How Fresh Fish From Monterey Bay Reaches School Lunch Trays

How Fresh Fish From Monterey Bay Reaches School Lunch Trays

How Fresh Fish From Monterey Bay Reaches School Lunch Trays Waterline is an ongoing series that explores the solutions making rivers, waterways and ocean food chains healthier. It is funded by a grant from the Walton Family Foundation. This story is published in collaboration with the Local Catch Network.  W ith the 2014 school year in full swing, Jenn Lovewell, the then-acting director of the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, noticed something was conspicuously missing from her schools’ lunchrooms. “We were doing a lot of work in the district around farms, so we had a lot of beautiful salad bars full of fresh local produce and free range chicken, grass fed beef, all that stuff,” recalls Lovewell. “But I really wanted a source of seafood — local seafood — because [what] we served otherwise was frozen fish sticks.” For Monterey Bay, which was once given the moniker “Serengeti of the sea” in a nod to the region’s aquatic diversity and abundance, the omission of seafood from the loc…