“I Love What I Do, & I Want Other People To Do This When I’m Done”, An Interview With Marine Biologist, Scuba Diver, & Sustainable Seafood Proprietor Stephanie Mutz

The Persaud Catalog
Jan 18
19 min read

*A vibrant photograph of today’s interviewee, marine biologist, urchin diver, & sustainable seagood proprietor, Stephanie Mutz. Credit to Paul Wellman.*

Recently, we were fantastically fortunate to sit down for an interview with marine biologist, scuba diver, sustainable seafood proprietor, & the only female urchin diver in California, Stephanie Mutz!

Stephanie Mutz is an extraordinary urchin diver, sustainable seafood proprietor, & marine researcher from California. She is well known for her sustainable seafood company, Sea Stephanie Fish, a clever play on words. She supplies premium, fresh urchin, black cod, snapper, scallops, California spiny lobster, mussels, & a variety of other Pacific seafood.

In today’s interview, we sit down with Stephanie to discuss her work in sustainable seafood, her passion for marine life, her early career as a marine researcher, what drove her to enter sustainable fisheries, & her advice for young marine scientists, fishermen, & ocean professionals, in a comprehensive 17-question interview. Before delving into today’s interview, please note everything said has been edited for clarity, & that the opinions of our interviewee do not necessarily reflect the views & values of our organization. With that being said, let us delve into the contents of the interview!

The Contents Of The Interview

Questions About Her Passion:

1. What sparked your passion for the ocean, & marine science?

I just grew up around it. I grew up in Newport Beach, I was the kid who rode her bike everywhere. I was at the beach every day, & had to come home when the streetlights came on. It’s all that I know. I needed to figure out how to make a living out of it, so I figured out a couple of ways, with commercial fishing, & in a past life I was a marine biologist & researcher.

I’ve always been surrounded by the sea, in 40-something years of my entire life, the longest I’ve been away from the ocean was 2 months when I was traveling through South America.

2. What sparked your passion for Scuba Diving?

Technically, for urchin diving, I am hookah diving. The difference between scuba diving & hookah diving is that in scuba, you have the tank on your back, & in hookah, the tank is on my boat, then I have a big long hose. The same rules for breathing compressed air, & dive tables. It’s the same except for where the tanks are. I’ve got more time, & less chance, or pretty much no chance of running out of air as long as the compressor is running.

I guess one of the things is that diving led to a job that I didn’t have to sit at a desk all day for, & I could be in the ocean! It became very comfortable right away, there was no working at it for me. I’ve always been extremely comfortable in the ocean, & extremely comfortable underwater. That’s a very important aspect to have, you need to have that comfort level. It's kind of second nature to me, I definitely say that I function better underwater than I do on land a lot of times.

3. What is your favourite terrestrial, or marine animal personally, & what is your favourite marine or terrestrial animal that you have worked on?

A terrestrial animal would be an elephant, they’re just gentle giants, unless you piss them off. There are not very many of them, & they’re social, although I’m not that social. Maybe I’m a little envious of it, I’m not sure.

The favourite animal that I’ve ever worked with, I mean, obviously I’m sure biased, but it’s got to be the sea urchin. When I was an undergrad in college at UCSB my senior thesis project was on the food preferences of sea urchins. I had no idea I would be in the commercial diving industry at that point, I wanted to be a researcher. That was pretty much my first project, or species, that I worked on that was mine. I often worked for other people before my senior year of college, in other laboratories & stuff. I guess I still study urchins now.

I still observe patterns, & pay a lot of attention to water temperature, water quality, & all those things in order to make a living at this, & make sure their species endures. I love what I do, & I want other people to do this when I’m done. If I’m ever done!

4. What sparked your passion for urchin-fishing?

Diving is what I know, I’m comfortable with it. I’d like to paint this picture of when I had just finished grad school, but my thesis wasn’t done yet. Essentially, I turned in my thesis, & I went to grad school in Australia, at James Cook University, & they do things a bit differently there than they do in the United States. In the US, you defend your thesis, you give this presentation, you turn in this book that is your thesis, your committee signs off on it, & you have your degree. In Australia, you do all of those things, your committee signs off on it, & it goes to 3 external reviewers to basically he peer reviewed by people in your field. Being a researcher, you have a pretty full plate already, then this book comes to your desk & you have to review it.

