How a San Diego fisherman is increasing the availability of fresh fish with a focus on sustainability, efficiency, and lowering cost margins.
Even in the dead of “San Diego winter,” Darian Schramm’s garden is full of life: collards, broccoli, chard, and artichokes shoot up and around swordfish bills he’s staked inside each raised bed. This fisherman doesn’t want any part of the ocean’s bounty to go to waste.
At home in Sherman Heights, his chicken coop is overgrown with passionfruit vines and next to his compost bin is an experimental bokashi project. Bokashi is a Japanese composting technique that involves inoculating organic material with microorganisms that ferment it to create a nutrient-rich soil amendment. His bucket contains lobster and fish parts along with vegetable scraps. “It really works. You can do it without the smell, but I am a little scared to open it.”
Darian, a commercial fisherman, focuses on bringing local catch to underserved communities throughout San Diego County. A 2020 study conducted by UCSD and Sea Grant found that the availability of locally caught seafood is largely limited to the coastlines — an indicator that inland communities may not have the same access. He sits on the advisory board of the sustainable seafood distribution startup Local Fish, where I work.
As the daughter, granddaughter, and niece of veteran commercial fishermen, I relish the unique position of getting an inside look at the business without being entrenched in it. And when I saw the work Darian was doing, I was intrigued by his commitment to uplifting others in a grueling business with very low margins.
“I’ve fished my whole life. I have always loved it,” he says. “I was catching a lot of fish and giving it to neighbors and family. People were asking for more. They were offering me money for it. I was known for fish in the neighborhood. I looked into going commercial, and it snowballed from there.” Darian is tall, unshaven, and sunburned with polarized sunglasses wrapped around his neck and a worn black shirt touting his company, Paramount Fish.
I wanted to bring fresh fish to areas that might not otherwise have it.
–Darian Schramm
His transition from sport to commercial fishing happened right around the start of the pandemic: a moment of great food insecurity for many of us. (I can still remember picking up my provisions from the local coffee shop.) During that time, the idea of using his catch to serve his neighborhood and the surrounding communities became the obvious one. “I wanted to bring fresh fish to areas that might not otherwise have it.”
The path to realizing that goal has not been linear. “I’m working on lowering my costs for everything to become more profitable, so I can focus on my original idea to make local fish more available to everyone. I got a new boat that uses less fuel — that will be better in the long run, but it’s a huge cost now.” The boat, Rebecca Jean, named after his mother who passed away last year, came all the way from Stonington, Maine. And for those of us following along on Instagram, we tracked its journey via trailer as it was caught in a snow storm in Ohio and traveled down through Kentucky and Arizona before finally landing safely in our local waters.
We love rockfish because it’s year-round and the quota is really high.
San Diego is world famous for the many delicacies being harvested right off our coast: spot prawns, spiny lobster, uni, and some of the world’s most premium tuna are caught no more than 100 miles offshore. Darian’s focus is not so much on high-ticket items like tuna or spot prawns (although he will catch a few tuna when they’re splashing around), but the ever-present rockfish. He believes that while not everyone can, or even wants, to buy expensive specialty seafood, everyone deserves the option to have fresh and local fish. Rockfish makes that belief a reality.
You have to change with the seasons, the tides, the weather, and sometimes for no reason at all.
“We love rockfish because it’s year-round and the quota is really high.” Unlike other species with tighter limits on how much can be fished each day. He says, “I can almost guarantee there is going to be fish,” and then rethinks this last part, and tells me that nothing is guaranteed in this business. “You have to change with the seasons, the tides, the weather, and sometimes for no reason at all.”
Rockfish is an abundant species in San Diego waters. They’re not overfished or endangered, making them ideal for sustainable or low-impact fishing. As someone who has eaten San Diego seafood since birth, I can honestly say it’s one of my favorites. I love the sweet, mild flavor and soft texture.
The notion that feeding a community requires community effort is not lost on Darian, and he is working to get more like-minded people involved in his cause. He actively works with local community-supported agriculture and fishery share programs and mobile farmers markets around San Diego food deserts. He says, “I’d rather work together with people and make everything work as a whole. Maybe we can all do well.”
Check out Nicole Litvack’s recipe for Whole Roasted Rockfish.
Track Paramount Fish and Darian’s catch via Instagram and through paramountfish.com.
