VANCOUVER -- A Metro Vancouver seafood company made some special deliveries Monday to help six local, non-profit meal-providers keep up with demand.

Organic Ocean delivered more than 1,200 pounds of frozen lingcod to six organizations, including A Loving Spoonful and Union Gospel Mission, for them to use in meals they provide to individuals and families who need a helping hand.

“We’ve spent our business on selling to some of the top chefs and Michelin Star chefs all over the world,” said Guy Dean, president and general manager of Organic Ocean. “So this was an opportunity for us to give back something that many people may not have necessarily tried.”

Lingcod is a dense, white fish similar to Pacific char and halibut, and is high in protein and low in fat. Dean said that as well as being healthy it is also delicious. “It’s a very sweet, beautiful meat,” he said.

This particular harvest of lingcod was earmarked for donation from start to finish, beginning with the fisher who caught it on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, to the volunteer processor, to Vancouver-based Goodly Foods Society who networked the distribution, and received part of the catch as well. It became a vital supply chain to get more food on the table for those in need.

“It was a neighbours helping neighbours,” Dean said. “Everybody combined to make this work. It wasn’t just Organic Ocean.”

Other recipients of the cod today were Have Culinary Training Society, PotLuck Cafe Society, and South Hall. In total twelve hundred and thirty pounds of the fish was distributed — about $20,000 worth in total.

A Loving Spoonful, a long-time Vancouver-based meal provider, received 400 pounds of the boxed, frozen lingcod pieces. The organization serves vulnerable, high-risk individuals who live throughout Metro Vancouver, many of whom are HIV positive, who may also have coexisting illnesses, and mobility challenges. The lingcod was a welcome catch for the non-profit, which relies largely on such support from the community to provide approximately one hundred thousand meals each year. The coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout have meant their program is needed more than ever, especially since several of its yearly fundraising campaigns have been cancelled due to the pandemic shutdown.

“We are seeing a big increase in our services, people looking for a stable healthy food source,” said Elyse Freeborn, director of development volunteer services at A Loving Spoonful. “We do provide all of our meals free of charge to our clients and at this time it’s very difficult with other meal programs shutting down.”

For Organic Ocean, like so many others, the impact of the provincial shutdown has meant business as usual is no longer possible.

“It’s been super hard for us on coping just like anybody else,” he said. “For us it was this whole entire supply chain from the fisher all the way through the end-user has been broken.”

But they still have product, so they’ve adapted by ramping up their online sales and included a next-day delivery service, so customers can purchase their seafood products to prepare at home.

“We are reinventing ourselves as as we go,” he said. “For me it was an opportunity to look at how do we keep our employees employed while doing something good for the community.”

For customers who purchase seafood online from Organic Ocean, there are cooking tips on its website from some of the top chefs who, if it were not for the pandemic, might have otherwise been serving it in their high-end restaurants around the world.

The fate of the lingcod stored in freezers at A Loving Spoonful is now in the hands of its volunteer chefs, to be included in meals for those who might otherwise go without.

“This is the time that we all need to step it up,” Dean said.