Saving Seafood

Ken Coons, Seafood Industry Advocate and Long Time Associate Editor of Seafood News, Passes Away

February 6, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Kenelm W. Coons passed away on Friday, February 3, 2017 after a three-month illness. Ken will be deeply missed for his kindness, compassion, and humor. He was a great listener and gifted story teller with an inquisitive spirit, keen mind and quick wit.

Ken was a well known advocate for US seafood.

After graduating from Harvard College (A.B. ’53), he served for two years of active duty in West Germany.  He then began his professional career, embarking on a series of packaged goods marketing positions, including introducing General Foods’ Cool Whip desserts.

He later moved to the mid-Atlantic and worked marketing Doxsee clam products, which introduced him to the seafood industry  He then worked for a  diversified fish and shellfish company in Rhode Island.  After earning a Master’s in Marine Affairs at the University of Rhode Island in 1978, he was named Executive Director of the recently formed Rhode Island Seafood Council. Two years later, he helped found and was named the Executive Director of the New England Fisheries Development Foundation, later renamed the New England Fisheries Development Association (NEFDA). He held this position in Boston for two decades.

Ken was one of John Sackton’s mentors in the Seafood Industry.  “Ken hired me as program director for the New England Fisheries Development Foundation, which was my second job in the seafood industry after leaving the same Marine Affairs program at URI,” said Sackton.

While at NEFDA Ken partnered with the Canadian Consulate in Boston to found the Boston Seafood Show. That show was eventually sold to Diversified Communications after the Foundation felt professional management was needed.

NEFDA also ran a popular Fish School for a national audience aimed at educating new seafood buyers. Gene Connors, who became the seafood guru for Hallsmith Sysco in New England, was a New Bedford Fisherman who led the quality training at the fish school.

NEFDA was chosen by FDA and USDC for a trial project to introduce the HACCP system of sanitation and, with Saltonstall-Kennedy Funds, focused on promoting under-utilized species, utilization of fish waste, and programs to enhance seafood quality.  The Foundation ran a series of quality improvement projects for ground fish in New England, including an attempt to introduce European style boxes for holding and offloading cod and flatfish in New Bedford.

Other initiatives included developing a domestic market for Rhode Island-caught Loligo squid and establishing the hagfish fishery in Gloucester, MA.

Ken was appointed by the Secretary of Commerce to the National Fish and Seafood Promotion Council and was elected its first chairman.  At this time he was also named Man of the Year by the National Fisheries Institute (NFI).  Ken firmly believed that the seafood industry needed generic marketing programs, and championed such programs in Washington DC.

Ken was a frequent spokesperson for the seafood industry in broadcast and print media.

After he retired, and John Sackton founded SeafoodNews, Ken became an associate Editor.

“I have enjoyed working with Ken immensely over the years”, said Sackton.  “He was unfailingly optimistic and had an extremely broad range of seafood interests.   He also loved to cook seafood, and we would often exchange recipes and compare our various dishes and how we cooked.  Ken brought me back a specialty whole fish poacher from Paris after one trip, for example.”

Ken was friends with both George Berkowitz, the Founder of Legal Seafoods, and Julia Child,  whose hugely popular cooking shows educated a generation of Americans about French cuisine.

“One of the wonderful things Ken did was arrange for Julia Child to come teach a cooking class on fish to the NFI Future Leaders group that was meeting in Boston”, said Sackton.  “Ken arranged the whole thing at the BU Culinary School.  It was a wonderful evening for the 20 NFI Future Leaders who cooked an entire seafood meal in a commercial kitchen with such a famous culinary star.”

Ken always kept an eye on menu trends especially as they related to seafood, and enjoyed writing about chefs and culinary tastes.

After Ken retired, he joined SeafoodNews as an Associate Editor.  Sackton said “it was truly a gift that in the last 13 years Ken was able to contribute to SeafoodNews.  His broad experience, commitment to the industry, and wide range of seafood interests was a perfect fit.   When we first started, it was just Ken and myself doing all the writing and editing,” said Sackton.

