Saving Seafood

Local Catch Network to Host “Find Your Seafood Week” August 2-8

July 26, 2021 — The following was released by Local Catch Network: 

The Local Catch Network (LCN), based in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine, is launching a new and improved digital “Seafood Finder” designed to help connect community members directly with fishers and seafood harvesters. To kick off the launch, LCN is hosting #FindYourSeafoodWeek, a social media awareness campaign that celebrates small-scale fisheries and local seafood.

“Fresh, sustainable seafood harvested by the same people who live in your community is often closer than people think,” said Joshua Stoll, founder of the Local Catch Network and Assistant Professor of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine. “We created the Seafood Finder to make it easy for everyone to discover local seafood wherever they are.”

The #FindYourSeafoodWeek campaign will run from Aug. 2 – Aug. 8 to help community members discover and engage with local fishermen. The pandemic has exposed the importance of community-based fisheries in building resilient local and regional seafood systems, as many global supply chains, including seafood, faltered at the onset of COVID-19 due to the elimination of traditional export markets. As a result, fishing businesses participating in direct-to-consumer sales saw an uptick in community support. Historically, shorter seafood supply chains have also been more adaptable and less prone to social, environmental and economic shocks to the food system. #FindYourSeafoodWeek is a new way that fishers, seafood organizations and advocates are collaborating to raise awareness about the role of community-based fisheries while strengthening relationships between fishermen and their communities.

#FindYourSeafoodWeek will also promote the launch of LCN’s revamped Seafood Finder tool, a searchable map and database that makes it easy for consumers across the United States and Canada to discover fishing businesses that sell seafood directly to consumers via community-supported fisheries (CSFs), farmers and fisherman’s markets and doorstep delivery. The Seafood Finder will allow consumers to learn more about individual fishing businesses, the locations they operate, the number of fishers they partner with, how long they have been in business, and the types of catch they offer. By making this information more easily available, the new Seafood Finder will increase the visibility and viability of small-scale fisheries and the communities that depend on them.

The Local Catch Network is inviting community members across North America to join the “boat-to-fork” movement by finding fishermen and local seafood near them during #FindYourSeafoodWeek and beyond. For information on how to participate, visit https://localcatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/HashtagFindYourSeafoodWeekCampaign.pdf.

The new Seafood Finder tool will be available on Aug. 2. To access it then, visit https://finder.localcatch.org/.

MAINE: Mitchell Center hosts talk about alternative seafood networks and fishing community resilience April 19

April 9, 2021 — The Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine will host a talk about how alternative seafood networks can support resilient fishing communities from 3–4 p.m. on Monday, April 19.

Global seafood trade is at an all-time high, with an estimated 36 percent of seafood worldwide traded across international borders at a value of $148 billion. In the U.S., 71 percent of the seafood consumed is imported. The benefits of this trade, however, are not evenly distributed and often disadvantage rural communities, small- and mid-sized harvesters and low-income nations.

In this talk, “A Fishy Tail About Our Food System,” Joshua Stoll will describe the recent emergence of alternative seafood networks in North America and their role in supporting resilient fishing communities, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. He will also discuss ongoing work to better integrate seafood into local food systems.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

International study shows alternative seafood networks provided resiliency during pandemic

April 1, 2021 — Local alternative seafood networks (ASNs) in the United States and Canada, often considered niche segments, experienced unprecedented growth in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic while the broader seafood system faltered, highlighting the need for greater functional diversity in supply chains, according to a new international study led by the University of Maine.

The spike in demand reflected a temporary relocalization phenomenon that can occur during periods of systemic shock—an inverse yet complementary relationship between global and local seafood systems that contributes to the resilience of regional food systems, according to the research team, which published its findings in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.

The globalization of seafood has made food systems more vulnerable to systemic shocks, which can impact those dependent on seafood for sustenance and employment, according to the research team, led by Joshua Stoll, assistant professor of marine policy at the University of Maine.

Policy changes and greater investments in data collection and infrastructure are needed to support ASN development, increase functional diversity in supply chains, and bolster the resilience and sustainability of regional food systems and the global seafood trade, according to the researchers.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Study aims to find indicators of resilience in American lobster fishery

September 15, 2020 — A new study by the University of Maine, Orono – funded in part by NOAA Fisheries’ Sea Grant American Lobster Initiative – is aiming to find indicators of the industry’s resilience.

The study – lead by UMaine Assistant Professor of Marine Policy Joshua Stoll – aims  to collect data to find indicators of the health of the lobster industry. Currently, several different monitoring programs keep track of the health of the lobster resource itself, but there are no equivalent monitoring programs to determine the health of the industry.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Maine fishermen: adapting in a sea of change

September 21, 2017 — ORONO, Maine — Increasing environmental uncertainty coupled with rapidly changing market conditions in the Gulf of Maine raise important questions about the ability of Maine’s commercial fishermen to adapt. How resilient is the industry to these shifting waters? Who is best positioned to adapt and who is most vulnerable?

“We have started to explore these questions by studying the relationships fishermen have to marine resources in Maine,” says Joshua Stoll, assistant research professor at the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences and lead author of the paper “Uneven adaptive capacity among fishers in a sea of change” published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE.

“Most assessments of adaptability are conducted at the community scale, but our focus is on individual-level adaptive capacity because we think community-level analyses often obscure critical differences among fishermen and make the most at-risk groups invisible,” says Stoll, whose research was funded in part by a grant from the UMaine Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, where he is a Faculty Fellow.

In their analysis, Stoll and co-authors Beatrice Crona and Emma Fuller identified over 600 types of fishing strategies in Maine based on the combinations of marine resources that fishermen target to support their livelihoods.

Read the full story at the Penobscot Bay Pilot