How Fresh Fish From Monterey Bay Reaches School Lunch Trays

Back in 2014, it seemed absurd to Jenn Lovewell, director of Monterey Peninsula USD that the 10,000 students of the school district didn’t have access to the fish from the bay (versus no-local frozen fish sticks). She set out to change that. Jenn and her partner Alan Lovewell founded the Sea-to-School program Bay2Tray as a CSF-modeled organization that connected Monterey Bay area schools with local fishers to purchase their bycatch (the unwanted species caught incidentally while fishing for another type of fish). In addition to healthy cafeteria food the students learn about sustainable fishing. Since its inception, the Bay2Tray program has managed to repurpose over 75,000 pounds of what would be considered seafood waste to serve over 88,000 healthy school lunches. Read ON.