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  For Valentine’s Day I asked Mark Usewicz from https://www.mermaidsgardennyc.com/ (Mermaid’s Garden NYC) to talk to us about their Fish Market and CSA since it seems like the news is all about the Mediterranean diet. I love fish, and caring for sustainable Oceans and water is important to me, and I think it probably is for you too. I’ve got some great videos of my mom making her delicious fish I’ll try to add at the end. Sorry it took so long to get this out there, but I always say the perfect interview happens when just the right listener is in the audience! http://sGardenNYC.com (MermaidsGardenNYC.com) Mermaid’s Garden On https://www.instagram.com/mgfishnyc/ (Instagram)  https://www.marthastewart.com/contributor/1526536/mark-usewicz (Check out Mark’s pieces in Martha Stewart) Tell us a little about yourself, Mark Usewicz. I was trained as a chef restaurant business lived in NYC last thing I wanted to do was open my own restaurant and the next worse thing is open my own business but  my wife was in the restaurant business trained as a fish biologist We saw this need for a great fish market in our neighborhood, there really wasn’t anywhere great to buy fish We knew a few fishermen and we built this network started a fish share kind of like a CSA or CSF but we’re not the fisherman Started by connecting our customers with a weekly fish sourced in the Northeast we work with fishermen on Long Island Massachusetts Rhode Island Developed this whole network of aqua-culturists small boat fisherman retail space fish share going retail market all domestic small boat fisherman sourced seafood I grew up in Buffalo, NY so other side of the state a lot of people don’t know where that is in NYC,  different vibe different pace I grew up on Long Island and I have sooooo many fond memories of buying fish on the docks from the fisherman in Freeport on Long Island. My mom would cook all the fish from scratch, cut the heads off scale it etc… and then there’s been so much on the news this year about the Mediterranean diet being the best and that’s my mom’s favorite so I thought it would be interesting. So tell us about sustainable fishing So sustainable fishing The methods they are using to catch the fish are sustainable like habitat preservation different kinds of nets they drag along the ocean floor like a steam roller running along the ocean floor so it preserves the ocean floor limit the size of the nets so if they are targeting porgies juveniles It made sense from a preservation to preserve their livelihoods That’s why we focus on these not a lot of young people going into the industry quota getting big How do you think that’s gonna affect you guys? We’re such a small niche the fisherman we work with are able to supply us with a steady supply Hopefully we’re able to keep the oceans nice and healthy Keep a steady supply of sustainable seafood, the US has the best regulated fisheries in the world right now come backs on certain species of fish over the years That’s good to hear, you don’t hear that very often. I know we don’t eat shrimp much because they say farmed fisheries are destructive to people’s livelihoods. destruction of the mangroves source our shrimp from either  gulf of Mexico south east off the carolinas Got to work a little bit if you want to find the good stuff but it’s out there Do you want to tell listeners where is your place? we’re in Prospect Heights in Brooklyn not quite downtown Brooklyn 10 minute train ride into Manhattan pretty area Brownstone Brooklyn My very first college I went to was a Pratt Institute. You have all these pickup locations how does that work? Those are our Fish Share locations the way we started our business satellite locations around Support this podcast