FAQs

Quick answer: to get better seafood at better prices. Our unique model of memberships and community partners (buyers club/home shipments in a pinch) allows us to offer ultra premium seafood without the ultra premium price.  Your membership helps us forecast our seafood needs and buy at the best possible times. It also helps us schedule appropriate pickups at each community partner.  While we encourage you to purchase a membership for a full year of seafood, we’re offering convenient “trial size” memberships of $100 for this first year.  And remember, when you become a Dayboat Blue Member, you’re making a commitment to yourself as well as to our business.  Having premium Maine seafood frozen in small packages means you’ve always got something healthy and delicious at your fingertips. We thank you, Maine’s small boat fishermen and sea farmers thank you, and soon your taste buds (and waistline) will be thanking you.

We’re able to offer the best seafood you’ll find anywhere at competitive prices because of our unique model enabling pickups from multiple members at each community partner event.  We offer two day pickup windows to make these pickups as convenient as possible, and you can cancel your order up until 72 hours before the pickup. If something happens that prevents you from picking up your seafood, please reach out to us and we’ll try to arrange to have your order stored an extra day or two.  And remember, you can always ask a friend or coworker to fetch your pickup for you.

This model of aggregated orders of frozen seafood allows us to skip the many middlemen and air shippers that add to seafood pricing while diminishing quality. We purchase Maine seafood at the best possible time, vacuum seal it into small packages and blast freeze it. Then we hold it in our facility until it’s time to ship to our community partners. Offering frozen seafood allows you to fill your freezer with ultra premium seafood at great prices. It also allows us to purchase seafood in advance rather than try to predict what we’ll need, without having to take out loans for inventory. And it allows us to transport with minimal packaging and cost. The fishermen get better prices, you get better seafood, and it all happens with less environmental impact. Win win win!

Each order is packed in a sturdy paper bag and all orders are shipped to community partners  via UPS Next Day Air or via ground transport using dry ice and gel packs to ensure everything stays frozen. Our shipping boxes are cardboard with Climacell liners, and both the box and the liner are curbside recyclable. 

Oh, we LOVE answering this question!  You can know you’re buying sustainable seafood because Togue’s passion is fisheries management.  We’re pretty sure we’re the only US seafood company led by an actual fisheries manager: Togue worked as a fisheries regulator for the state of Maine for years and is currently the Chair of Maine’s Marine Resources Advisory Council.  She also sits on the New England Fishery Management Council.  Her passion is fisheries management

We specialize in wild harvested dayboat seafood, but we do offer American Unagi, which is sustainably grown in a closed system in Waldoboro Maine.  We also offer applewood smoked dulse, which is sustainably farmed by Maine lobstermen. We may also offer other farmed seafood in future, although we’ll most likely stick to closed-system aquaculture and shellfish and sea vegetable aquaculture.  Interesting fact: scallop aquaculture actually helps the wild fishery by increasing larval supply!

Oh, we’re so glad you asked! We specialize in dayboat seafood, which means our product is harvested from a vessel that’s at sea for fewer than 24 hours so our seafood is harvested in its freshest, purest form.  100% of our scallops are caught by dayboats, and with scallops the dayboat difference is particularly pronounced, since scallops are more susceptible to absorbing melting ice than whole fish are. The vast majority of our other wild-caught seafood is also harvested by dayboats, and in the rare instances the boats we source from are at sea for more than a day, it’s not by much. Because, after all, we want you to taste the difference a day makes®

We do NOT make any attempt to source exclusively from seafood listed on specific sustainability lists, because Togue, with a graduate degree in Marine Policy and years of experience as a fisheries manager, knows all too well just how fallible and biased those lists can be.  Have a question about sustainability?  Contact her at togue@downeastdayboat.com.  She’ll be happy to put your mind at ease, because she’s passionate about sustainability.

While some of the seafood we source is listed on various sustainability organizations, WE DO NOT USE ANY LISTS OR CERTIFICATIONS to determine the sustainability of our seafood.  Our founder Togue Brawn has a graduate degree in fisheries policy and has worked in fisheries management for over 20 years.  In fact, Togue is largely responsible for the recovery of Maine’s scallop fishery.  Togue is not a fan of sustainability certifications, as she has seen how fallible and biased they can be first-hand, and does not wish to support them.  Togue will not purchase seafood from a fishery she thinks is poorly managed, and if you want more in-depth management information than what’s provided on our website, just send us an email to info@dayboatblue.com and we’ll get you some links.

Yes you can! Our first pickups were just in Mass and New York, but beginning in May we’ll be offering pickups in other areas of the country, as well as nationwide shipping. We’ll always prefer to work through community partners or buying clubs, but we can ship individual orders anywhere in the lower 48 states, although you will need to meet a minimum order size to allow us to keep prices low.

A buying club is when two or more individuals come together to place a bulk order. Doing this allows us to ship larger amounts of seafood so we can keep our prices low. You can form clubs with coworkers, friends or members of a group. And by the way, as a mission-driven business, we’re always interested in collaborating with other mission-driven groups on fundraising opportunities.