonstrated, Nova Scotians are increasingly willing to pay a little more for local, high quality fish caught with low-impact gears, especially if the premium is invested back into the traditional fishery and the marine environment.

Community Supported Fisheries (CSFs) are modelled after “Community Supported Agriculture” (CSA) enterprises, which work to connect consumers to locally and sustainably grown, fairly traded foods. Social enterprises like CSFs help make sure that independent, small-scale fishing families can continue to pursue their livelihoods in an industry rapidly becoming dominated by large-scale, corporate players. 

Off the Hook CSF hopes to showcase a seafood direct marketing enterprise that recognizes and nurtures the “triple bottom line. ” We are interested in creating opportunities for rural and urban communities to connect, creating more local market links, and generally spurring on a dialogue about local food, sustainable fisheries, and community health. We are also interested in ensuring that low impact fishing gears like bottom hook and line can continue to be used to protect our ocean resources into the future.

Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance keeps an excellent directory of active Community Supported Fisheries here.

Check out this video from the recent CSF summit in Rye, New Hampshire. Off the Hook was pleased to attend, and we look forward to working with the great people we met there.

It's finally officially summer, and we are gearing up for a great season of Off the Hook. All of our fishermen were busy fishing for lobster over the winter, but are switching over to groundfish now. We will begin our weekly deliveries of fresh, sustainably harvested groundfish during the first week of July.

We will be switching our main delivery days to Saturday this season, in order to make parking and traffic less of an issue. The main Halifax pickup will be at the Historic Farmers' Market (the same place as last year), from 10-12 on Saturday mornings starting July 7. Other deliveries have also been organized in:

Tantallon
Bedford
Dartmouth
North End Halifax (at the Ecology Action Centre)
Wolfville
Lower Prospect
Musqudoboit Harbour Farmers' Market (Sundays)

If you are interested in organizing a delivery in your community, please get in touch with me. We need 10 subscribers at each delivery location to make it work.

Sign-up will be available on line soon (as soon as we work out some of the kinks). I'll send out another notice when the sign-up goes live, which will include share options and pickup details.

Beau is on the water today fishing for halibut. You can see a picture he just sent on our facebook page. As a special way to kick off the fishing season, Beau will be bringing halibut with him this Saturday (June 23) to Halifax. You can pre-order halibut steaks, fillets, or whole fish online through our website. To order, CLICK HERE. The fish can be picked up on Saturday morning from 10-12 at the Brewery Market (in the same room we were in last year- off of the lower courtyard). Please place your orders by noon on Friday so he know how much fish to bring.

Let me know if you have any questions, and thanks for supporting Off the Hook.

-Dave

Click here, just for the Halibut.

On Friday afternoon we learned that Off the Hook was named as one of two runners up in National Geographic's "Solution Search" contest. There were 103 entries from all over the world, and we are really honoured to have been named as one of the top three.

Thanks to everyone for your continued support, and for spreading the word about Off the Hook. As one of the runners up, we win a $5000 grant to go towards our work, and a trip to Washington D.C. to meet with key stakeholders in international fisheries management. In addition to the grant and the trip we hope that the exposure we get through this contest will encourage more fishing communities to get involved, and more people to start asking where their seafood comes from, who harvested it, and how.

Again, thank you for supporting small scale sustainable fishing.

-Off the Hook

Holiday Lobster

Orlie and his crew left the wharf before dawn this morning to catch lobster for tomorrow's  delivery. He'll call in for a final count at noon today, so if you are planning to order lobster for Christmas Eve, please place your order by then. You can order online by clicking here. Lobsters are $10 each (they will be about 1 1/2 pounds each), and can be picked up at the Brewery Market on Saturday (the 24th) between 11 am and 1 pm.  Lobster will also be available on New Year's Eve. If you need any tips on how to handle or cook your lobster, please don't hesitate to ask. If you have a cooler, please bring it to the market.

Off the Hook Gift Certificates

We have had several inquiries about buying Off the Hook subscriptions as gifts for friends, neighbors, and family. You can now buy gift certificates online by clicking here. Certificates are good towards any Off the Hook subscription or special catch such as lobster, halibut or mackerel. Haddock, Cod & Hake subscriptions will be available as early as February, depending on how the lobster season goes! You can pay online with any credit card through paypal. Once we receive your order, we will email you a gift certificate that you can print out or email to a friend- just in time for Christmas.

"Turning the Tide for Coastal Fisheries"

We are really excited to have been named North America's only finalist in National Geographic's global contest aimed at finding innovative, community based solutions to overfishing. The winner will be decided by an online vote- and if we win, we get $20,000 to continue our work, and a chance to meet with key fisheries stakeholders and international policy makers at National Geographic's headquarters in Washington D.C. If you have already voted, then THANK YOU. If you haven't yet- you only have 1 more day to vote! To vote, click here. Voting is a little tricky- for step by step instructions, click here.

Thank you

Finally, we wanted to thank you for your continued support and interest in Off the Hook. We know that buying your fish from a super market may be cheaper and more convenient, but by buying your fish through Off the Hook, you are supporting coastal communities and the environment by ensuring that fishing families earn a fair wage for fishing sustainably. We look forward to bringing fresh, fair fish to more communities in the new year, and continuing to raise awareness about sustainable seafood. Happy Holidays, from our families to yours.

                The Thurbers                                 The Hudsons                           The Gillises

            The Dixons

We are pleased to announce that fresh, live, hard-shell lobster caught by Off the Hook will be available this holiday season. There will be two delivery dates: Christmas Eve (Dec. 24) and New Year's Eve (Dec. 31). Both deliveries will be at the Halifax Brewery Market from 11 am to 1 pm in the lower courtyard (the same area where we parked the truck for the fish pickups). Lobsters are $10 each, and average 1 1/2 pounds each. Lobster must be ordered in advance so we know how many to bring. You can pay by cash, cheque, or credit card (through Paypal). To order, click here.

If weather prevents us from safely getting out on the water and making the Christmas Eve delivery, we will deliver your lobster the following week (on New Year's Eve). If the New Year's Eve delivery is cancelled, we will refund your order. By buying lobster through Off the Hook, you are insuring that the people who catch your lobster get a fair price for their catch. A portion of the proceeds go to the habitat stewardship and fisheries conservation efforts of Off the Hook.

We need to sell at least 500 lobsters to make this work, so please spread the word! Thank you for supporting Off the Hook.

Happy Holidays,

Dave

Off the Hook has been named one of the ten finalists in National Geographic‘s Solution Search: Turning the Tide for Coastal Fisheries. This is a global contest to surface and recognize community-based innovations for near-shore fisheries based on proven successes. There were 103 entries from 48 countries, and Off the Hook was the only entry from North America to make it to the top ten. The next step is an online vote. Click on the button to the right to see all of the entries (there are some very cool ones)- and then register and vote for Off the Hook.