January 22, 2021 — A half-dozen people spent a few hours this week unloading the “Miss Rebecca” on the dock behind Wild Seafood Company. The flurry of activity continued for hours. Erin Grebenev only put her calculator down for a few moments to answer questions about how special the process made her feel.
“This has been an amazing opportunity,” she said. “It’s so cool to watch a boat offload.”
This has been the scene at John’s Pass since October. Jason Delacruz, the owner of Wild Seafood, sends out one of his fishing vessels and it will return with thousands of pounds of fish. They are tagged, separated by client, and then a portion is placed in a box to the side to feed hungry families in Tampa Bay.
“We are at a need level that we have never seen,” said Delacruz, who has been operating Wild Seafood since 2012.
Hundreds of pounds of freshly caught red snapper were loaded into a box marked ‘Catch Together’ this week. The label represents the name of the program designed to support local fishermen and feed families in need.
Delacruz, who had to stop running boats for a brief period last spring when the pandemic began to ramp up, got a grant from Catch Together this year in the $200,000 range to offset the price of the fish caught by his crews. That money paid for the donated food, which was sent up the road to the St. Pete Free Clinic.