Alittle more about me...
I started NorthCoast Brine to bridge some of my passions- creativity and imagination, the landscape of waves and saltwater and the wild creatures I grew up around.
Through showcasing species most people are only aware of as fillets on a dinner plate, I hope to encourage stewardship and pride in the life of cold ocean waters and provide advise on sustainable methods of taking and of eating seafood. Beyond educating, as a brand, NorthCoast Brine represents an ocean centric lifestyle. A lifestyle revolving around a cold and dark ocean, which is the water most brimming with life.
NorthCoast Brine is my (Emma Hurley) project: I am the artist, wardrobe engineer, writer, researcher, web-designer, sales person, shipper.... The one thing I do not do is the screen-printing. My screen printing takes place in a small garage in Santa Cruz, CA. Each piece is hand printed by a friend. We do small batches of each image and I keep only small batches of clothing in stock. Because of the nature of hand printing, variations of color and placement occurs within a batch of shirts. My goal is ocean conservation, so I try to source part of my line in semi-ocean friendly clothing. My clothing blanks are a mix of large company, organic cotton, made in the US and soon to come some hemp and bamboo. The fish come from my original pen and ink drawings, which to me, give a different feel than computer generated vector art, which most tee-shirt art these days is printed from. My images occationally do go into the computer, but just to get ride of an ink smudge here or there.
A little about myself: I grew up next to the ocean in the small wonderful town of Point Arena. I have a passion for the outdoors. Values of environmental stewardship and sustainability developed when I was young through the hours I spent exploring, observing and interacting with different ecosystems in the wild coastal reaches of Northern California. I would disappear for hours to explore deep, forested canyons, craggy ridge-tops, meadowed headlands and vibrant tide-pools. From an early age I knew the names of the plant and animal life I found around me; I knew when and where the calypso orchids bloomed, which intertidal seaweeds were edible and what the names of the trees I climbed were. In my early years, a home-schooled education allowed time for the natural world to be my greatest teacher.
The tie I have felt to the ocean environment my whole life has only gotten stronger through education and work, from earning a bachelors in Marine Conservation from Prescott College and through working as a biologist and environmental educator. I worked for the Department of Fish and Wildlife as a field sampler for four years, which is partly where my inspiration for NorthCoast Brine came from- my role as a fisheries biologist, seeing these beautiful species first hand day after day and my frustration with how much ignorance, lack of knowledge and lack of respect I witnessed from people out on the California coast catching fish. I currently work as a marine educator for the O'Neill Sea Odyssey program and as a field technician for the Gualala River Watershed Council working on steelhead and river restoration.
I stared surfing when I was in my early 20s and has been the passion most driving my personal lifestyle. Where I live, what work I do, even when I hang out with friends is influenced by the surf access, tides and swell. which also influences my work and is the.
