TalkingFish.org: You are known for your commitment to local and sustainable food. Tell us about your philosophy.

Alex Hay: Part of what drives us is personal: We got into this business because of our love of fish and of this place (Cape Cod). We grew up spending summers fishing with our grandfather. He wasn’t a commercial fisherman, but he took us out from Ryder Beach in Truro, and we sportfished for anything we could find. The time we spent out on the water, and also exploring the tidal sand flats, taught us a lot about our interdependence in a unique ecosystem here. Learning to fish gave us a sense of responsibility: This is something to take care of for future generations.

Of course, we’re extremely fortunate now to be buying and selling fish in a place where there is so much tradition and knowledge, and so much abundance. That makes it easy to focus on what’s local. When we got started, we weren’t trying to make a big statement about that. We simply didn’t know any other way. Our idea was, “We know how to catch fish and how to handle it, fillet it and cook it, so let’s do that.”

Now we think it’s important to help our customers get to know a wider range of the local catch. That’s part of learning to roll with the seasons and quotas and support sustainability. We’re still learning, and we know we need to do some teaching, too: Yes, the cod out here is fantastic, but so is the pollock, the hake, the mackerel and the squid.

Read the complete interview from TalkingFish.org