Alex and Stephanie Villani enjoy an enviable life. They live in a beautiful, secluded home with a big pool on Long Island’s idyllic North Fork. They set their own work hours and answer to no one. They spend two months every winter in the Florida Keys.
And how do they pull it off? They fish for a living. Literally. Their income derives from their daily catch in the Long Island Sound, which they sell at farmers markets in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
“It’s not much different than how it would be 300 years ago,” Ms. Villani says.
Unlike most local fishing operations that eke out a meager living selling their catch to wholesalers, the Villanis sell direct to the public—and command a lot more for their fish.
Wholesalers offer about $1 a pound for bluefish, for example. But the Villanis sell their whole bluefish at the market for $3.50 a pound, and get $8 a pound for bluefish fillet.
The downside? It’s twice as much work.
On a recent Monday, Mr. Villani, a burly 66-year-old, munched a bagel at his kitchen table and declared himself pleased with the morning’s expedition.
“I caught a lot of fish in two hours,” he said. “You get back, you tie up the boat, you’re alive. It’s a perfect day!”
Fishing ranks second only to logging as the nation’s deadliest occupation.
“There’s lots of ways to kill yourself,” Mr. Villani says.
Cruising 4 miles into the Sound from Mattituck Inlet on his 36-foot boat, he met the dawn dragging the waters with his 55-foot net.
There’s not much to do while you trawl. “I listen to music and twiddle my thumbs,” says Mr. Villani, who grew up in Manhattan and started fishing professionally in 1972 with a $600 clam boat.
When the net was full, he sprang into action, emptying his haul of flopping fish onto the boat deck. Donning kneepads and gloves, he threw the undersized fish overboard, along with sea bass worth several thousand dollars that were off limits due to state quotas.
Next, he decapitated 45 sand sharks, nesting them on ice, followed by 60 flounder and 600 porgies.
After breakfast, he trucked his catch to the fillet house to be skinned and deboned.
Ms. Villani, who is 50, spends her days smoking fish for sale at the market, cleaning the truck and fish tubs and loading fish and ice.
“There’s a lot of drudgery behind the scenes that people don’t see,” says Ms. Villani, who is raising an 11-year-daughter with her husband. “You’re dirty, you’re wet, you’re smelly. You’re so tired.”
She also does a ton of paperwork for their business, Blue Moon Fish. There’s the detailed daily-catch report for New York state officials, not to mention 25 licenses required for everything from the commercial kitchen to permits for different species of fish.
Inspectors with the National Marine Fisheries Service, meanwhile, regularly accompany Mr. Villani on his expeditions.
“They’re great company. I so look forward to it,” he says dryly.
Commercial fishing is heavily regulated. Thanks to quotas aimed at maintaining fishery sustainability, New York’s harvest—which centers largely on Long Island—fell from 60 million pounds annually in the mid-1990s to 30 million in 2016. Commercial-fishing permits, meanwhile, fell 42%, to less than 1,000.
Saturday is the longest day of the week for the Villanis. They load their 24-foot truck with 1,200 pounds of fish and hit the road at 3:30 a.m. to make the 100-mile trip to markets in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood and at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn.
The stalls—which each rent for $125 a day—are a bustling scene. Customers pepper the Villanis and their eight helpers with questions and snap up a dozen kinds of fish, ranging from pricey striped-bass fillet at $20.95 a pound to sea robin at $1.50 a pound, along with oysters, clams and scallops.
“Their stuff is always fresh. It’s the best you can buy,” says customer Stephen Rose on a recent Saturday.
The Villanis, who have sold at the markets for 30 years, say it’s been a long road to prosperity. It helps that despite growing demand for local fish, they see little competition.
“A lot of fishermen don’t want to do what we do,” says Ms. Villani. “They want to be solitary.”
Write to Anne Kadet at Anne.Kadet@wsj.com
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