It did not come back in a timely manner, so technically I couldn’t start teaching yet because I didn’t exactly have my degree. I came back to Santa Barbara, & I needed a job, & at that point, you needed about five jobs. That led me to get into fisheries politics. I was freelancing, & essentially representing fishermen for marine protected area meetings & similar policy things. Then, I also began bartending at Peabody’s for people who know old school Santa Barbara.

I was very interested in urchin diving, I wanted to start fishing on boats so that I could have more knowledge of who I’m representing & what I’m representing. I could go to meetings, & instead of saying I represent fishermen, now I am a fisherman, & can have a somewhat knowledgeable conversation with these policy makers. I ended up loving it!

The first guy that I worked with, George Hawkins, I still dive with today. I suppose he dives with me now, & dives with my business. I’ve participated in many fisheries, but I mostly focus on sea urchins, & spiny lobsters now. I used to do a little bit of everything, & realized that I was doing everything halfway, & it’s better if I focus on a couple of things & learn to be good at those. Part of my business is to buy seafood from other fishermen, to have a variety of seafood products available to my customers.

*A mouthwatering urchin caught by diver Stephanie Mutz. Credit to Stephanie Mutz.*

Questions About Her Career:

5. What university did you attend for your undergraduate degree, & was there any particular reason?

I went to UC Santa Barbara for their marine biology program. I knew what I wanted to do. When I was 12, my dad asked me, “What do you want to do when you grow up?”, & I said “I don’t know. I just don’t want to wear pantyhose & sit at a desk”. So far so good! I remember my uncle’s wife at the time, who worked in high school education, told me that I should apply to UCSB for a major that’s not popular, then I can get in & change my major. I’m a bit stubborn, I’m much like my mom, & I said “No, I want to go there for marine biology.”

I didn’t get in at first, & I was just going to go to the local city college in Newport, in Orange County. It’s something for young people to hear, this is a good story. I petitioned their decision, & I wrote a letter to reconsider. I am diagnosed with ADD as well as Dyslexia, & I asked them to take all of these things into consideration. I distinctly remember the phone call, they asked “Do you want to go to UCSB?”, & I said “Yeah, I do.” I still had the assignment for my place in the dorms as they had not dropped me for that yet. I got in, & started freshman year. I finished in 4 years, which is beginning to be difficult. I’ve heard that it is more difficult to do in 4 years now, I don’t know if I’m wrong about that. I worked in many laboratories, & worked in French Polynesia for a few years. That is where I got my start in research diving.

I did a lot of diving on the coast here in California, from Oregon all the way down to Mexico. I surveyed the ocean, you know, fish, invertebrates, sea life, everything. It’s actually really, really fun now.

6. What university did you attend for your master’s degree, & was there any particular reason?

I’d been to Australia a couple of times already & loved it. Loved being there, loved visiting there. I worked under J. Howard Choat, who’s the best tropical marine ecologist in the world. He made it very clear that he didn’t accept me for my grades. I was a very solid B student in college, he took me because of all of my experience, & the people I’ve worked with. He didn’t have to babysit me with field work.

One of the big reasons that I went was that I thought I was going to save money, because when I was there earlier, the US dollar was so strong compared to the Australian dollar. I could save money by going to grad school there. Well, John Howard was the prime minister, & he did great things for the Australian economy, so it was one to one the entire time I was there. I had enough money for tuition for the first year, & I proved myself by collecting data. I ended up collecting a lot of data for J. Howard Choat for his research, & that essentially paid for mine as well. We worked on the same habitat, so I would collect both of our data together, then process all of the information. I also TA’d, so that got my tuition paid for.

So I got all my research paid for, & my tuition paid for. I ended up leaving grad school with 15,000$ debt, which I thought was pretty good.

7. Although your primary work relates to fisheries nowadays, part of your early career was spent conducting research in the field of marine science. What was the first research project that you were involved with, & what was your research centered around?

I can’t remember which, I was working at two different labs at the same time, & both do similar things. One was a laboratory called PISCO (Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans), & the other was called LTER (Long-Term Ecological Research Network). Both of these labs were long-term ecological research programs, which were essentially data collection at the same spot for many years. A lot of what I did was taking inventory, & I started working at first with the intertidal. After I got my research diving certification, I moved underwater, & began surveying things underwater & doing things near the Channel Islands. I took inventory of everything, ran transects, quadrants, counted fish, all that stuff.

Eventually, I went to the tropics & worked there for a couple of years, essentially working on damselfish mostly, & a bit of coral restoration as well. You don’t focus on one single thing, you write a grant to explore everything in that habitat. I was very capable, and I learned my species identification well. Good attitude is a quality that you’ve got to have in order to work that way, & flexibility.

