supply chain Archives - One Fish Foundation

Hurricane Ida wreaks havoc on Louisiana’s seafood industry

September 8, 2021October 20, 2021
by Colles Stowell

Share it!

This time, the levees around New Orleans held. The reduced flooding in the city after Hurricane Ida helped minimize the catastrophic loss of life following Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago.

But some levees in southern parishes didn’t fair as well. And Ida’s widespread devastation fueled by sustained 150 mph winds will have long-term consequences for Louisiana’s seafood industry.

I spoke with Lance Nacio, owner of Anna Marie Seafood in Montegut, La. on Monday to get a sense of what folks down there are dealing with. Here is a quick snapshot of our conversation:

He and his family are fine, living on his two fishing boats and in his house. The house, the boats and the processing facilities all weathered the storm pretty well, though there are some things to fix.
His boats are trapped in the canal across the street from his house until Sept. 29, which is the estimated time when power should be restored to allow the drawbridges to raise and let the boats motor to the Gulf of Mexico and begin fishing.
More than 60% of the structures in Terrebonne Parish (the 2,000-square mile parish south and west of New Orleans where Lance and many other fishermen live) are uninhabitable, according to authorities.
Lance predicts that many residents will not return in what may be a more expansive exodus than after Katrina.
This exodus will not only include fishermen, but also those who run critical infrastructure operations like docks, ice houses, boat maintenance operations, processing facilities, etc.
He will be working with Chef Dana Honn of Carmo to provide meals for first responders and line crews from across the country.

In essence, the industry in the state that provides the highest volume of domestically harvested wild shrimp and crab is in trouble. The entire regional seafood supply chain from boat to plate will likely be a shell (take or leave the pun) of itself in just a few months, sending shock waves across the country and around the world. As Dana said, “The fish will be out there. But with no infrastructure in place, who’s going to come back?” Louisiana Congressman Garrett Graves has formally called on the US Department of Commerce to declare a Fisheries Disaster Determination for the region to unlock funds to counteract the pending economic damage.

Worse still is the likelihood that further climate change will spin off more intense hurricanes like Ida and Katrina more frequently, leaving the Gulf Coast more vulnerable to long-term ecosystem damage.

This summer alone has seen several catastrophic events highlighting how climate change can have severe impacts on food systems:

the sweltering heat weave that smothered the Pacific Northwest for several days, literally cooking some oysters in their shells;
the anemic wild Pacific salmon runs in the Yukon territories, forcing remote Indigenous communities to scramble for winter food stores;
the devastating fires across California and other western states that have devoured millions of acres of old growth forest (very important to watersheds) and farmland.

Want to get involved? Here are a few ways to do so with a focus on Hurricane Ida’s aftermath:

Several people and organizations are raising funds for relief efforts, including providing food, shelter, medical services and supplies, debris removal, and repairs. Here are a couple of resources:
- Chef Dana is raising money to support Lance’s efforts to help his community and feed first responders and line workers.
  - Venmo: @Lance-Nacio
  - PalPal: orders@annamarieshrimp.com
  - Zelle: Lance Nacio
- Coastal Communities Consulting, Inc. is a nonprofit organization supporting coastal businesses and fishermen in La. It is doing good work to provide info on everything from prescriptions to food and water as well as coordinating donations.
- Gulf South Rapid Response Community Controlled Fund provides disaster relief directly to frontline communities in the Gulf South impacted by climate disasters. Local leaders have committed to a transparent and accountable process for the money – which will allow communities to practice self-governance and self-determination.
The Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy is hosting a national press conference Thursday Sept. 9 from 10:30 am – 11:30 am CDT to address Ida’s impact on the Gulf Coast region and the nation. Here’s a link to more information.
Learn more about the Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act, which is a congressional bill that mandates accounting for climate change when setting fisheries policy in the U.S. This bill officially calls for the re-authorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the primary fisheries management policy for the U.S. If you agree with its direction, contact your Congressional representatives and tell them to support it.
Learn more about the Keep America’s Waterfronts Working Act, a congressional bill that aims to preserve working waterfronts, like the ones in jeopardy in southern Louisiana following Hurricane Ida. Again, if you like what you see, contact your Congressional representatives.

