Nicholas School Students Make a Splash in the Local Fisheries Market

Americans consume close to 5 billion pounds of seafood each year, 84 percent of which is imported from other countries. Chances are, the last fishy meal you ate traveled a farther distance to get to your table than some people travel in a lifetime.

This is a problem that a group of Nicholas School students are setting out to solve with their fledgling project, Walking Fish: A Community-Supported Fisheries Initiative.

Community-supported fisheries link consumers directly with producers in their area. Customers buy shares in the program and receive weekly or biweekly supplies of fresh, local, seasonal seafood in exchange. The goal is to increase access to locally harvested fish, decrease imports, and let consumers know where and how their seafood was caught. Buying direct from local sources brings in more income for local producers and supports those involved in well-managed fisheries.

“The United States is the second largest importer and fourth largest exporter of seafood, and a lot of the seafood that we import isn’t necessarily from sustainable or well-managed stocks or fisheries,” says Joshua Stoll, a second-year student in the Coastal Environmental Management (CEM) program and creator of the Walking Fish project. “Basically, if we can support local seafood, then we can create local economic opportunities and build partnerships between rural and urban communities while also spurring a conversation about sustainability and local food systems and gaining real-life experience.” Stoll got the idea for Walking Fish after talking to Susan Andreatta, associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro and project coordinator of Project Greenleaf, an organization devoted to promoting a local agro-food system in North Carolina. Along with community-supported agriculture projects, Andreatta has explored the challenges that small-scale fishermen face in marketing their seafood to local communities, and how community-supported fisheries might help overcome those challenges.

After talking with her, Stoll says all the pieces just seemed to fall together. He brought the idea of a community-supported fisheries project to Duke Fish, the Duke University chapter of the American Fisheries Society, with the goal of trying to move some of the Carteret County catch inland to the Durham area. Other members immediately jumped on board and started trying to figure out how to make it happen.

In March 2009, Walking Fish presented their ideas to Carteret Catch, a marketing group and branding organization in Carteret County that aims to sustain the county’s fishing industry through marketing and education.

Carteret County is located along the central North Carolina coast, a three-hour drive east of the Raleigh-Durham metropolitan market. The county is home to many popular beach resorts, small towns and fishing ports, including the village of Beaufort, where the Duke University Marine Lab is located.

“We went in to this meeting with the message that our project was an opportunity where consumers and fishermen alike could benefit. We had access to the market, resources and potential sources of funding, but few connections to coastal community members who might want to be involved, which is where Carteret Catch would come in,” says Stoll. “It turns out they’re asking the same questions: How do we market our seafood? How do we sustain local communities? There’s real overlap between our mission and their mission, and I think this partnership has real potential.”

Barry Nash, a Carteret Catch advisory board member and a seafood technology and marketing specialist at the Center
for Marine Sciences and Technology in nearby Morehead City, agrees.

“The Walking Fish project is a good match for us, because it provides an opportunity to get a toe in the door in the Triangle area,” he says. “Basically we’ll be working with them to set up logistics and make sure they have a steady supply of seafood to the participants who buy shares.”

With Carteret Catch on board, and armed with funding from the Duke University Sustainability Office, the organizers of Walking Fish jumped in with both feet. They began working out the logistics of the project, discussing details, and planning a Web site to promote Walking Fish and provide information about local fisheries. In April, they held a Happy Hour event in Durham to introduce their idea to the public and local restaurant owners, and held focus groups in July to determine what potential consumers and participants might want.

“Everyone in the focus group seemed really excited about Walking Fish,” says Duke Fish member and second-year CEM Jennifer Bruce. “What it boils down to is that people want to get high quality, fresh local seafood from Walking Fish, but at the same time they’re really excited that their purchases will affect the local economy, that their money will mean more to the community than if they just bought a piece of fish in the grocery store.”

But the members of Walking Fish say this project is not just about stimulating the local economy.

“There’s an increasing demand for sustainable seafood, and if we can show that consumers want to support well-managed fisheries, there’s an incentive for fishermen, managers and commuity members to work together to create and promote an ethic of stewardship,” says Stoll. “A major component of this effort is economic development, but in the long run this also is about working to ensure that the integrity of our coastal environments are maintained.”

However as Bruce points out, the term ‘sustainable’ is not always easy to define.

“The issue and complexity of the term ‘sustainability’ poses a challenge because it’s so abstract and has so many layers,” she says. “It’s a big stumbling block. Consumers need to understand that every fish you give them is not going to be the perfect sustainable fish, and what we’re trying to do is provide the best product we can while respecting sustainability issues and balancing the needs of the fishermen and the consumers.”

And while the focus groups helped determine what the consumers are looking for, the members of Walking Fish are still working on developing partnerships with local fishermen to better understand their needs. To do this, some members have tagged along on local shrimp and trawling boats throughout the summer, forging partnerships and seeing firsthand what the local fishermen do.

“We want to get a better understanding of what was meant exactly by ‘small-scale fisherman’ in North Carolina,” says Stoll. “The experiences have been really interesting, and different than I imagined. We’ve learned a lot about what it means to fish in this area, and we’re starting to establish relationships with these fishermen. It’s all about building trust and gaining credibility.”

Walking Fish launched their pilot program this fall, offering weekly or bi-weekly seafood shares with fresh local seafood delivered for a period of 12 weeks. The shareholders receive different species of fish each week as the fishing seasons progress. At first, shares will be marketed mainly to members of the Duke community, but Stoll hopes to expand the project in the future to include the wider Triangle area and maybe even other counties.

“The idea is that we start here because it’s easier to access, but then we could potentially go to other counties and tap into the species that they have too,” says Stoll. “Sustainable fishing is an important global and national issue, and it’s a big local issue right now. I don’t think it’s something people will lose interest in anytime soon. As long as there are people willing to work for it, then the enthusiasm for it is not going to go away.”

Robyn Walker MEM’10 is a Nicholas School blogger and was the 2008-09 Nicholas School student communications assistant.