It was a great job to have while I was an undergrad.

8. What did you enjoy about commercial fishing & the seafood industry?

That’s different every day. That’s a good & bad thing. It’s super challenging, & it’s super rewarding because I’m feeding people. I’m feeding people in a responsible way, with good quality fish. I have pride in the quality that I catch & that I supply. Any person can pick a spiny ball off the bottom of the ocean, but I have to make sure it’s good quality inside & I’m not wasting a resource. There are some indicators that you can use to ensure quality.

Also, I love the relationships that I have with my chefs, & my customers. I love geeking out on how to prepare seafood, & some of my customers love to talk about diving. I don’t like to talk about diving too much, we have a little joke that urchin divers hate diving. We don’t, we’re not avid divers, & have all the tools, & just do it. It’s like second nature to us, we don’t need to talk about it, but you entertain your customers who may want to geek out about it. Most of my chefs have become very close, good friends. I’ve worked with many of them for 10+ years.

With my direct marketing, I don’t sell to another distributor, I am the distributor. I distribute myself to restaurants, to retail, & my face is behind it. I have a responsibility to provide the best available responsibly.

This year, 2026, is going to be 20 years as a commercial fisherman. It’s still nothing compared to some of the great legends that I get to work with every day as well. My mentors have been doing it for twice as long, & more, which is awesome.

9. How did you found your sustainable seafood company, “Sea Stephanie Fish”?

What was your experience in founding it?

I came up with the name through my best friend’s dad. My best friend’s dad growing up came up with it while we were drinking beers at Paradise Store, which is no longer, up at San Marcos Pass in Santa Barbara. I didn’t know anything about sales, all my education about marketing is from experience, seeing what sticks & what doesn’t. I knew I needed a brand, & that I needed a name. My dad suggested having my name in it so that everyone remembers my name.

I started cold calling chefs, I would go to the back of restaurants with a bucket of urchin. I hated it, the chefs were so mean!

“What do you want little girl?!”

“What are you doing in my kitchen?!”

“I have urchin…”

“Why didn’t you say so?! Get over here!”

Some told me to get out, but most ended up being great! I’ve become great friends with them, & it’s so fun to see our restaurants & both our livelihoods grow together. I’m a slow grower, I started with a super small boat, & I started on somebody else’s boat. Then I got my own little Panga, then a little aluminum skiff. Then I graduated to big girl pants, with the Radon.

I had a business partner for a bit that I shared markets with, & we grew apart, & ended up amicably splitting. I’ve been growing a team since then, because I’ve definitely gotten too big for my own britches to do it all on my own. I’ve got drivers, deckhands, people who help distribute & do everyday things that I do. I’m very fortunate, I had & have some great people working with me. I see them, I acknowledge them, they are a reason I’m where I am. It’s not just me. As hard as it is to manage people, it’s definitely easier to manage urchins.

*A photograph of Stephanie Mutz on her boat, out on the Pacific, with a net filled with urchins & kelp. Credit to Fran Collin.*

10. What kinds of seafood do you sell, & what are your most popular products?

Everything, I have relationships with the fishermen. It’s all seasonal obviously. We’ll do mussels from Hope Ranch, & abalone from The Cultured Abalone at Gaviota. We have rockfish, black cod, halibut, & tuna, with tuna mostly from Southern California. We’ve got whelks, rock crabs, spider crabs, lobster, & ridgeback shrimp. I’ve got a great relationship with someone fishermen in Alaska for salmon, because we don’t have a salmon season. We haven’t had a salmon season in a few years. They’ll put it on a plane & they’ll come into Santa Barbara Airport the next day, or the same day. They’re not alive, but they’re fresh.

I need to have a relationship with a fisherman. My relationships are not just with customers & chefs, but also with fishermen. I figured it out quite early that chefs didn’t want seafood from eight different people, they wanted it to be more consolidated. I understood that, I understood the assignment, & then I got my friends to come join.

11. How would you describe urchins to those who do not have experience with them both in taste, physical description, & ecology?

Sea urchin is an animal, an animal with no eyes. It’s got little two feet or something called the podia that they “walk with”, & also kind of breathe with. They do have a mouth, it is called Aristotle’s Lantern, because Aristotle described it as looking like a street lantern in one of his books. I think it was called Animals.