The last thing we can all do is spread the word. The more folks know what’s going on and what’s at stake, the more the broader community can get involved and help chart the industry’s future.

We’ll post more updates in this blog and via our Facebook page.

Top photo: NOAA satellite image of Hurricane Ida’s destruction in Terrebonne Parish.

All Blog Posts

Slow Fish 2021: Relationship Matters

April 14, 2021October 19, 2021
by Colles Stowell

Share it!

Slow Fish is about relationships. Our relationships with seafood, those who harvest and sell that seafood, our broader communities, our oceans and waterways, and with each other.

Since the pandemic shut down our planned Slow Fish 2020 in-person event last March, we’ve been reimagining how we re-establish, strengthen, and explore these connections. Planning a virtual event was new for all of us. We learned you can’t apply the same thought process to a remote event.

The theme of relationships was prominent throughout Slow Fish 2021, held online from March 18-20 and March 25-27.

We heard it from Jim Embry, who spoke about the importance of striving for equity, inclusion, and justice even as racism persists in our water- and land-based food pathways. Keynote speaker Buck Jones of the Columbia River Intertribal Fisheries Commission reemphasized the importance of preserving both indigenous and non-indigenous connections to food sources.

Know your fishermen and women!

The theme of relationships cropped up again in the Seascape World Café where attendees joined rotating conversations about growing the network, advocacy and action, and young fish harvesters.

One central theme from the Seafood Supply Chain Deep Dive is that direct connections between fish harvesters and customers, retailers, and other harvesters are increasingly essential to growth and survival. Covid’s devastating impact on industrial supply chains continues to wreak havoc. In the end, the definition of “local” is becoming less about geography and more about relationships.

We heard this from several storytellers. Kayla Cox at New England Fishmongers based in NH described customer enthusiasm for the amazing shrimp from Anna Marie Shrimp in LA and wild salmon from Yakobe Fisheries in AK. Lance Nacio explained how these types of business networks have helped both Anna Marie Shrimp and its customers who buy all of the scallops he can get from New England Fishmongers.

These are the kinds of relationships that help fishermen and women troubleshoot logistical challenges like collective marketing, business questions, or mentorship. These are the connections that grow the network of folks that share Slow Fish values of good, clean, fair seafood.

Natural connections

Relationships to the land, the water, the fish, the birds, animals and Nature in general is at the center of Indigenous culture, and it was the foundation for many powerfully spiritual stories in the Indigenous Access to Food Sources Deep Dive. We heard perspectives from Indigenous communities from Martha’s Vineyard, MA. all the way to AK., including stories from smaller and bigger river systems in northern CA. and OR.

We heard resilience in the stories of opposing a massive proposed mine in the Bristol Bay, AK watershed, restoration of Indigenous access to wild salmon runs on the Columbia River; preservation of cultural knowledge around seasonal, balanced ocean and land harvests in northern California, and the continued efforts from all geographies to protect treaty rights around access to natural resources. The upshot? If we take care of our natural resources, they will take care of us. Protecting Indigenous access to cultural food sources is an important part of that equation.

This connection to natural resources and marine habitats played a crucial role in the Aquaculture Deep Dive, where we learned about small-scale, ecosystem-balanced operations like an oyster farm near Miami, seaweed farming in Maine, and wild seaweed harvest in British Columbia. We also heard about collective efforts to oppose industrial-scale finfish and shrimp farming and other operations, which upset marine ecological balance and often socio-economically displace coastal communities that depend on local fisheries for their lives.

The Rivers Connect the World discussion featured compelling stories of habitat restoration and preservation from the Mississippi, Danube, Snake, and Copper rivers as well as the rivers of Cork, Ireland. These efforts continue to succeed because of the collaboration within and among communities along those rivers, regardless of political borders.

Shared Resources

The Blue Commons Deep Dive explored how the industrial-scale development of the Blue Economy typically saps the lifeblood from coastal communities and their local economies, and cripples the independent fish harvesters living in those communities. Blue Economy plays such as massive fish farms, huge offshore wind farms, or large, investment-backed no-fish zones essentially privatize large sections of the ocean and have the most devastating impacts on independent, artisanal, and subsistence fishermen.

