Andrew Ryland Spurgin, Seafood Education & Events Director, is also the Executive Director/Chef of Waters Fine Catering in San Diego. Andrew has built a culinary career spanning three decades. He has designed and prepared menus and events honoring dignitaries from U.S. Presidents Clinton and Reagan, Soviet Union President Gorbachev, and Israeli Prime Minister Peres, to California Governors Wilson and Davis, and even Martha Stewart. Some of his regular clients include Tiffany & Co., Bloomingdale's and Callaway Golf.

Among his many accolades, he and Waters recently earned a coveted ACE Award for Best Caterer in the West for 2009 from Catersource Magazine. Spurgin has also been honored by Event Solutions Magazine with a national Spotlight Award as Caterer of the Year.

A champion of sustainable, handcrafted, organic, and regional foods, Spurgin grew up in London, working in his relative's restaurant and butcher shop. His aunts introduced him early to the bounty of local purveyors at London's historic Borough Market where he “worked” at a young age. His family moved to San Diego in 1974.

Promoted at age 19 to banquet manager for a major area resort, Spurgin moved on to become chef and baker of one of California's first handcrafted, on-premise bakery/restaurants. He was director of catering at Southern California's celebrated Piret's, and at several other respected catering firms. Spurgin has consulted and cooked with London's Mustard Catering Ltd. and has been tutored by the
cheesemongers at Neal's Yard Dairy, also in London.

He gives regular lectures on sustainability, cooking and entertaining, and his events, interviews, articles and photos have been featured in numerous local and national magazines, radio and TV. In 2000, to address growing concern for the environment, he helped found this organization, Passionfish, an innovative educational concern addressing seafood sustainability issues.

Spurgin sits on the Advisory Board of Catering Magazine and is an Associate Board Member of the Slow Food Convivium San Diego. He is a past member of the Director's Cabinet for Scripps Institution of Oceanography and is an E.W. Scripps Associate. Currently, he is working with other educators, marine biologists, fishermen and chefs on a national project for the Blue Ocean Institute’s “Green Chefs, Blue Ocean” program, developing a national curriculum for culinary students and continuing education for chefs. Spurgin is a cofounder of Cooks Confab (www.cooksconfab.com), a consortium of San Diego’s premier chefs who believe in “farm- and sea-to-table regional cuisine” and enjoy the camaraderie
of cooking together for their friends and clients. He also has been a guest chef at the renowned James Beard House in New York City.