They want to live on rocky reefs, preferably with kelp, their favourite food is Macrocystis (Giant Kelp), which I learned about when I was 17 years old at UCSB in my senior thesis. It also affects their taste, sea urchins are what they eat. If they're eating sweet Macrocystis, they are going to taste sweet, if they are eating something bitter, they are also going to taste bitter. Sometimes, there are warm water events which will come, & I’ll see them with a tuna crab hanging out of their mouth. If there are squid eggs at a certain site, I’m not going to pick there, I’m going to pick somewhere else, because they’re going to taste super bitter. Especially if they are eating squid eggs, you can totally smell it, & it smells super disgusting.

I remember one time in particular, it was a warm water event, which was probably 10+ years ago. I got these urchins from super shallow waters, like 10 feet, & because they were so shallow & it was so warm, another kind of algae grew, & they were eating this algae. I remember one of my chefs was Sam Baxter from Connie & Ted’s, & he tastes every single urchin that goes out to the table as quality control. He tells me that all the urchins were so bitter. The colour, & freshness were perfect, but they were so bitter. So I went back to that spot, & sure enough, there’s this little algae that I wasn’t paying attention to, growing there. Now if I ever see that algae, I won’t pick urchin there.

I’m giving you examples where they don’t taste very good, but most of the time they taste good. As you know, they’re sweet, they’ve got a salty umami flavour. My favourite thing about them is that they evolve in your mouth. You take a bit, & they could be super salty at first, then they turn sweet, then a little umami, then back to sweet again. It’s this evolution. I call it a party in your mouth.

I’m obviously a bit biased, but I think California Urchin does that the most.

12. What does a typical day for you consist of?

I leave the harbour at about six, & it takes me 2+ hours to get to the diving spot in the Northern Channel Islands. On ideal days, we don’t have to move the boat. We stay in one spot, & there’s enough good quality urchin there, & it’s a good day. We stay there & pick urchins until we get what we need. I’ll pick as much as I can sell, & leave the rest for later. That’s an ideal day if I can get enough for the markets. I’ll go once or twice per week. Sometimes I’ll go more, I’ve gotten pretty good at my job to the point where I can focus on distribution, & communication with clients.

Sometimes, we’ll leave urchins hanging from the boat for the market the next day. If I don’t use them for a couple more days, then I’ll have a mooring outside the harbour, hang them in bags, & they’ll stay alive for a week or two. It’s nice to plan around the weather. There was a storm last week, I had quite a few hundred hanging from the mooring, & they all survived quite well, I knew they would because I’ve done it before. I’ve definitely killed a lot of urchins to figure it out in the last 20 years.

I’ll deliver on the way home, I mostly distribute to Santa Barbara & the Santa Ynez Valley. Then the next day I’ll have a driver drive all the way to Los Angeles, & then to Orange County. We FedEx seafood all over as well.

Wednesdays are a big market day, our biggest market day. Wednesdays & Saturdays. It gives us enough time during the week to collect our seafood from the ocean, & it’s there for the weekend. We distribute on Saturdays for people who need it twice a week.

We have a retail market as well. We did it every week during the pandemic. The pandemic for us, market-wise, was a success! We were all restaurants at first, then the restaurants went away overnight. I remember Michael Cimarusti from Providence calls me, & says “We’re done.” What does this mean? I told my people, I’m going to pay you for a month, but get your affairs in order. I didn’t quite understand what was happening, but in the back of my mind, I was thinking to myself “Somebody could do really well in this situation.”

Obviously, it was a horrible thing, but there were opportunities there. I learned quickly, & we jumped right into retail markets. You order online on a Wednesday on our website, then you have until Friday morning, or until we sell out of something. Then you pick it up, you have an hour to pick it up. One weekend will be in Orange County, then the next weekend will be in the Bay Area. We have four different spots in the Bay Area that you can pick up from, & then you take it home to eat.

During the pandemic, I got a lot of chefs to make videos of how to cook urchin, & how to prepare all these dishes with seafood. A normal person doesn't eat seafood at home, but they did during the pandemic! They had plenty of time to learn. We're still doing really well market-wise, & I understand the value of diverse markets. We still do retail, but we focus mostly on restaurants, & wholesale markets.

13. What courses do you teach about science at Ventura County College in Southern California?

At Ventura College, I teach environmental science. I used to teach general biology, but I evolved away from that. I wanted to teach fewer courses, but I didn't have the time for it.

