July 22, 2019 — Last weekend’s Slow Food Nations Festival – a Denver, Colorado-based event showcasing sustainable and traceable food – was well represented by the U.S. West Coast groundfish fishery, which is exhibiting an impressive turnaround after it was decimated in the 1990’s.
The fishery, which consists predominantly of species of rockfish and flatfish, was collapsing due to overfishing about two decades ago. Thanks to conservation efforts, the recovery has been massively successful, with only two stocks down from the 10 classified as overfished. The two currently overfished groundfish stocks in the region are on the road to being rebuilt in coming years.
Even though the recovery of the fishery has been a smashing success thus far, demand for the fish has been languishing behind the supply, stakeholders say.
“The challenge at this point is that the economic performance is not coming up to where it’s being viewed as a profitable fishery by industry,” said Environmental Defense Fund Pacific Fisheries Policy Manager Melissa Mahoney. “That’s mainly because… when that fishery collapsed, [groundfish] lost their market share and at the same time, tilapia was coming in. So we’ve had the substitution of cheaper consistent whitefish in that market. As the fishery has recovered and the fishermen are able to catch more rockfish with more consistency, there’s this chicken-and-egg thing with getting the market back.”
The EDF has been working on the West Coast groundfish fishery for over 10 years and is deeply involved in shaping policy. Mahoney is also on the board of Positively Groundfish, a non-profit formed by a group of industry stakeholders – including Oregon State University, Marine Stewardship Council, fishermen, fish processors, etc. – to help coordinate and unify the efforts around getting the West Coast groundfish market going again.