The Blue Commons is a counter-narrative to the Blue Economy, in which communities gather around a shared set of values to treat marine and estuarine water bodies as shared resources. We again heard stories of resilience, such as how the Okanagan Nation’s Alliance worked to restore wild sockeye salmon runs on the Snake River in their home waters in British Columbia. We learned about a Rhode Island community working to re-establish a vibrant, locally managed quahog fishery and provide more access to more fishermen despite consolidation by market forces.

We also learned how a fishing community in Sitka, AK worked to ban trawl nets in sensitive fishing areas to minimize halibut bycatch; develop a collaborative science approach to monitor rockfish biomass to ensure healthy stocks; and create an innovative program to train young fish harvesters. These types of commoning fortify the relationships between communities and their surrounding natural resources.

All of these discussions prompted thoughtful idea exchanges and questions in very active chat sessions, with 2,424 messages spread out over both weekends. This does not include the very vibrant feedback during the live panel discussions following the screenings of “Last Man Fishing” and “The Wild” films during the first weekend.

On the final day of the event, Slow Fish North America Oversight Team members Tasha Sutcliffe and Kevin Scribner provided a thorough synthesis of common threads arising from these discussions. Relationships, food sovereignty, equity and social justice, habitat protections, and intergenerational knowledge transfer or mentorship were some of the most common threads woven into the fabric of the event and of Slow Fish values. To see the full synopsis from Kevin and Tasha, follow this link.

Follow this link in case you’d like to see recordings of the different discussions from Slow Fish 2021. Scroll down the library until you see “Aquaculture.” The eight videos following Aquaculture were all part of the event.

A team of between 30 or so people worked tirelessly for several weeks to coordinate what turned out to be a stellar event. We met or exceeded our goals of strengthening and growing the community; empowering folks in the network to share their stories and become our values standard-bearers; spark meaningful conversations around several crucial topics to the Slow Fish network; and celebrate the community and collective energy of our shared values.

I am truly thankful to everyone who participated. Hopefully, the next event is in person!

Top photo: Screenshot from the final day of Slow Fish 2021. Credit: Sister Denisa Livingston of Slow Food Turtle Island

All Blog Posts

Slow Fish 201: Building Accountability in Seafood

January 31, 2019October 19, 2021
by Colles Stowell

Share it!

Sometimes it’s tough to see the forest through the trees. Or in this case, effective fisheries enforcement through the quagmire of domestic fishing regulations.

Consider that laws established to ensure responsible harvest, proper trade/market practices and truth in advertising throughout the supply chain are enforced by at least four different federal agencies with different agendas, priorities, authority, funding and resources. Factor in state and local agencies involved in the process, and you’ve got layer upon layer of bureaucracy. And yet, there are still gaps.

This is why we conducted the Slow Fish 201 webinar: Building Accountability in Seafood Weds. Jan. 23. We wanted to shed light on this complexity and the challenges it presents as well as some innovative thinking on how to create markets that organically root out fraud (more on that later).

Alphabet soup: NOAA, FDA, CBP, USDA

In broad terms, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Law Enforcement has jurisdiction over seafood entering the U.S., and can conduct warrantless inspections on vessels as they enter US waters. But it does not have the same broad authority once the seafood has crossed the border. The Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection also has some authority to inspect and ensure proper labeling of seafood entering the U.S.

Once seafood has passed beyond US borders, the responsibility to enforce labeling, country of origin, food safety and related laws generally belongs to the Food and Drug Administration and to a lesser degree, the US Department of Agriculture (primarily for farm-raised seafood). There are of course, exceptions to these rules where, for example, NOAA does have some jurisdiction on product within US borders (which makes the situation all the more confusing to those in and outside the supply chain.

With all of these layers of protection, intelligence and resources, you’d think we’d have a good handle on fraud.

And still, less than 1% of the seafood we import in this country, representing some 90% of domestic consumption, is inspected. That doesn’t even account for what happens within the domestic seafood supply chain, such as the co-optation of core trusted values, as happened with the Sea To Table news last summer.

