April 17, 2014 — If you're doing everything right, isn't it a good idea to be able to show that to people? Justine Simon runs Salt & Sea, a community supported fishery in Portland, Maine. Her husband is a fourth generation fisherman. Her goal is to connect Maine consumers to the best quality local fish. The fishermen she works with — who catch their fish using best practices — want that connection, too.
"The fishermen we work with take tremendous pride in what they're doing. They'll have heated conversations about which way to lay fish in the hold," she says.
Quality is priority, and they don't like it when their fish is not given the recognition it deserves.
"For these guys, it kills them when their boat's being unloaded and it's kicked off the boat or mixed in with other fish" for which maybe the same care wasn't taken. "For them it means a lot when we give them the customer feedback — people are raving about their fish."
The conversation reminded me of a discussion I had with Eric Brazer of the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders Alliance. I interviewed him for a story I'm writing for the June issue of National Fisherman about efforts to use cameras for catch monitoring instead of or in addition to human observers.
Read the full story at National Fisherman