Moving to Annapolis in 2004, Ken and his wife Deborah enjoyed a decade of cruising Chesapeake Bay aboard their aptly named Bristol 29.9 Loligo.

Ken was also thrilled when one of his sons, Chris, became the US Senator from Delaware.  As a professional journalist, Ken joined the National Press Club in Washington DC, and served on one of their scholarship committees.  Ken was always a supporter of younger journalists, and took an especially helpful role with new hires for SeafoodNews.  He maintained an active interest in international affairs and domestic politics as well as the food world.  He introduced all of his grandchildren to his love of seafood and sailing.

Ken was born July 5, 1931, in Cambridge, MA, the son of the late Quentin L. and Persis (Wallace) Coons. In addition to his wife Deborah, Ken leaves three sons, Thomas W. Coons (Jeanne) of Newark, DE, Sen. Christopher A. Coons (Annie) of Wilmington, DE, and Stephen K. Coons of Annapolis, MD; daughter, Lisa Griffith-Fintl (Helmuth) of Oestrich-Winkel, Germany; two stepdaughters, Blair B. Slaughter (David) of Cockeysville, MD, and Barrie B. Jansen (Thomas) of Moncton, N.B., Canada; brother, William W. Coons, of Newburyport, MA, and nephew, Jeffrey (Mary) Coons, of Smyrna, GA, and nine very special grandchildren.

Interment at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA, will be private.

In lieu of flowers, those wishing to honor Ken’s memory may contribute to the Kenelm W. Coons Marine Affairs Scholarship at the University of Rhode Island. Donations may be mailed to URI Foundation, PO Box 1700, Kingston, RI 02881  (checks payable to URI Foundation, with scholarship name in memo line), or donations may be made online.

Notes to the family may also be left at legacy.com.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission. 

KEN COONS: Research Shows Path to a Sustainable Seafood Industry

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [SeafoodNews] (Opinion) By Ken Coons — August 6, 2015 — One of the striking things about fishery management here in the Atlantic Region is how often the academics, the regulators, and the fishing and seafood industry talk past each other.

The folks with scientific expertise often speak a language that’s difficult for the layman to understand. Regulators, for their part, are in a defensive crouch distracted by endless litigation and whipsawed by recreational and commercial fishing groups along with their elected state and Congressional representatives and often the media as well. The fishing and seafood industry, for its part, wants cost effective timely research results. Commercial and recreational groups are united in their call for “better science” to address regulatory restrictions.

Too often these three sectors – academics, regulators and the fishing and seafood industry – are classic examples of stovepipes, not collaboration.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, a bold and expanding model of collaboration is happening right now. It is an industry-led collaborative research program that addresses urgent scientific problems. Specifically, the work is focused on reducing the uncertainties in fisheries assessments. The goal is to achieve both sustainable fisheries and a sustainable fishing and seafood industry.

This new program, the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCeMFiS), is one of the Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRC) supported by the prestigious National Science Foundation. These partnerships are specifically designed by the NSF to promote cooperative research between the academic community and industry. (SCeMFiS is the only fisheries-oriented IUCRC.)

In addition to providing an important imprimatur of legitimacy onto the cooperative research work SCeMFiS is doing under an initial five-year program, NSF’s funding largely covers administrative costs so that industry investments in research flow directly through to actual work and results.

Research institutions that participate in SCeMFiS projects are restricted to a 10 percent indirect cost allowance factor which is way below common practice. The result is a very cost-effective research program for industry sponsors.

The industry sponsors provide critical financial support. All decisions about which research projects to pursue are guided by an Industry Advisory Board (IAB) comprised of industry partners with voting rights. The IAB functions like a Board of Directors. Membership is open to any company or group that is interested in improving science for fisheries management.

