Those looking to purchase local
seafood at grocery stores and fish markets in New England may have a difficult
time finding much, especially if you’re searching for something other than shellfish.
Just 15 percent of the seafood available at markets in the region originated in
New England, according to a pilot study by the Rhode Island-based non-profit
Eating with the Ecosystem.
“Unfortunately, the results weren’t
super surprising to me,” said Kate Masury, the program director at Eating with
the Ecosystem who coordinated the project with University of Rhode Island
Professor Hiro Uchida and student Christina Montello. “We’re a seafood
producing region, it’s a big part of our economy, but we’re not making it
available to our own consumers.”
Rhode Island’s results were better
than the regional average, though still not as high as one might expect. About
24 percent of the seafood in Ocean State markets was captured in New England
waters, which compares favorably to Massachusetts and Connecticut, at 12
percent each, and New Hampshire and Vermont, at 5 percent. Only Maine – 33
percent – had more local seafood available in the markets surveyed than those
in Rhode Island.
The findings are the result of a
citizen science project called Market Blitz that took place over a two-week
period in March. Volunteers visited 45 supermarkets and seafood markets in all
six New England states to identify what species were available and where it was
captured.
While the percentage of locally
caught species available for purchase was low, the total number of species for
sale was unexpectedly high. Ninety-one species of fresh or frozen marine life
could be purchased during the survey period, including 45 species identified as
being landed in the New England region and 85 species from outside the region
or unidentified. (The overlap is due to some species being caught both locally
and beyond the region.)
Again, Rhode Island was above
average, with 50 species available at the 12 markets surveyed, far more than the
other states.
Despite the variety of species
available, however, Masury said that New Englanders typically do not eat a diverse
diet of local seafood. Oysters, quahogs and lobsters dominate the markets,
followed by four other varieties of shellfish. Farmed salmon is the most
popular regional finfish, followed by flounder and haddock.
“We eat a lot of a few things, and
it’s mostly shellfish,” she said. “When people go out to eat at a restaurant or
go to a seafood market, they want traditional New England food. Shellfish is
what people are demanding.”
Where does the rest of the New
England seafood harvest go, if not to New England consumers? All over the
globe.
“Two-thirds of the seafood caught in
the U.S. is exported elsewhere, some species more so than others,” Masury said.
“In Rhode Island, whiting – also called silver hake – is a fairly big fishery,
but most people here have never heard of it. It mostly goes to New York and
it’s distributed out of the region from there.”
In a report issued by Eating with
the Ecosystem in late June, the authors wrote that the low availability of
locally caught seafood “may not necessarily imply that the market is dominated
by non-regional seafood. Rather, it may be in part because the markets did not
bother to indicate – or advertise – that the seafood is from the region.”
The report also noted that many of
the study’s results suggest that Maine and Rhode Island were different than the
other New England states.
“Seafood is a bigger part of the economy in those
states, they depend on fisheries more than other industries, and people who
vacation in both areas want local seafood,” Masury said. “So part of the reason
why those states had more availability of regional species is because there is
more demand for local species.”
And that, she added, is the take home message of
the Market Blitz. The region has plenty of room to improve, but consumers will
have to demand it.
“For many businesses, it’s an economic decision,”
she said. “If they don’t think people are going to buy it, they’re not going to
offer it. So the biggest thing we can do is to show there is demand for local
species. Buy the local instead of the imported. And if you don’t see local in
your market, ask for it.”
The Market Blitz study will be conducted twice a
year for the foreseeable future to build up a database and demonstrate how
seafood availability changes over time. In the next phase of the project,
interviews will be conducted with fishermen, seafood dealers, processors, chefs
and consumers about the mismatch between what species are available in the
ecosystem and what species are available in the marketplace.
“One of the things we talk about all the time with
consumers is eating a diversity of local species in proportion to their natural
abundance,” Masury said. “Species more abundant in the local area should be a
larger part of our diet. We hear that species like dogfish and sea robin are
abundant in local waters, for example, but you don’t realize that because
that’s not what’s available in the local market. Our goal with the Market Blitz
is to quantify what is available.”
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