Fresh Seafood Directly from the Source

Our mission is simple: to increase awareness and accessibility around local and transparent seafood directly from the source. Our goal is to bridge the gap between local fishermen and their community through providing them with the tools, resources, and connections they need to deliver the freshest catch possible.

Local Fish is an innovative networking platform that connects local fishermen with buyers, including restaurants, chefs, and merchants. We facilitate connections, ensure transparency, and support responsible fishing practices. Through our platform, customers can discover a variety of locally sourced fish and make informed choices about their seafood purchases. Chefs can easily access a diverse range of local species, creating menus that celebrate the seasons and support responsible sourcing. For fishermen, Local Fish streamlines the process of showcasing their catch, establishing a strong presence in the community, and connecting with industry buyers, all while accessing valuable resources to enhance their business operations. Join us in transforming the seafood industry, starting from the source, and together, let’s create a more sustainable and thriving seafood community in San Diego.

Subscribe for Updates

Our Story

The Local Fish was created with a purpose: to narrow the divide between fishers and the community they serve.

What started as one fisherman’s daughter’s quest to deliver the freshest possible catch has expanded into a grassroots mission to revolutionize the industry from the inside out. Tanner Saraspe and Connie Winterstein connected at the intersection of commercial fishing and fisheries science over a shared vision for a transparent local seafood industry.

Tanner is the founder and manager of a small-scale seafood distribution company that works exclusively with local and sustainable partners, including her family’s fleet of vessels in San Diego. Connie specializes in natural resources management and has a background in fisheries science. Together they sketched a blueprint for a system that could transform outdated industry standards and optimize community accessibility to quality seafood. In 2021 Local Fish (LF) was launched and pushed off the dock thanks to initial funding support from NOAA.

Local Fish is an innovative networking platform that connects local fishermen with buyers, including restaurants, chefs, and merchants. We facilitate connections, ensure transparency, and support responsible fishing practices. Through our platform, customers can discover a variety of locally sourced fish and make informed choices about their seafood purchases. Chefs and other buyers can easily access a diverse range of local species, creating menus that celebrate the seasons and support responsible sourcing. For fishermen, Local Fish streamlines the process of showcasing their catch, establishing a strong presence in the community, and connecting with industry buyers, all while accessing valuable resources to enhance their business operations.

Join us in transforming the seafood industry, starting from the source, and together, let’s create a more sustainable and thriving seafood community in San Diego. We’re on a mission to narrow the divide between locally-landed seafood and the community. We want to work together to disrupt existing food systems and create a new framework in which our community buoys fishing operations resulting in a viable and sustainable fishing industry.

Our Team

Tanner Saraspe Founder

Tanner provides oversight, creativity, mastery, and supervision over all aspects of Local Fish with the goal of supporting local and regional economies through preserving the livelihoods of local fishermen and supporting our working waterfront. Tanner is a true born and raised San Diego girl. After earning a degree in neuroscience from the University of San Diego, she decided to carry on the family tradition and breathe new life into the local fishing industry. Tanner started Saraspe Seafoods, a small-scale distribution company focused on local and fully-traceable products, as a 21 year old fresh out of college. Her growing awareness of the need for methods to improve quality and efficiency in the marketplace sparked the fire that brought the Local Fish to life. Tanner comes to LF with a broad range of experience, having worked as a manager of a fish processing plant, steering committee member of San Diego Food System Alliance, director of San Diego Fisherman's Working Group, and founder of Saraspe Seafoods. Her first trip offshore was at two-days old on her dad’s lobster boat – she knows her way around a fishing boat.

Connie Winterstein Co-Founder

Connie provides operations and programmatic oversight of LF, including strategic planning, operations, and developing processes and systems. She has over 15 years of experience driving operations and managing projects from the ground up. Her diverse background includes working with the private sector, U.S. government, as well as non profit organizations. Connie has acquired and managed grant awards with a portfolio exceeding $60 million over her career. Her experience includes collaborating with fishing industry representatives to analyze environmental impacts from select fisheries in Hawaii; funded by NOAA. Connie received her M.S. in Natural Resources Management from the University of Hawaii, Manoa and her undergraduate degree from UC San Diego. Raised in southern California, Connie has fond memories of heading to the Dory Fishing Fleet and Market in Newport Beach on weekends with her family to purchase fresh seafood from fishermen. Seeing her father develop relationships with the fishermen stuck with her over the years and she understood that food doesn’t just come from a grocery aisle and local, high-quality seafood is not only important, but delicious.

Sarah Saraspe Outreach and Supply Chain Specialist

Sarah brings over 20 years of experience in the fish handling and processing business. In 2003, Sarah founded Five Star Fish Processing based in Point Loma where she serviced the San Diego fleet. The Point Loma sportfishing fleet is one of the largest in the world. Sarah’s business reinvented the way fish was preserved before landing at the docks through Refrigerated Saltwater System (RSW) technology. This system allowed fish to remain fresh, never frozen, and processed immediately. Her business received and processed over 800 tons of fish annually and processed an average of 15,000 pounds of fish per day during peak season. Sarah now works with Saraspe Seafoods as a purchasing and delivery coordinator and quality control specialist. Her role includes providing support for outreach activities, conducting research on the San Diego seafood supply chain system, and advising on quality control methods.

Cheryl Chan Fisheries and Technology Advisor

Cheryl Chen, PhD, Fisheries and Technology Advisor. Cheryl works to empower and engage coastal communities through collaborative and cutting-edge technology initiatives. Raised in the Bay Area from Taiwanese parents, she grew up fishing on the US West Coast, and has been involved in ocean and coastal management/policy since 2006. She has led the design and development of a multitude of online tools, websites, and mobile applications such as digital logbooks, marine spatial planning tools, MPA monitoring dashboards, and fisheries data explorers in ways that are intuitive to navigate, yet engage the user in discovering and mapping the rich knowledge that exists within coastal communities. She has worked extensively at the intersection between fishing communities, tribal nations, state/federal agencies, coastal recreation groups, students, and researchers/scientists as both clients and collaborators. She received her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Nicole Litvack Director of Content

Nicole is a San Diego-based food editor and writer. Born into a third-generation fishing family, her deep love and appreciation for local food systems sparked an interest in gastronomy that led to a lifelong career in and around the kitchen. After earning a degree in English Literature from the University of California, Irvine, she went on to pursue a professional degree from The New School of Cooking in Los Angeles, as well as a food styling certification from The Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. Nicole has overseen the launch of several web-based marketing campaigns, worked on the creation of eight cookbooks, and managed a multi-platform content marketing publication for a major US grocery store. Nicole will help capture the stories and recipes embedded in our local community to expand awareness around local catch.