Full Partners have two votes on the Industry Advisory Board at an annual cost of $50,000; Associate Partners, at $25,000, have one IAB vote.

To date, the full industry partners on the IAB are the NFI Clam Committee along with the NFI Scientific Monitoring Committee and the NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

Associate Partners are: Atlantic Capes Fisheries, Inc.; Garden State Seafood Association; LaMonica Fine Foods; Lunds Fisheries Inc.; Surfside Seafood Products.

The Advisory Board is fortunate to have the guidance of Russ Brown of the NOAA Fisheries Northeast Science Center in Woods Hole and John Boreman, SSC Chair of the Mid- Atlantic Fishery Management Council, to ensure, insofar as possible, that data developed by a given project will be used in future assessments (otherwise the project does not go forward).

The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) and the College of William and Mary Virginia Institute of Maine Science (VIMS) collaborated to form the Science Center with USM as the lead institution.

Eric Powell, PhD, is the Principal Investigator at USM and Roger Mann, PhD, is the Principal Investigator at VIMS. Dr. Powell was previously at
Rutgers and he and Dr. Mann had worked together with the surf clam/ocean quahog industry on urgent issues. It’s not surprising, therefore, that a good deal of the early research work of the Science Center for Marine Fisheries has focused on research important to the continued viability and employment capacity of the surf clam/ocean quahog industry.

For example, federal clam assessment has now moved to an industry vessel rather than a NOAA vessel. The clam dredges in commercial use are designed to allow juvenile clams to escape, so to conduct a proper resource assessment, a research dredge with a liner was developed to capture juvenile clams. A subsequent project developed an innovative research dredge with adjustable bars in order to capture juvenile clams. (The industry paid the $75K required to develop, fabricate and test this research dredge.)

To allow for accurate assessment despite broken shells a related VIMS project determined how the overall dimensions of an intact clam shell could be reliably inferred from a portion of the broken shell – this was possible since most shells break along the same lateral line.

The ocean quahog is believed to be the oldest living animal on earth. The resource is not classified as “overfished,” but an important project is underway to estimate age and frequency of recruitment. This project is also being used as a teaching tool to demonstrate effects of climate change.

Dr.Powell has also established an advisory team for marine mammal assessment which includes the University of Washington and two other
groups. Marine mammal interactions are a serious concern of fishery management in most coastal regions. There are currently uncertainties in marine mammal stock abundance and bycatch estimates that urgently need to be addressed.

The SCeMFiS is also working with a distinguished team of independent scientists who aren’t affiliated with either USM or VIMS to bring their expertise to bear on important assessment issues. They include Steven Cadrin, PhD, a former stock assessment scientist for 20 years with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and currently at SMAST and Jean-Jacques Maguire, with a lifetime career in international fisheries management issues with DFO, ICES, ICCAT, and the SSC of the NEFMC. He is currently a consultant to a wide range of international clients.

At USM, and also part of the team, is Robert Leaf, PhD, with a background in modeling to achieve effective conservation and management of fisheries. His current work is on stock assessment of Gulf menhaden blue crab and Mississippi red drum.

From all of the above it is clear that this is a new day in fisheries management research. The research capabilities of the Science Center are already lined up and demonstrating results. Future work will be set by those who have invested in partnerships with the assurance that only work which is likely to be influential in regulatory decisions will be funded and go forward.

Now is the time for companies, associations and other entities to step up and fill out the industry leadership role.

By collaborating with others, partners gain access to work that would be cost prohibitive on an individual basis. Accurate resource assessments are vital to protecting access to fisheries while promoting sustainability. This cost effective industry-led collaborative research program, endorsed and supported by the National Science Foundation, is a unique opportunity for industry participation.

For more information go to: scemfis.org [2]

To join the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCeMFiS) contact:

Jeff Kaelin, SCeMFiS Chair at jkaelin@lundsfish.com

Guy Simmons, SCeMFiS Vice-Chair at guy@seaclam.com|

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.