We are Tilghman Island Seafood
How Tilghman Island Seafood started… in Nick’s own words.
“ I was a traditional seafood buyer and processor on the eastern shore, buying and processing oysters in the winter and buying and processing crabs in the summer. After a terrible year in 2022 buying, selling, and picking crabs, we not only were exhausted but showed a loss for all our efforts at the end of the season.
Wondering how we were going to make ends meet going into the 2022 oyster season, we knew we had to make a change, or we wouldn’t be able to keep the doors open. We decided that we would turn the old oyster house into a USDA certified Blue Catfish processing facility. I was approached by a gentleman who was a purchaser for the military, he told me that he purchased hundreds of thousands of pounds of blue catfish a year and was having trouble meeting the demand of the military. He asked if I thought I could convert the packing house in Tilghman to a USDA certified catfish processing facility. After doing some homework and learning everything that would be required to get certified we weren’t sure that we could pull this off.
But that same month the 2022 fall crab survey came out and showed the lowest number of crabs reported since they started doing the surveys back in 1990. The report showed that only 227 million crabs were estimated which may seem like a lot but compared to 2012 where there was an estimated 765 million we knew something was wrong. I wanted to figure out where the crabs were going. All signs started to point back to the blue catfish, pictures started surfacing with blue catfish bellies full of dozens of crabs.
This was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. Being frustrated with the crab industry and concerned for my friends and community that rely on the crabs for their livelihood, I knew we didn’t have a choice. We had a chance to become part of the solution and not the problem.”
Then the real work started…
John N. Hargrove - Owner & President
A life-long waterman and resident of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, John Nicholas Hargrove (Nick) is dedicated and determined to help manage the invasive blue catfish population to preserve and protect the Chesapeake Bay and to restore a way of life to the watermen and the Eastern Shore before its irreparable.
Nick passionately dedicates over a decade to the ongoing Spat-on-Shell oyster restoration program and is now taking the fight directly to the blue catfish, having converted one of his two historic waterfront packing houses into a seafood processing plant whose primary focus is the blue catfish.
In August 2024, Nick was humbled to receive the Congressional Record and Citation Award, Governor's Citation, Senatorial Citation, House of Delegate Citation, and our country’s flag was flown over The Capitol in Washington, D.C., in his honor, in recognition of his contributions to preserve an endangered ecosystem.
Norman McCowan - Vice President of Operations
Norman McCowan is passionate about our environment and he is unwavering in giving back to nature to help provide a safe, healthy habitat for all living things now, and for all future generations. Growing up in Indiana, fishing was the name of the game and is what started his appreciation for the great outdoors. For the past two plus decades, Norman has been raising, breeding, marketing, and selling fish and seafood in various functions ranging from Operations Manager to President and CEO.
Now, Norman is proud to apply his vast experience to Tilghman Island Seafood with the goal of eradicating the invasive blue catfish from the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries to help restore the threatened ecology. He has helped transform this historic MD packing house into a fish processing plant, adapting from a manual processing operation to implementing machinery to enhance productivity, efficiency, flexibility, and safety for the team. He continues to streamline processes while expanding business relationships and opportunities for the company.
Horacio Savala Molina- Plant Manager
Horacio has been with been with the Tilghman family seafood group for 5 years and is a lead-by-example manager. He has been in the seafood industry for over 20+ years and has a well rounded experience including the retail space, picking crabs, fishing and processing seafood. Horacio understands what it takes to produce a quality product and meeting customer expectation for a excellent product. Horacio is trained in HACCP and continues to learn the new innovation being applied to seafood standards and equipment.
