Kim Selkoe and Victoria Voss of Get Hooked, based in California.
By Doreen Leggett
The Oreo was introduced by Nabisco in 1912 and is the most popular cookie in the world, but still subject of a $20-million marketing plan in the United Kingdom.
If a cream-filled cookie sandwich needs that much help, what are the chances for fish such as skate, thornyhead rockfish, the obscure Ta’ape, and monkfish?
Fish have another problem too.
“People are intimidated by a naked fillet,” said Jana Hennig, executive director of the non-profit trade association Positively Groundfish, who worked in marketing in a previous life and had intel on the Oreo.
Local fish do have champions though; coastal communities, advocacy groups like Henning’s, and Saltonstall-Kennedy grants from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that have helped push them into the spotlight.
Some recent benefits of the 70-year-old grant program were on display at the Aquaculture America national conference in New Orleans on Friday, March 7.
As part of “Promotion and Marketing through Innovative Fishing Community Focused Projects,” 10 initiatives that address needs of fishing communities, support economic opportunities, and build and maintain resilient fisheries were presented.
One was the expansion of our own Meet the Fleet, which brings together fishermen and local chefs in a presentation and tasting that has deepened appreciation of Cape seafood for more than a decade. Quarterly Meet the Fleets are almost always sold out. To reach more people funds were used to capture events on video and develop “Tips and Tricks,” short visuals on how to prepare seafood.
“Meet the Fleet builds knowledgeable seafood consumers who are committed to expanding their seafood choices, buying local seafood, and supporting working waterfronts,” said Melissa Sanderson, chief operating officer at the Fishermen’s Alliance.
Recent surveys of the public show an increase in local demand for monkfish, hake, black sea bass and other fish plentiful in local waters. The SK grant also provided funding for a “How-To” guide, which Sanderson developed and that groups everywhere can use to launch their own community’s version of Meet the Fleet.
Up the coast, Gulf of Maine Research Institute has a variety of programs that aim to increase the amount of local seafood purchased and help strengthen the economy.
Carissa Maurin, aquaculture resource specialist at GMRI, said they work with partners up and down the supply chain and help businesses develop storytelling and communication assets that personalize eating local.
She spoke about the Tastemaker program. Businesses participating commit to sourcing at least 35 percent local seafood, demonstrate leadership in building demand for a diverse range of local fish, shellfish, and sea vegetables, and educate staff and customers about why local seafood benefits our health, economy, and climate.
The program helped lead to 43.6 million in local seafood being purchased across New England in 2023 with an average of 47 percent of seafood sourced locally by the participating businesses, she said.
Clear across the country, Hennig is trying to lure consumers back to Pacific cod and rockfish. Last century they were overfished, but through management and efforts by fishermen an economic disaster became a sustainable success story. But markets were gone.
“Consumers could no longer find these species on the menu and they forgot about them,” said Hennig.
Hennig and her team implemented strategies to increase demand for the heathy, inexpensive fish and now hope to develop value-added products.
With an SK grant, Positively Groundfish’s new program “Catch and Create” will help five start-ups develop and market value-added products.
Jhana Young, of Conservation International in Hawaii, touted their “Eat it to Beat it” campaign for Ta’ape, or bluestripe snapper, a highly invasive species outcompeting Hawaii’s native fish.
Through live cooking demos, virtual throw downs, celebrity partnerships and other efforts, there was a 168-percent increase in market value for Ta’ape compared to 2018.
In a matter of weeks, Young said, a shoe made with Ta’ape skin and produced by an Italian company will be available.
Marissa McMahan, with Manomet Conservation Sciences, said rapid warming of the Gulf of Maine has meant softshell clam populations and harvests are declining, making hardshell clams more important to the $18.9-million wild fishery in Maine.
Aquaculture can be used to supplement hardshell clam populations. Towns want to increase quahog propagation but can only buy them at one millimeter in size from one hatchery in Maine. Hardshell clams need to be 15 to 20 millimeters before they are put in the wild.
At the same time, aquaculture is dependent on oysters, which prompts concerns about a lack of diversification. SK grant funding is meant to help solve both problems, troubleshooting ways oyster grant holders could also grow quahogs.
McMahan explained that growers shy away from quahogs that take four years to grow to market size, whereas oysters take two. The plan is to have farmers grow baby quahogs from 1mm to 15 mm, then sell to towns for propagation instead of waiting to bring them to market. The pilot project has three towns on board.
Inga Potter of Cold Current Kelp is working to expand Northern New England’s seaweed industry by integrating dulse into existing sugar kelp farms.
They first experimented with the seaweed Nori but that didn’t work out; government support allowed them to take chances. The work with dulse, expected to generate $350 million by 2031, was more successful and the team tested rigid growing lines to reduce risk of whale entanglement. High-density polyethylene pipe proved effective.
Potter and Nicole Kirchoff, of Live Advantage Bait LLC, were two examples of how NOAA’s grant program is working with small businesses. Kirchoff aims to improve farming Atlantic croaker for bait. She said Florida alone spent $279 million on live bait for recreational fishing, some coming from wild sources.
“Bait species is an economic boon and you keep wild fish in the wild,” Kirchoff said.
The grant program allows for reinvention. Kim Selkoe and Victoria Voss’s Get Hooked Seafood’s catch of the day subscription service peaked during COVID then dropped, so they worked to get more seafood into schools in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in California.
“It’s such good brainfood, yet it is completely absent,” Selkoe said.
After a lot of taste tests, curriculum development and cafeteria staff education they developed a program that matches learning to lunch; students learn about pink shrimp in the classroom and then have it in the cafeteria.
“Pink shrimp ceviche has been such a huge hit,” Selkoe said.
The program also benefits fishermen who can count on $8 or $10 a pound for their catch. They are hoping to expand sea-to-school programs nationally.
Other speakers included Bethany Walton of Oyster South Company who talked about training servers to know their oysters, and Brenda Lima who discussed how you increase production in loko iʻa, traditional Hawaiian fishponds.