At the door to the Black Trumpet Bistro in Portsmouth, N.H., we were welcomed by a smiling hostess who directed us to sit at one of the large tables set up for the evening. We were there to eat five delicious courses of fresh seafood and talk about Community Supported Fisheries (CSF) as part of the first ever National CSF Summit. What made this dinner really special was that all of the seafood on our plates came from people sitting around the table.
Community Supported Fisheries create a direct relationship between fishermen and seafood consumers which provides many potential ecological, economic and social benefits. Each CSF was started for a different reason and has a slightly different focus and way of operating—much like Community Supported Agriculture varies from farm to farm. The Summit was an opportunity for fishermen who catch fish for CSF and CSF coordinators to come together to discuss challenges, share ideas and generally connect with others who run similar businesses.
Over the course of the night, we ate salmon eggs from Sitka, Alaska, shrimp and grits from North Carolina, black cod from Port Orford, Oregon. We had ale-battered Acadian Redfish with baked marfax beans and radish slaw that came from Port Clyde Fresh Catch, and Cape Ann Fresh Catch provided the blackbacks that went into the final course—the blackbacked flounder roulade stuffed with perpetual spinach and cured local pork, served with squid ink polenta and roasted pepper puree. It was an evening of eating and conversation to remember.
Stephanie Mutz, a fisherman from Santa Barbara, California, attended the summit, who, after a few years of direct marketing from the docks and to area restaurants, just launched her area’s first CSF. She said one of the important aspects of the CSF was that “our communities know exactly who caught the seafood, how it was caught, where it was caught and how to prepare it.” According to Stephanie, this is huge shift because “on the West Coast, Community Seafood started the CSF to provide more access of local seafood to our community because most of our seafood gets shipped out of town and overseas. Local seafood was not readily available to locals.”
Some of the fish at dinner were not as local as the redfish or blackbacks, but over the meal I could look across the table at the person who caught the fish we were eating and talk with them about their fishery and business. I knew what I was eating was exactly what the menu said and felt good about supporting small-scale, community-based fishermen. Eating “community seafood” recognizes that “local” takes on a different meaning with seafood that might be caught in the harbor or 100 miles offshore and end up in a rural fishing port that is not close to the large urban centers.
Like purchasing fair trade coffee, when you purchase fish from a community-based fisherman, you have a much better sense of who you are supporting. CSF and other community-based fishery ideas like the Community Fisheries Network (http://www.communityfisheriesnetwork.org) allow the fishermen, their stories about the fish and the importance to their community to travel with the fish and help consumers make knowledgeable choices about their seafood.
The seafood standards that only promote environmental sustainability or stock health miss the importance of the connection between the fisherman and consumer and how purchasing seafood from a CSF or other direct marketing entity can help ensure the future sustainability of our coastal communities. The U.S. imports 90 percent of its seafood and a sizable fraction of it is certified as sustainable by some organization or another. Eating this seafood is an impersonal experience that ignores the domestic fisheries and the coastal communities that depend on having fishing or processing jobs.
With community seafood, there is a bond created between you and the fishermen when you eat the fish they caught and start to understand how they catch their fish. This bond goes both ways, as Stephanie Mutz puts it, “When a fisherman puts his/her face behind their product, he/she is more accountable to the marine resource.” As consumers, we should uphold our end of the bargain and put our money behind community-based fisheries and be more accountable for the health of our coastal communities.
Nick Battista is the Island Institute’s Marine Programs Director.