June 22, 2022 — Jared Auerbach stands with a box of monkfish livers at his feet. They are pale pink and streaked with blood, each one packed in plastic and nestled on ice.
Behind him on the processing floor at the Boston Fish Pier, an ice machine releases an avalanche of cubes at two-minute intervals. Dozens of gloved and aproned workers mill about, offloading, packing, and filleting. They work with the usual suspects: blue mesh bags of oysters, live scallops, and lobsters with banded claws in plastic crates.
But plenty of other local species fill the floor. There’s the monkfish, of course, plus a box of conch. There are halibut bellies and skate wings and whole black sea bass.
“On our busiest day, we unloaded 376 different boats,” says Auerbach, who founded fish distributor Red’s Best in 2008 to connect fishermen with wholesalers and retailers. He deals that catch around the world — to buyers as close as the Boston Public Market and as far as South Korea.
The shellfish stand a good chance of staying within New England, he says, finding a home at a local restaurant or fish market. But the finfish may still have a long journey ahead of them.