[Waves crashing] - Puerto Rico's deep water squid fishery got its start in the aftermath of an epic disaster.

- The situation here in San Juan is dire.

The winds here have been intensifying and the worst is yet to come.

(wind blows) - It was my wife and my, at that time, my 1-year-old kid, and I remember our building was shaking of the strength, of course, no power, no supermarkets were open.

So where I live, where we lose power, we also lose water.

So we didn't have any water either.

- Hurricane Maria really was the perfect recipe for disaster.

Millions of Americans just waiting for somebody to show up.

If nobody is coming, you are the one.

So you gather some friends, find some food, there's always food somewhere around and they start feeding them.

- So it was a time that nobody had anything and so...

Didn't expect this.

- There's a lot of unexpected things from that time, it's all right man.

- And so at that time, Rodolfo was telling me how bad the fishing sector was.

I said, well, I'm pretty good at writing proposals.

- I saw firsthand how these coastal populations, they made their living out of a boat and those boats are all destroyed.

We supported some fishermen that they needed money to buy equipment or to buy the motors or to buy the different tools.

And obviously this is great because it's not throwing money at the problem, but it's really investing into solutions.

- And so I remember helping over 30 fishers submit themselves to World Central Kitchen.

We got Rodolfo gear for the squid, the electric reel, (Rodolfo speaks Spanish) and we got him a new engine as well after Maria, which is one of those things that it's great because it allowed us to continue on to working towards creating that diamondback squid fishery here in Puerto Rico.

There's been a lot of things that the hurricane uncovered.

One of them has been the need to continue promoting resilience.

For an island like Puerto Rico, food security is something that's critically important just because we need to be able to not depend so much on the imports.

- Fishing remains a safety net, even after massive losses of boats and fishing assets and things like that.

It is the one thing as we've observed, that people will go to to get their food in a natural way as a response to major disasters out there.

- That is a serious cooler.

- Raimundo and Rodolfo wanna show me what I missed because of the storm.

All right, it's almost like there's a body in there.

- [Raimundo] There is.

- [Baratunde] A deep water diamondback squid.

That's big.

I have not seen a fully intact squid before.

Gonna pick it up, you see the weight?

- Okay, that's real, yeah, you could train with this.

- One of the good thing for the fishery, almost the entirety of the squid is meat.

- So a lot of the fish, when you clean the fish, a lot of the bones take up a lot of the weight.

So with squid.

- No bones.

(gentle music) - It doesn't really help if fishers go out and catch squid and then we have nowhere to sell it.

So, part of that outreach has really been distributing it to a lot of many different chefs, so folks really have the product.

(upbeat music) - When you're fishing for squid, somebody's gotta eat it and it better taste good, otherwise that's not sustainable either.

- Martin, do you want something to drink?

All right.

This is an alcapurria, so this is a traditional Puerto Rican food.

It's like a turnover that's stuffed with meat.

However, with a play, that instead of with meat, it's with squid.

- There is no meal more satisfying than the one you've worked hard for.

It actually extends for me some of the definition of sustainability and the idea of recognizing value.

- So this is calamari in coconut flour, deep fried.

- Very good, bueno.

- It's like a squid fry.

- This is the first time we make this.

- We gotta come up with a name.

- Well, we gotta know we got, we got squid, Naguabo style.

- Naguabo style, all right.

(gentle music) - When I first started with Conservación ConCiencia, I remember one of the things that I would say to myself was, I'm doing this for my kids.

But the more that I've been working these past six years, it's been giving hope for myself in my lifetime that things are going to continue getting better.

And I've seen the progress, I've seen the friendships, I've seen barriers broken down.

- Raimundo is a great representation of meeting people where they are.

You can't just show up asking people for something, demanding that they change without offering them something too.

- We need many of Raimundo Espinozas not only Puerto Rico but around the world.

It's a very simple message, I want you to fish, but I want you to fish smart.

I want you to enjoy what the ocean can give to you and your family, but in order for you to keep enjoying the riches of the ocean, you're gonna have to also be a friend of the ocean.