From our family to yours

With the support of our members, Otto enjoyed many more seasons of fishing. As demand grew through members telling their friends, Shaun returned to fishing alongside his dad and eventually introduced our sons, Oliver and Lyndon, to commercial fishing. Today, Skipper Otto members across Canada support dozens of fishing families like ours. We know you’ll love getting to know your fishers and feeding your family seafood you can feel good about!

– Sonia and Shaun Strobel, Founders

Where it all began

Skipper Otto is Shaun’s dad. He started fishing on the BC coast in the 1960’s. At that time, there were thousands of families like theirs harvesting seafood in traditional, sustainable ways. But by the time Shaun graduated from high school, things had changed. The once robust fleet of independent fishers had been reduced to a skeleton crew of old men.

Changes to regulations meant that now a handful of massive corporations controlled the industry. And this lengthy supply chain means that seafood now changes hands dozens of times, travelling around the globe before reaching the hands of consumers. This usually means increased costs and environmental damage, lower wages paid to harvesters, and a lack of transparency for consumers.

We want to change how people connect to fisheries.

The changes in the industry led us to where we are today. We started Skipper Otto Community Supported Fishery to keep independent small-scale fishing alive in BC, protecting our valuable ocean resources, and ensuring customers have direct access to wild, sustainable BC seafood.

We’ve cut out huge swathes of the supply chain providing you with complete transparency around what we are catching, where, and how. We educate consumers around important issues in fisheries, and are rebuilding robust local food systems and communities.