Environmental science is an introductory class meaning everybody can take it, it's all online. My administration team supports me as a professor, so I really, really enjoy it. So long as that keeps on, I'll keep on teaching. Students have changed a lot in 20 years, quite a lot. Entitlement is there, & present, absolutely. Students don't want to learn, they just want a grade. This has stemmed from the No Child Left Behind Law passed many years ago. The high school teachers just pass them even though they don't do their work. Then I get them, & they don't do their work, & they say, "I have a zero.", & I have to respond, "Well, you didn't do the work!", & they're shocked about it!

My favourite thing in the world now is Chat GPT, so I'm not teaching, I'm just trying to figure out if they're cheating or not. It's not fun. I have only a handful of students who want to learn, give great feedback, & want to participate.

14. What has been your biggest triumph or proudest moment across your career?

I essentially have 2 careers. With teaching, my proudest moment is when a student doesn't finish a class, or doesn't pass my class, then they come back, & say "I wasn't ready, but I am now.", then they pass my class. When they drop out, or when they don't do well, I always think "What did I do wrong?". Part of it is, if you don't do your work, I can't help you. They admit they weren't ready, they know they are ready now, & then they pass the class. Maybe they weren’t mature enough, or were in a bad place at the time. Yet, they’re ready now, & I get to see them succeed. That’s so rewarding as a professor.

I think what’s rewarding for me as a fisherman is to be able to accomplish the near impossible. Whether it's fishing in bad conditions, or something breaks & I end up fixing it or figuring it out in the middle of the ocean, & we still get the work done. I definitely have the attitude & the mindset of everything’s possible, & I try to instill this in my students & employees. There’s always a way. There’s always a solution. It may not be your first attempt, but there is always a fix for everything. You've got to try, & maybe the outcome will not be the way you expected, but it was some kind of a solution. To the chefs who are asking for the impossible, or the near impossible, “Can we get this seafood across the country by 7:00 AM tomorrow?”, & I’m like “If you can go to the airport to get it, yeah.” I figured out how to do that. A lot of it is having connections, & good relationships with the people you know. I think it’s most rewarding to do the almost impossible.

I don’t go to policy meetings anymore, I ask “What is this regulation doing now?”, I’ll work around it. Just tell me what the deal is & I’ll work around it. I don’t deal with policy stuff anymore, it’s a waste of my time. If I’m not fishing, I’m not making any money. The more meetings you have, the less time you get to fish. That’s my favourite thing to do in the whole wide world. So why deprive myself of that, especially with some dumb meeting?

15. I’m sure that you have faced just as many challenges & setbacks as you have leaps forward, what has been the biggest hurdle or challenge that you have faced across your career, & how did you overcome it?

I do have to admit something. I definitely have had so many challenges & setbacks, but there’d definitely be more going forward than going back. I wouldn’t say it is 50/50. I’m still growing, I’m still learning, I’m still moving forward. We all are. I’d say there’s more moving forward than back.

Things that take me back, honestly, one of the hardest things is a dead loss of some sort. It got contaminated somehow, a refrigerator went down or the weather destroyed it, something like that. The resource got wasted. Sometimes you have to do that to learn. I mean, all the setbacks you have, you learn from them, or else you’re not going to learn forward. There are a few occasions where I’ve had theft or deception from other humans, & that’s always a big bummer, you take it personally. Even a chef wants to try to discredit you just because they have something going on with themselves.

If one of my employees makes a mistake, I’ll explain it to them. I’m a very direct person. They know this by now, I’m not mad at them, I’m just trying not to waste time & to figure out how it won’t happen again.

16. What is your advice for new urchin divers, marine biologists, or fisheries workers?

There’s always a solution. There’s always a solution. If you have to petition your college entry, if you have to watch YouTube on how to work on your boat engine for you to go to work, if you have a chef asking you an impossible thing, there’s always some kind of solution. I’m a big fan of that.

You've got to want to love it. Honestly, you've got to love what you do & everything else will fall into place. You've got to love what you do. You can’t just do it for the money, you can’t do it for anything else but really, genuinely loving what you do.

17. Do you have any final words about your work, the kelp forests of California, urchin diving, marine biology, or sustainable fisheries?

One thing I want to say about kelp forests; It’s cyclical. It’s cyclical. It comes & goes, & it has been coming & going for a gazillion years. We need to you know, help with the preservation of it. Our waters are a lot warmer than they used to be, & that’s affecting the kelp beds, but be careful when somebody says “The ocean’s dead.” It’s more resilient than us, keep that in perspective.