Wild-harvested seafood from Baja California

Francisco “Pancho” Morales and Gregor “Paco” Flores met in 1984, the summer after graduating high school, while surfing at Punta Abreojos on the Pacific coast of Baja California. Paco had come down from Mendocino, California. Pancho was from Ensenada, Mexico. After a few surfs together, and over shared machaca tacos, they became fast friends.

They stayed in touch for years, then lost contact as life moved on. Pancho built his life in the Baja fisheries—diving as a teenager and later working as a commercial diver, fisherman, captain, and cooperative member. His family has long been part of the abalone fishery within a cooperative system that manages harvest under strict quotas and local control.

Paco followed a different path, spending years surfing in Hawaii before becoming a mechanical engineer in California. He later spent a decade at Apple working on complex product systems before starting this business, but remained closely tied to the ocean throughout. In 2003, Paco returned to Baja and tracked Pancho down in Ensenada. They reconnected after nearly twenty years; much of their time together is now with family visits to Pancho’s hometown of Bahía Asunción, where their children have become close friends in the same way.

For several years, Pancho had been pointing to the need for new markets as conditions in the fishery shifted. More recently, that led to a direct question: why hadn’t seafood from these cooperatives—carefully handled and harvested within a controlled system—reached the California market that would value it? P&P Wild Baja Seafood was built as a direct answer, working with cooperative fisheries and bringing product across the border with minimal handling and full traceability—from specific boats, divers, and towns.