No wonder consumers, fish harvesters, retailers and everyone else in the supply chain is confused and likely frustrated. How do you keep tabs on all of that?

A label’s cautionary tale

Patty Lovera, food and water policy director for Food & Water Watch, has spent decades navigating the domestic food policy system. She began the webinar with a high-level view of the matrix of federal agencies and laws responsible for safeguarding the stream of seafood in the supply chain. In short, the very Jenga-like structure leaves many gaps in enforcement, too much room for interpretation and hence, exploitation, and some confusion among supply chain players about how to honestly comply with the law.

As Patty Lovera mentioned and others echoed, consumer education is critical in the seafood supply chain.

She presented the Certified Organic label as a cautionary tale when laws and values don’t gibe. Established to distinguish farmers who adhere to a set of standards that prohibits hormones, antibiotics, certain pesticides and other additives and destructive practices, the label became a battle cry in the conflict with huge multinational corporations seeking to own the food system.

Millions of dollars, countless hours, political wrangling, lawsuits, arm-twisting, scheming and in some cases, outright capitulation have led to a severely diluted label bearing no resemblance to the original mission. More than three decades of haggling, and products either owned or supported by the likes of industrial agriculture giants Monsanto, Dow Chemical and Tyson foods bear the Certified Organic seal.

The message? Labeling schemes and the values they promote can be co-opted if not rooted in strong values backed by stronger laws.

Congressional commitment

We were fortunate to have Congressman Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) join the conversation. He’s quite busy as he’s just taken the gavel for the powerful House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife, which is responsible for reauthorizing the Magnuson Stevens Act (MSA), otherwise known as the Fish Bill.

“I believe we’ve got to be supporting U.S. fishermen in an increasingly competitive international market.”
Congressman Jared Huffman

In outlining some of his priorities for the subcommittee, he said we need to preserve the health of the oceans, fix some of the environmental rollbacks established by the current administration and do what is necessary to help U.S. fishermen make a good living. “I believe we’ve got to be supporting U.S. fishermen in an increasingly competitive international market,” said Huffman.

He also mentioned “…ways to improve traceability throughout the supply chain. There may be new technology that could be utilized, examples from businesses that are doing some of this work. It’s clear to me that we need to better enforce, maybe even strengthen, existing policies to ensure accurate labeling, increased transparency and consumer trust.”

Marketing, education and leveling the playing field

Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and the Institute for Fisheries Resources, followed on that theme, saying that fraud has a significant impact on community-based fish harvesters who are trying to abide by the law.

“It’s only fair that the accountability that fishermen have been holding themselves to is rewarded in the marketplace.”
Noah Oppenheim

“Fraud can occur at any place in the market,” Oppenheim said. “It’s a huge problem, and we have to find comprehensive solutions that make it harder for anybody on the end of the chain of custody to mislabel or fraudulently market their product.”

He also spoke of the need to enhance education and marketing to help consumers better understand the value of domestic fisheries. “It’s only fair that the accountability that fishermen have been holding themselves to is rewarded in the marketplace.”

Jes Hathaway, editor in chief of National Fisherman, a national trade publication, echoed Oppenheim’s call for better education and more funding for marketing programs.

She zeroed in on increased funding to boost the infrastructure at our ports to level the playing field between domestic seafood standards and standards for imports. “As long as it’s easier to bring seafood into port in a container than to bring it in your fish holds, we are doing our seafood industry, our fishermen and our citizens a disservice.”

“As long as it’s easier to bring seafood into port in a container than to bring it in your fish holds, we are doing our seafood industry, our fishermen and our citizens a disservice.”
Jes Hathaway

Hathaway also proposed “encouraging region- and fisheries-specific solutions to the problem beyond Magnuson.” One such approach, in her view, would be to provide funding for test programs to track seafood from boat to plate in different regions. While some programs exist, she would like to see more cooperation and investment in such programs, rooted in common values across different supply chains and geographies.

