Foraging in the Northern California Waterways

Kirk Lombard is an apologist for the Pacific herring. The small, plentifully available fish are perhaps not the most glamorous of the edible ocean fauna, but in his new book, The Sea Forager’s Guide to the Northern California Coast, Lombard, a Bay Area fisherman, argues that they deserve some reverence. In the book, he writes:

The Sea Forager’s Guide is an unusual tome: part guide to urban fishery, part poetic ramble, part collection of anecdotes, part recipe book, it advocates for an ethical, considered approach to fishing the waterways of the Northern California coast. Working as an observer for the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission for seven years, Lombard canvassed the Bay Area, monitoring recreational fishermen and sport boats. Through that work, he amassed an index of the state fishing regulations, species distinctions, and harvest cycles; he funneled anecdotal snippets of his life in the waterways into a popular blog, The Monkeyface News, named after a variety of California eel that Lombard became famous for catching.