Our Story
Fishmongers have always had a presence on Cuba Street. In 1891 one of the first Greek immigrants Peter Garbes, arrived from from the islands of Corfu and opened a fish shop and oyster saloon on the Oaks site at 63 Cuba St. Gallete Haralambos brought that shop in 1895 and sold fresh fish caught around the Wellington region. Crayfish, muttonbirds and rabbits were also sold intact with fur, feathers or carapace still attached.
Gallete used some truly memorable marketing techniques to promote his business. Blocks of ice were introduced to preserve food in the early 1900’s. Gallete used them in his window display attracting curious passers-by who had never seen ice used like this. Large whole fish were strung up in the shop window including a large, 20-foot shark with its huge, teeth-encrusted jaw open. One of his most popular attractions, especially for housewives with curious children in tow, was his tame penguin which he convinced to stay in the shop’s doorway by giving it regular feeds of spotties.
In the 1930s fishermen of Italian, Greek, and Shetland island origin, most of whom lived and fished near Island Bay, formed a cooperative. Their market was located around the corner on Dixon Street. This cooperative allowed the fishermen to wholesale and distribute their catches, mostly groper, bass, blue cod, and lots of crayfish, to local restaurants and shops and to get a fair market price.
The 1950s were the golden years for these fishermen with 25 boats working from Island Bay, but when exports of frozen crayfish to the West coast of the United States began in the 1950s things changed. The next generation of the original families closed the Co-op and many went into businesses of their own.
Wellington Trawling and Sea Market:
In 1947, the Meo family of Island Bay set up the fish factory on this site and distributed wholesale fresh and frozen fish, shellfish, and smoked fish to local and international customers. Bluff oysters arrived in sacks and, in later years, were shucked in 25-dozen tins. The factory had a large smoking area where fish was preserved.
Tony Basile was part of a group that bought this business in 1979 and soon took over the running of the whole operation. Tony is a second-generation Italian whose father Antonio and Uncle Mariano emigrated from Sorrento, Italy, in the 1920s and worked as Island Bay fisherman.
Over the last 33 years, the Wellington Trawling and Sea market has responded to changes in public taste and habits. Its smokehouse closed because its emissions became unpopular in this built-up area and, in the 1970s as the demand for whole fish or fillets with the skin and backbones attached waned and that of fully filleted portions grew, filleting and other ways of preparing fish for sale took place in the factory.
The fish prepared and sold by Wellington Trawling and Sea market is caught by contract fishermen who sell their quota to Tony. Some have been supplying fish to this business for 10 to 20 years. This fish is still landed fresh at Wellington port.
The retail fish shop on this Cuba Street site was opened in 2000. The Wellington Trawling and Seamarket has two other stores, one in Lambton Quay and the other in Lower Hutt. Fresh fish and crayfish are exported from the factory to Australia and the West Coast of America and frozen goods are sent afield.