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I live at the coast where a great deal of wild Salmon, Crabs, and Oysters and a truckload of other varieties of fresh fish are caught daily, unless there is a huge storm and boats can't get out of harbor.

With a few exceptions (the oyster farm for example, and one or two piers) we can NOT buy local fresh seafood here. The market isn't big enough, they sell in bulk and almost all of it is shipped to those fly-over states, the East Coast, Vegas, LA, and San Francisco. Believe me, someone in Oklahoma probably has a better shot at getting our local seafood than I do.

It drives me nuts to live at the source but not be able to buy it.

I either need to start fishing and especially to invest in crab traps, because 5 minutes south of me is one of the best crabbing from piers areas around.

BTW, my genealogy must be all screwed up, and I have it done back to the 1500s on my dad's side, and the early 1600s on my mom's. Not one Italian, the closest is a Marquis from Calais, my only french connection, and he died around 1540. So, someone is lying here!

There are lots of blond haired, blue eyed Italians though, right?

I am within 2 minutes walking distance to one of the best rivers for catching salmon in the world! Walking distance to all kinds of clams as well, and a short drive for lake fishing (trout/bass/etc) or ocean fishing. Under 4 minutes.  A tributary of that river (about the width of a football field, yet called a "creek") is a 20 second walk from my front door.  There are dozens and dozens of lakes and rivers and coastline within 20 minutes too.

Seriously, I need to get over the whole, "don't know if I can kill it" thing and just start fishing. A year long shellfish license is under $15 too.

Central Oregon Coast. And nope. Restaurants around here must buy from the big distributors.

A friend of mine is a commercial crab fisherman (actually he is the captain of his own boats, just like that show!) and he will bring a few home to his wife, but the rest are shipped out of state. It's illegal for sports fishermen to sell their catches, and I haven't met enough locals to have an in there yet.

Oysters? Yes, easy.

Salmon? Almost impossible to get local stuff, the grocery stores, when they do sell "wild" salmon, sell Alaskan, because they are chains. Occasionally I can find fresh crab, and I think I finally found one store that sells a few locally caught things, little hole in the wall near a small harbor about 35 minutes south of me. It had fresh local halibut, but it was also very pricey.

The fishermen just make the best and most consistent money selling to bulk distributors. They say there isn't enough of a local market to make it worth their time, and locals can't buy enough to make it worth it to them. Also, a little town north of me occasionally puts out a sign that says, "fresh salmon" (or whatever) at dock 24.

We do get some "fresh" fish, but it's never from Oregon. Very, very, very annoying. Oh, and they over-dredged for scallops here, and I think in California. I haven't seen a fresh scallop in a decade. I used to just go down to the Santa Cruz pier and get locally caught ANYTHING, probably two dozen choices of fresh stuff, including scallops. San Francisco, of course, had our stuff and just about anything available from all over the world, almost always fresh. Heck, even San Jose had a great fish store with a multitude of choices.

Here? It's catch your own, or get lucky. Even the restaurants here very rarely have anything fresh and local, except of course, oysters.  You can sit in a harbor restaurant watching the salmon and crabbing boats come in, but when you order either and ask?  They are from Alaska almost every time. 

Also, when there is local stuff, it is much more expensive.  I occasionally see fresh local halibut for example, on menus or at the small fish stores, but it's so expensive.  The locals have to pay so much more when they can't buy it by the ton, so it will be there, but the fresh halibut from elsewhere will be half the price of the local stuff.

I miss scallops! It's the one thing that absolutely sucks after it's been frozen.