Justin Park was used to the deep. As a U.S. naval veteran who spent two and a half years working on submarines for the Royal Canadian Navy around Victoria, he had seen plenty of what lies beneath the waves. But nothing prepared him for what he discovered when he turned his attention to the surface.
The 30-year-old from Honolulu recently completed a personal challenge: to find, catch and eat as many different species of flora and fauna across British Columbia as he could in roughly a year. The haul was remarkable. Park chronicled his culinary adventures for tens of thousands of followers on social media, sampling everything from globally renowned spot prawns and Dungeness crab to far more obscure offerings. Think acorn and oak weevil crostini, salal berry fruit roll-ups, pickled bull kelp and, perhaps most eye-wateringly of all, barbecued purple starfish – which, when cooked, yields yellow gonads that resemble scrambled eggs and taste not entirely unlike them, albeit with a distinctive bitter pop.
“I was just so excited to discover these things,” Park said during a phone interview from Ecuador, where he travelled this summer. “I didn’t know you could just dig in the sand and catch a Dungeness crab and go home with a $30 crab. I was just like blown away by how much food there was, not only in the sea, but on land as well.”
A Growing Appetite for Self-Sufficiency
Park is not alone in his enthusiasm for sourcing meals directly from the wild. An informal movement appears to be building across North America, with people seeking to reclaim their relationship with food in response to a confluence of modern pressures: ever-climbing grocery prices, concerns about the ecological and health impacts of industrial agriculture, and a growing frustration with screen time consuming空闲 hours.
Concrete data remains elusive, but census figures from 2021 offer some insight. Just three per cent of Canadian households reported hunting close to home, though this rose to seven per cent for those residing outside major urban centres. In British Columbia specifically, the province issued 13 per cent more fishing licences to residents over the decade leading up to 2023 – the last year for which figures are available.
Tom Cervenka, a Vancouver-based computer programmer who also sells field guides to berry and mushroom picking and leads tours through Pacific Spirit Regional Park adjoining the University of British Columbia campus, believes the COVID-19 pandemic and our deepening dependence on social media have accelerated interest in self-sufficiency.
“How can I look after myself without relying on food distribution chains that could fail conceivably?” he asked, articulating what he sees as the central question driving this shift.
Beyond the Usual Suspects
Park is keen to push audiences beyond the familiar trio of crab, salmon and halibut. He wants people to explore the abundance that Indigenous communities have utilised for millennia – a point that resonates with Dr. Jennifer Grenz.
Grenz, a member of the Lytton First Nation and a food systems scientist with UBC’s Department of Forest Resources Management, welcomes Park’s efforts to share knowledge about accessing wild foods. She notes that a growing number of Indigenous creators are now posting their own content, citing chef and educator Jared Qwustenuxun Williams – known online as the Indigenous Forest Punk – as a prime example.
“Humans are inherently lazy, right?” Grenz said, challenging the popular misconception that Indigenous peoples spent their lives in constant hunting and gathering. She points to practices such as “sea gardens” – rock walls built along intertidal zones to trap sediment and create thriving habitats for shellfish – as evidence that traditional food systems offered minimal effort for maximal returns.
“This was sustainable aquaculture,” she explained.
The erasure of such knowledge from mainstream culture remains a persistent problem. Grenz experienced this firsthand when her twin daughters were called to the principal’s office after showing classmates how to pick and eat salmon berries during a school hike. The teacher, upon discovering what the girls were doing, “flipped out” – apparently, teaching others to eat wild berries ran counter to school policy.
“I’m like, ‘well, they know their plant identification, they’re teaching them: This is food. They’re just teaching their friends to find food out in the places they go all the time,'” Grenz recalled. “‘And then that’s when I was like, “Do you want this to be a news story or do you want to apologize to them?”‘”
The school apologised.
Learning to Engage Responsibly
Park is careful to emphasise that anyone wishing to follow in his footsteps must follow the rules and avoid harvesting from species at risk. He sees his platform as both a celebration of British Columbia’s natural wealth and a challenge to others to venture beyond their comfort zones – even if just to appreciate, rather than consume, what the wild has to offer.
His challenge may be over, but editing continues on the videos documenting his journey through up to 70 different species. Whatever comes next, Park has already introduced countless viewers to the idea that dinner might be waiting just outside the usual supermarket aisle.
Why it Matters
The renewed interest in foraging and wild food procurement speaks to something deeper than foodie trends or social media novelty. As climate change threatens agricultural stability and supply chain vulnerabilities become harder to ignore, the skills our ancestors took for granted are finding new relevance. Justin Park’s culinary adventures may seem like light-hearted entertainment, but they point toward a fundamental question about how Canadians relate to the land beneath their feet – and whether the knowledge stripped from mainstream culture over generations can be meaningfully restored before it’s needed most.
