Taylor Witkin/Scott Nuzum: Designing seafood systems for the post-pandemic world

Photo by Gordito1869

From SeaAhead

BOSTON

While the COVID-19 pandemic directly threatens the lives of millions of patients and frontline health-care workers, it also jeopardizes the livelihoods of seafood-system workers across North America. The pandemic exposes the vulnerabilities of supply chains that criss-cross oceans, stretching across thousands of miles and demonstrates a need, and capacity, for regional food security.

Savvy seafood harvesters are often prepared for major market disruptions -- harmful algal blooms that shut down production, hurricanes that force boats back to safe harbor, ice that takes out equipment. But this pandemic is a different kind of crisis. It attacks demand as well as supply. Harvesters that rely on sales to restaurants, where 90 percent of shellfish and 75 percent of all seafood in America are consumed, are left wondering how to stay afloat if pandemic-induced shutdowns continue. The entire industry has been forced to pivot to direct-to-consumer sales models, a daunting task given that restaurants aggregate customers and bear much of the marketing burden.

While these are indeed dark times, there are rays of hope for better days. Ultimately, this crisis may lead to a reorientation and recommitment to local food systems, providing a much needed boost to local communities and restoring some resiliency in domestic food- supply chains. In addition, this crisis also may provide an opportunity to reflect upon how we might redesign our commercial fishing fleets to take advantage of a range of innovations -- including remote sensors, advanced propulsion and alternative fuel systems.

This reorientation, recommitment and reimagining will, in large part, be aided by the bluetech sector. Working as partners, local producers and tech companies have the potential to revitalize the seafood sector and create the seafood system of the future.

With international trade stalled, the pandemic is forcing producers, suppliers, and consumers to rethink America’s seafood system, where 90 percent of seafood comes from foreign sources. Much has been written recently of the collapse of domestic seafood-supply chains (NY Times, LA Times, National Fisherman, Seafood Source). Seafood processors are saddled with more fish than they can process. Fishers can’t engage in their livelihood. All the while, consumers facer empty supermarket shelves and compete for coveted grocery delivery windows on mobile apps. Moreover, with reports of Covid-19 outbreaks spreading through many of the country’s food-processing facilities, people are increasingly concerned about the chain of custody of their food and whether it is safe to eat.

Consequently, consumers have sought work-arounds to these supply chain failures by looking closer to home for seafood, relying on local farmers markets and community-supported fisheries to deliver fresh, high-quality finfish and shellfish from short, trustworthy supply chains. Whereas the “know your fisherman” ethic was a lifestyle choice in the pre-COVID-19 world, it is now gaining momentum and becoming mainstream.

And with good reason. The United States is blessed with an abundance of seafood up and down its lengthy coast. Most U.S. fish stocks are well managed, meaning that fish can be harvested sustainably. And, increasingly, we have the tools to provide traceable and transparent supply chains. Combined, these factors point to an opportunity to transform seafood-supply chains to not only increase resiliency and sustainability in the system, but also to improve economic returns for fishers and their local communities. 

The Local Catch Network demonstrates the power of an engaged virtual community, and that technology does not need to be complex to be effective. Local Catch is a community-of-practice made of fishermen, suppliers, chefs, researchers and organizers committed to providing local, healthful, low-impact seafood via community- supported fisheries. Local Catch’s Seafood Finder map provides the location and contact info for nearly 120 businesses that distribute to over 500 locations in the U.S. and Canada, making it easy for consumers to find local seafood providers and distribution points. Though businesses within the network are struggling, as consumers make a concerted effort to support their fishermen and farmer neighbors, some seafood providers are well positioned to weather the crisis, and are even doing more business than usual. 

While Local Catch Network was conceived in the pre-COVID-19 world, the virus has only served to reinforce its underlying thesis -- that the seafood-supply-chain network was ripe for disruption. This and countless other groups, such as SeaAhead members Oyster Common, Oyster Tracker and LegitFish hope that their efforts bring greater value to fishers and the coastal communities in which they live, in the process demonstrating the transformative possibilities of the bluetech space.

If you want to learn more, check out the Social FISHtancing podcast

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Taylor Witkin is the Bluetech Desk Manager at the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) and works with SeaAhead to manage and grow the Bluetech Innovation Hub, in Boston. Before joining CIC, he was the Network Coordinator for the Local Catch Network and organized the 2019 Local Seafood Summit. He also conducted research for the University of Maine on adaptations by stakeholders and supply chains in the lobster industry. His seafood-systems research has been published in the journal Fisheries Research.

Scott Nuzum is a strategy consultant and futurist at VNF Solutions LLC and a lawyer with Van Ness Feldman LLP. He helps organizations assess and understand the implications of technological, environmental and geopolitical change and works with clients to craft strategies to become more resilient in the face of this disruption. In addition, he advises innovative companies and start-ups operating in the environmental-, energy- and social- impact spaces on a range of issues, including providing input and feedback on engagement strategies with potential investors and regulators. Before joining VNF, he was a policy adviser at the White House Council on Environmental Quality and a lawyer at the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The future of ocean fishing

Fisherman's Memorial in Gloucester, Mass.

To members and friends of the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (pcfremail@gmail.com; thepcfr.org).

Our next meeting comes Wednesday, May 17,  with James E. Griffin, an expert on the global food sector. He's a professor of culinary studies at Johnson & Wales University and an international business consultant. He's particularly well known for his knowledge of international food sourcing and sustainability.

Professor Griffin will focus in his talk on seafood sustainability, looking at it with New England, national  and international perspectives. It will be based on international research he and his colleagues have conducted in recent years.

You might to look at this New York Times story about rapacious Chinese fishing:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/world/asia/chinas-appetite-pushes-fisheries-to-the-brink.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Let us know whether you're coming by sending a note to:

pcfremail@gmail.com