Our beloved fishing family, Scott and Karen Lincez, are famous for their exquisite spot prawns and shrimp. Scott is a first-generation fisherman who has fished for 33 years (and counting!). We wanted to share their story and why the current fishing industry fails families like theirs.

Preparing for prawning

Scott and Karen Lincez are based in Qualicum, BC, where they are raising their 6 daughters, and have undertaken just about every type of fishing you can imagine – seining, crabbing, herring, the list goes on! The Lincezs are now some of our best prawners. At the start of this year’s prawning season, they leased a spot prawn licence. We worked with them to decide on a fair catch price for them and for our members. Partnering with us at Skipper Otto (a small but growing industry player), means that fishing families still have to sell the majority of their catch to another buyer. Those buyers offer a guaranteed minimum price for their catch. This is later topped up based on what the buyers were actually able to sell.

The bait and switch

With this price from their buyers confirmed, Scott and Karen went fishing every day, working long hours to fulfill their agreement. When their international buyer’s buyer suddenly changed their mind on the size of the prawns they wanted, the buyers came to Scott & Karen and told them that they could only give them half of the guaranteed price they had already agreed upon! Imagine working every day and then suddenly being told you are getting less than half of the price you were promised.

This, unfortunately, is pretty common in the industry and something we’re fighting to change. Buyers and lease owners get their guaranteed pay but the big risk lies with the fishing families. To help counteract this sad turn of events, we reached out to our valued members, offering the Lincez’s delicious flash-frozen-at-sea spot prawn tails at a deep discount. Check out our video below, explaining the whole story.

And the result?

The Lincez’s spot prawns are (temporarily) sold out!

Thanks to the support of our incredible members, we sold out all the spot prawns that Scott and Karen had on hand in no time!! Not to worry though, we have another truckload on the way and will be restocked towards the end of the month. A huge thank you to everyone who has helped save this season for Scott and Karen. Stories like this are the reason we started Skipper Otto, and helping fishing families like Scott and Karen is why we work so hard every year to spread the message of CSFs and show people there is a better way to get your Canadian sustainable seafood.

Check your inbox for updates on spot prawn tails, and for those of you who have already ordered, enjoy your delicious prawns! If you have any great spot prawn recipes or photos, please share them on our Facebook page or tag us on social media! The team at Skipper Otto as well as our fishing families love to see our members enjoying their Canadian sustainable seafood.