Steve Tousignant (left) and Steve Parkes at the Cape Ann Farmers Market passing out shares to Gloucester shareholders of the CSF. “It’s a tool for educating people, changing the way consumers think. The most important lessons are the elements of scale, the importance of local food, and a connection to the fishermen.” ©Photo by Niaz Dorry, NAMA

While the Port Clyde Fresh Catch may have started out as a way to make more money for fishermen, it has quickly become much more than that. “There’s a whole sustainability concept built into this,” Libby says, describing an array of voluntary gear changes the boats have made for the sake of reducing habitat impacts, and increasing escapement of juvenile fish.

CSF’s are modeled on CSA’s (community supported agriculture) in which people buy shares of produce from a local farm, and receive a basket of fresh produce once or twice a week. At present the Fresh Catch CSF delivers to approximately 300 customers at ten locations from Bath to Mount Desert Island, and their direct sales market is expanding to include numerous restaurants.

Fresh Catch pays the fishermen a flat price, $1.50 per pound, for all fish, and charges customers a flat rate around $3.00 per pound for whole fish, which they can order filleted for an additional charge. “Because we charge a flat rate people are willing to try new things like hake and redfish, last week we gave them monk tails and they loved it.”

According to Libby his customers now eat more fish than they did before, and rave about the quality. “They tell us we’ve ruined’m, that they’ll never buy supermarket fish again.”

Which is not to say there weren’t some bumps in the road. “We had some fish cutters we were training, and we found a new product: chowder pieces,” says Libby, recalling the hacked up fillets that went out the door. “That generated some interesting phone calls from our customers, but we gave some extra the next week and everybody was happy.”

Raising Awareness
CSF’s however, do more than make fishermen and fish consumers happy. They provide alternatives to a seafood production system that many believe has increased the scale of fishing operations, infrastructure and marketing, at the expense of quality and the consumer’s link to their food. Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, an advocacy organization for small and medium scale fishermen and fishing communities, and similar organizations such as Penobscot East, in Stonington, Maine, have facilitated the development of eight CSF’s up and down the coast, including Port Clyde Fresh Catch.

“There’s a lot more to a CSF than selling fish,” says Niaz Dorry, executive director of NAMA. “It’s a tool for educating people, changing the way consumers think.” The most important lessons, according to Dorry are the elements of scale, the importance of local food, and a connection to the fishermen. “That’s one thing people here are always asking for,” Dorry says of the Gloucester CSF. “They want the fishermen to come to the pick ups.”

Aaron Dority, of Penobscot East, sees CSF’s as the way to hold back the continued dissolution of small-scale fisheries and communities. “Once the customers understand this, they become our allies.”

Catch Shares
Since the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) voted to adopt “catch shares,” as a tool for managing groundfish, many fishing communities are concerned about their futures, and need allies. “Catch Shares,” is a euphemism for Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs), which New England fishermen vigorously resisted for the last 15 years. Backed by NOAA’s new chief, Jane Lubchenco, and the non-governmental organization, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), lobbied hard for catch shares, ostensibly as a tool to save the fish. In Iceland, Canada and elsewhere however, transferable quotas have lead to consolidation of access rights in the hands of a few large-scale operations. In April 2009, EDF vice president, David Festa, promoted catch shares as a commodity in which investors could see 400 percent returns.

With catch share now a fate acompli, NAMA and other organizations have launched the Fish Locally Collaborative, aimed at securing access rights for those who tend to loose them in a quota scheme, in this case, the people who are supplying their communities with the freshest fish available, at a reasonable price. The Fish Locally Collaborative is working to establish permit banks—which would keep permits evenly distributed along the coast. Members are lobbying the NEFMC task force on catch shares to include provisions for limiting the special scale of quota management, insuring that initial allocations do not disenfranchise traditional fishermen, and designing programs that reward conservative fishermen.

“We’re getting connected farmers and the whole family food movement. We’re talking about CSFs with fishermen in California, Washington and North Carolina.” ©Photo by Niaz Dorry, NAMA

Realizing that the number of fishermen left is too small to effectively make demands, these organizations are utilizing CSF’s to help enlist a broader constituency, and in a positive way.

“Some of our biggest supporters now, didn’t believe it could be done,” says Dorry. “So we held what we called, a ‘seafood throwdown,’ where we gave two chefs each a fish, a few ingredients, and $25 to buy whatever else they needed at the farmer’s market. Then they had a cook off. Fishermen couldn’t believe the interest. They were amazed. And it’s a lot more fun than the meetings, the bloody forehead banging against an immovable object.”

Spreading the Word
With a direct link to consumers, fishermen can no longer be characterized as opponents of management, but instead define themselves as proponents of sustainable seafood. When they take positive initiative, and back it up with self imposed limits, fishermen become the good guys.

“This has opened up a lot of new conversations,” says Dorry. “We’re getting connected farmers and the whole family food movement. We’re talking about CSF’s with fishermen in California, Washington and North Carolina.”

Willy Phillips, a North Carolina fish dealer visited Penobscot East earlier this summer to find out more about CSF and other ways to secure futures for fishing communities. “There’s no doubt in my mind that this is the future,” says Phillips, who shared what he learned with locals interested in starting CSF’s. One CSF, Carteret Catch, started with support from Duke University, is already selling fish from Cedar Island, NC, and Susan West, an author and freelance reporter for National Fisher- man, is working on moving the idea along in her community. “I was very inspired by what Willy told me, but so far we’re just having conversations in the community,” says West, whose husband fishes commercially. “We don’t have public docks so we need to get buy-in from the fish dealers here.”

Buy In From Dealers
When the Libby’s started their operation, they met with some concerns from the Portland Fish Auction, where they normally sell. “We told’m, look, if we don’t do this you’re not going to have any boats. The way we see it, we’re getting fish out there at a slightly higher price, and that’s only going to help bring the price up all around, and that will help them.”

There was also some discussion among Maine lobster dealers about getting legislation introduced that would prohibit direct sales. “That was a no go,” said a member of Maine’s Fisheries Advisory Council.

But infrastructure is an issue for CSF’s and each one appears to be working things out as best they can. In Port Clyde they lease facilities, in Gloucester, Mass, and Carteret they currently work with dealers and use existing facilities.

As CSF operations expand, it could lead to a recapitalization of failing infrastructure in fishing villages that become centers of the movement. For the fishermen in Port Clyde the CSF represents more than stopgap measure, until fisheries improve. “The mandate we got from our guys, is that we need to keep as much control as possible,” says Libby. “There’s a lot of mistrust of the old system because it hasn’t kept up with what we’ve needed.”

According to Libby, Port Clyde Fresh Catch hopes to grow. “I sure don’t see myself as head fish cutter.” At the same time he expects to remain different from what many see as an outdated business model where seafood becomes a commodity, with increasing distance between the harvester and the consumer. “We’re about local fish and local jobs. The fish belong to local people,” says Libby, who has bought in to the widely held belief that CSF’s will help people understand the importance of local food, and lend their support to keeping fishing communities viable.