November 15, 2021 — A team of researchers is looking to learn about the direct seafood market across the country in order to strengthen local food systems and coastal communities.
“Currently, there is a gap in national-level data on the domestic seafood system,” said Joshua Stoll, a marine policy professor at the University of Maine and one of the lead investigators for the project.
The collaboration between the school, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will help better understand how fishermen in the U.S. market their catch.
The agriculture sector has collected this kind of data for decades but the scale of the direct market, where fish is sold from fishermen directly to customers, isn’t clear.