How the Fishing Industry Is Trying to Stay Alive By Acting Like Small Farmers

On Saturday night, men in thick winter jackets hoist shrimp out of the icy waters of the Gulf of Maine. Most of the shrimp haul goes to a processor three hours away; some shrimp travel as far away as the Carolinas. But early Sunday morning, co-op manager Kim Libby drives a few miles down the road to a snowy parking lot, where she delivers the catch directly to locals. These customers have paid for a portion of the catch in advance.

"Here's hoping that we can sell all of our product like this one day," she says.

By eliminating processors and purveyors, the Port Clyde Draggermen's Co-op hopes to increase the return on its shrimp, a staple for winter groundfishing boats in the state. The tiny crustaceans have been selling for less than 50 cents a pound. By going direct to consumers, the co-op is essentially trying to make more money selling less seafood -- and, in the process, they're hoping to reverse an industry in steep decline.

In addition to federal lawsuits and grants, smaller commercial fishermen are using direct marketing to stay afloat. At least four fishing groups started similar initiatives last year.

Two Maine brothers, John and Brendan Ready, sell subscriptions of lobster and other seafood under the name Catch a Piece of Maine. Their 150 subscribers receive shipments and can even go online to check on the status of their underwater investment.

In Alaska, the nonprofit Alaska Marine Conservation Council sends its donors tangible evidence of its environmental initiatives: sustainably harvested seafood. Marketing campaigns have also been launched to promote the regions' seafood, including North Carolina's Carteret Catch and New Orleans' White Boots Brigade.

These community-supported fisheries (CSFs) attempt to replicate the success of small farmers using the community-supported agriculture (CSA) model. Like CSAs, the idea is that shareholders will invest at the beginning of the season with guaranteed return of food dividends all season long.

"You're getting food from someone you know. You know how they grow it, you know how they treat it," says Anne Burt, an organizer with the Maine Council of Churches, which has been organizing CSAs with the Maine Organic Farming and Gardening Association.

The CSA model originated in Japan as teikei (literally "cooperation") and first came to the United States in 1986 in the midst of a long, steady decline in small family farms in America. Now, an estimated 1,500 CSAs operate in the US, according to Nichole Nazelrod at the Robyn Van En Center at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pa. Many of them are new farms. In fact, over roughly the same period the number of small farms appears to have grown, according to US Department of Agriculture databases. Some organizers hope community support will reverse declines in family-owned commercial fishing vessels in oceans that are increasingly considered depleted. By some estimates, the world's fisheries are 80 percent depleted.

"Thirty years ago, we all thought, we'd never clean everything up," never catch all the fish in the ocean's seemingly infinite bounty. "But we've done a pretty good job," says Port Clyde fisherman Glen Libby. "Now, we're in the process of trying to save what we have left."

Others who are studying the industry, such as Maine's Island Institute and Susan Andreatta, a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, say that with the loss of sea life, knowledge about fishing grounds that is passed on from generation to generation will also be lost by the time fish stocks rebound -- if they rebound at all.

Given the rising cost of waterfront land, soaring costs for fuel and nets, and tighter and tighter fishing quotas, the commercial viability of fishing has been waning for years.