Resources for Fishermen

It’s mid winter.  The shrimp are near shore. But lately the fishermen where we live have been staying in.  There’s no market for their catch.  Or if there is, they get $0.30 per pound for it.  That’s $300 for a day’s catch, $600 if it’s a really good day.  But then you take out the fuel.  And the ice.  And the boat.  And the crew…  Not much left over. $300 a day in 15’ weather doesn’t sound like a deal to us.

Nor does it sound reasonable to the families who look forward to fresh winter shrimp.  When you explain the boat price and what comes out of it before anyone gets paid, the consumers are wondering why they pay so much for their seafood if the fisherman got paid so little. 

It all adds up quickly when you enter in processing, packaging, freezing, shipping, storage, advertising, on and on.  All of these are current steps to our food chain in today’s global market place.

But what if your market is on the dock?  For so many reasons it no longer makes sense to buy packaged, frozen fish trucked hundreds or thousands of miles when it was caught steps away from our homes.

A Community Supported Fishery gets fishermen a higher boat price for catch that can be sold locally.  It gets seafood lovers in your community the freshest sweetest seafood available at what is often less than the grocery store price.  It gives consumers a window into the fishing industry and a sense of how their food got from the boat to the plate, and who caught it.

To help you get started, we’ve put together a primer, a bait box if you will, of what a CSF is and why it can work in your community.  There you’ll find more tools that you’ll need as you get started, like a sample CSF contract, a shrimp preparation handout, and contact information for regulatory agencies in your state.  We can even set fishermen up with their own web pages hosted on this site so consumers can find them. 

We've also created a CSF search feature.  Here a fisherman entes the basic information about his CSF and maintains it themselves as the season or catch changes.  Consumers can enter a zipcode and find all the options closest to them. They can even print a Google map directly from the site with directions to get to your drop off point.

NAMA is available to help you get started, promote your CSF and work out the kinks as you go along.  We’re committed to helping fishermen and the shore side communities who agree that if we truly care about the health of our oceans it is important how, when and where we fish and how that fish gets to our dinner plates.  Not because we are in the seafood marketing business, but because we believe saving the fish doesn’t mean we have to lose our ecologically minded fishermen.