Pier to peer community accountability

One of the webinar’s recurring themes hinged on supplementing better, more comprehensive enforcement of stronger laws with cultural changes within the fishing community. As Hathaway suggested, “Federal legislation is rarely a panacea for every issue in fisheries.” However, one possible path toward ensuring stakeholder buy-in while potentially reducing fraud involves a community accountability model.

Kevin Scribner, owner/operator of Forever Wild Seafood and one of Slow Fish national’s team leaders, described the notion of creating a seafood community accountability program, in effect, a cooperative rooted in a shared set of values. If you agree to uphold the values, you become part of the community that will support those values, identify and address any violation of those values (fraud), and offer support to those who need it.

This type of community accountability promotes a self-policing model that discourages any missteps while promoting the values that engender public trust. Scribner described it as a system in which “We take care of and manage our own.” But it would also be a system that is open to anyone willing to embrace the core values, which may be similar to the Slow Fish values of good, clean, fair, and/or the Local Catch Core Values embracing community-based fishermen.

“…a reliable trusted knowledge-based system of accountability can be developed and maintained by a seafood community that is committed to and guided by core values.”
Kevin Scribner

“We have confidence that with the proliferation of direct and immediate communication tools plus refined methods of traceability and a commitment to transparency, that a reliable trusted knowledge-based system of accountability can be developed and maintained by a seafood community that is committed to and guided by core values,” Scribner said.

A seafood community accountability framework would not seek to rebel against nor replace existing federal, state and local laws in place. Rather, it would operate under the umbrella of existing fisheries laws, augmenting the overall effort to minimize fraud while uplifting the values that support responsibly managed fisheries.

There’s much more to discuss on this topic, including different values and traceability and transparency technologies to support those values, all of which we’ll revisit in the third webinar in the Slow Fish 201 Webinar Series on Feb. 27. Stay tuned for more information regarding time, panelists and questions to be asked and answered.

The webinar closed out with some insightful questions from the audience regarding fair pay for seafood processing employees, economic justice to ensure fair pricing and access to quality seafood for all demographics and ways to measure success in the mission to uphold values and minimize fraud.

We will revisit all of these topics in some form in one of the following webinars.

Resources

If you’d like to watch the video recording of this webinar, follow this link.

If you’d like to watch the video recording of the first webinar, follow this link.

If you’d like to continue the discussion, visit the Local Catch Forum here.

If you’d like to communicate directly with one of the panelists, send an e-mail to colles@onefishfoundation.org.

Want a more in-depth understanding of the federal agencies at work against seafood fraud? Follow these links:

Congressional Research Foundation report on Seafood Fraud

University of Minnesota Food Policy Center Report

All Blog Posts

One Fish Foundation 2017

January 8, 2017October 20, 2021
by Colles Stowell

Share it!

Happy New Year from One Fish Foundation!

2016 was a year of continued growth, broadened horizons, hands-on experiences, shared stories and several firsts. One Fish remains committed to educating students, parents and communities about why they should care where their seafood comes from, how it was caught and by whom.

Here are a few of the highlights from the past year, including some important firsts that set a precedent for spreading the sustainable seafood message in communities.

The first sustainable seafood dinner was staged at Rosemont Market in Portland in June, bringing interested residents to the historic bakery to have a frank, thoughtful discussion about myriad factors affecting seafood choices.
The KNOW FISH dinners hosted at When Pigs Fly in Kittery, Me. and Black Trumpet in Portsmouth, NH. extended the discussion of the June event to include fishermen, chefs and fishmongers talking about different links in the seafood supply chain. Attendees learned about one fisherman’s unfailing drive to catch groundfish such as haddock and pollock by hand, on rod and reel, up to 80 miles offshore to reduce bycatch and preserve the species.
One Fish Foundation expanded its educational reach into New Hampshire schools.
One Fish Foundation has been featured in the media:
One Fish Foundation helped plan and attended Slow Fish 2016 in New Orleans, an international event aimed at sharing fisheries stories from around the world and addressing some of the challenges to fishermen and seafood sustainability.

We have set some ambitious goals for 2017.

