Spearfishing Contest Spotlights Best Flavors of the Sport

April 12, 2022 – Fin + Forage knows how to layer an adventure. And how to assemble a spectacular seafood barbecue. 

Edible learned as much joining the group for a mission that involved repelling down a cliff, swimming miles of Big Sur coast with spear guns, and ultimately cooking freshly caught blue cod, rock crab and limpet on a remote beach. 

Now both adventure and seafood will happen in living color and vivid flavor for Fin + Forage’s second ever Catch and Cook Competition Saturday, April 30.

Freediving spear fishermen from around the region—but also as far away as Australia—will descend on Monterey Bay shores to try their luck doing what the event promises in its title. 

All competitors, who bought out 25 slots within 24 hours, meet at 6am for a safety briefing and then have until noon to return to outdoor event headquarters at Monterey Bay Kayaks next to Del Monte Beach. 

Many will arrive much sooner to start prepping their catch of the day on whatever portable non-electric heat source they bring along. (The resourceful setups are both a big part of the competition and the fun for observers.)

From 1pm to around 2:30pm the hunter-chefs will have assigned 4-minute time slots to present to a panel of judges who include star chef Colin Moody, Big Sur Food & Wine Events Director Elsa Rivera and local foraging savant Matt Bond, who will verify all collected ingredients, from mussels to sea lettuce, are safe for consumption. (They’ll also be required to submit a recipe that will be used to assemble a cookbook.) 

The score card against which they’ll be judged includes nine criteria. They include classic dimensions like culinary technique, presentation and overall taste. But they also include categories that reflect Fin + Forage’s approach to the sport, like fish usage (“more than just filet meat, e.g., belly meat, head, collar, roe, filet, cheeks, stock, etc.”), wild ingredients (the less store-bought, the better), and difficulty of harvest (“bonus points for halibut, striped bass, and/or any other legal invertebrate”).

Moody went into the first Catch and Cook competition in 2019 uninitiated and was so blown away he soon signed on as Fin + Forage’s head chef. 

“I didn’t know who the hell [Fin + Forage] were, but I wanted to check it out,” Moody told me after the event. “When I saw what was going on—no bravado, more about family, local identity and conservation, the whole package—I thought it was badass.”

Entrants will have ample incentive—beyond bragging rights—to bring their A game. Prize packages are substantial; the first place haul includes a customer wetsuit from Omer, a slick Traeger Ranger cooking grill, a custom-made Travis Dimon knife block and a set of Messermeister knives. 

Second and third place also receive handsome knife and wetsuit combos, with additional prizes for fourth and fifth. A special “executive” award is reserved for someone who doesn’t place but demonstrates above-and-beyond achievement that really seizes the ethos of the event, whether that be in clever sourcing or sly technique or all of the above.

The first installment of the event came pre-COVID, and quickly revealed how gifted many “spearos” are around a reef and cutting board. One contestant assembled a convex fire pit, built a wood fire, dropped in a cast-iron Dutch oven and created a rockfish-stuffed puff pastry—and still was bested by two other dishes.

“It was cooked beautifully,” Fin + Forage founder and event lead Eric Keener says. “The judges were like, ‘Holy cow, I can’t believe he pulled that off.’”

It’s all open to the public, who organizers are inviting to drift through the cooking segment starting around 11:30am when, per Keener, “the action really gets going.” 

They can also join the beach clean-up, which dangles its own generous prize possibilities. Every 5-gallon bucket turned in full earns a raffle ticket and a chance to win items like a $1,000 gift certificate to Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn.

A different kind of cleanup push, meanwhile, will reward divers plucking invasive sea urchins from the sea with tickets for another raffle and a prize bundle valued at $1,500. 

A third and final raffle will offer still more prizes, and members of the public can also survey a stacked silent auction, which rolls out things like a massive underwater print on metal from celebrated fine art photographer Jason Bradley and a Traeger Pro 575 WiFi Pellet Grill. 

Though it’s hard to prove empirically, according to experienced competitive spearfishermen, the amount of sponsored prizes is the largest assembled in the history of the sport. 

All proceeds from the event go to Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, a nonprofit which advocates for environmental conservation and responsible public land access for fishermen and hunters—and will present thoughts as part of the afternoon event. 

While Fin + Forage seeks a food truck to help feed its audience (interested parties can email erickeener@finandforage.com), Dust Bowl Brewing and its own Wedo’s Tacos truck await next door.

The whole multifaceted undertaking fits with F+F’s bigger mission, to provide an educational platform attuned to the ethical harvesting of wild food with a flair for adventure and cooking. That results in an event that’s different than most size- or quantity-driven spearfishing competitions, with intention.

“Killing an animal for points is a weird notion,” Keener says. “We want to reward people for respecting their catch—and we want the focus to be on the food.”

There is an argument to be made that Monterey Bay is the golf capital of the world—or more relevant to the purposes of this story, the marine science capital of the world. The way the tides are turning, it could soon credibly claim to be one of its leading spearfishing destinations too—particularly for those who approach it consciously.

More at finandforage.com/cnc22