We will hire a social media communications coordinator to expand One Fish Foundation’s presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
We will extend the website to include more content for students.
We will grow our footprint in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
We will host more KNOW FISH dinners along the coast, inviting more fishermen and chefs to share stories about seafood sustainability and offer tips for consumers.
We will launch a newsletter that brings the latest news and events regarding sustainable seafood and what’s going on at One Fish Foundation.
Hats and T-shirts sporting the One Fish logo will be available online, proceeds directed toward the foundation.
One Fish will attend key conferences focused on the front edge of seafood sustainability issues, including climate change impacts, policy changes, new science, community involvement, etc.

It’s going to be an exciting year. Through the blog, the KNOW FISH dinners and in the classroom, we’ve found one inescapable truth: change happens one conversation at a time. The more people we can reach with the message about learning where their seafood comes from, the more we can improve the resource, and the lives of the fishermen who depend on it.

Come join us!

All Blog Posts

Know Fish: A Dinner Series of Food, Fun and…

September 28, 2016October 20, 2021
by Colles Stowell

Share it!

For most people, seafood is simply a protein either on a menu, laid across some ice in a display case or pre-packaged in a box at a supermarket. There’s typically no story about where and how the fish was caught, much less by whom. Consumers have little or no idea of how far the fish has traveled, nor whether the fish and shellfish are abundant, stressed or fed antibiotics and hormones at an industrial aquaculture site.

One Fish Foundation arose from a wish to spread the word about our relationship to oceans and specifically to seafood. This means bringing the story behind the seafood we eat into classrooms. I’ll lug in a bunch of fishing gear to talk about different harvest methods and their impact on the resource and marine ecosystems. I’ll throw out eye-popping stats to illustrate how skewed our domestic seafood consumption picture is.

Spreading the word also means going into communities and having conversations with people who care about the environment and want to learn more about the food they eat. That’s what the Know Fish Dinner Series is about. For the past five months, I’ve worked with Seacoast chefs who are passionate about sourcing sustainably harvested seafood; activists who speak out on issues like fisheries management fairness and climate change; fishmongers selling locally abundant, underutilized species; and one fisherman who is bucking the trend toward consolidation, resource depletion and massive bycatch.

These dinners will be a fun, interactive dialogue about why we should be concerned that 90% of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported. We’ll eat deliciously prepared, sustainable groundfish caught on rod and reel by Capt. Tim Rider out of Eliot, Me. We’ll discuss why supporting local fishing communities is important and how our seafood choices make a difference: to the resource, the oceans and the fishermen who work them

We’ll have some fun with trivia that sheds light on the resource, the supply chain, marine ecosystems, aquaculture, invasive species, climate change impacts and more. We’ll discuss these topics, ask and answer questions, and bring more of the story to life.

This will be your chance to talk to Capt. Rider about why he spends 18 hours a day or more on the water, fishing with rod and reel in a fishery dominated by trawl nets.

You’ll have the opportunity to talk with chefs Evan Mallett of Black Trumpet, Rob Martin of When Pigs Fly and Brendan Vesey of Joinery Restaurant (Brendan will be cooking with Evan at the Black Trumpet event) about how they choose what seafood to put on the menu.

You’ll be able to ask fishmongers Spencer Montgomery of Dole and Bailey and Amanda Parks of New England Fishmongers about the products they market and handle, and some of the discussions they’ve had around underutilized species.

Got questions about why many small-scale fishermen are struggling? Follow up with one of the event collaborators, Brett Tolley, the community organizer and policy advocate for Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance. He’s been at the forefront of a campaign to revise current fisheries laws that are consolidating the fleet and squeezing out fishermen like Capt. Rider.

(And, I’ll be on hand to talk about sparking student interest in seafood sustainability, and the effectiveness of waving a dead fish at 6^th graders).

This is the team that has volunteered many hours to help organize these events. Everyone brings a great energy and passion to the dinners on Oct. 13 at When Pigs Fly and Oct. 27 at Black Trumpet.

So come out and eat some fabulous seafood, listen to some cool stories, test your seafood trivia, and most of all, get to know your fisherman, your fishmonger, your chefs, a couple of evangelists and your FISH.

Get tickets via the links below.

I hope to see you there!

Oct. 13: When Pigs Fly

Oct. 27: Black Trumpet