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New Map Launching Today Helps People Find Local Seafood

This article is more than 3 years old.

The seafood industry relies heavily on restaurants and retail stores for the majority of sales. With restaurant closures and coronavirus shelter-in-place orders, the seafood industry has been hit hard. The sudden drop in demand has forced fishers and fish farmers to get creative in their methods, turning to direct sales to stay afloat. A new tool through the University of Washington Sustainable Fisheries initiative has compiled information about where to find seafood in the form of a map that can be used to easily track down local, sustainable catch for delivery or direct sales.

The goal of the map is to support small seafood businesses by making their transition to direct sales just a little bit easier. Generally a supplier (fishing boat or farm) will deal with processors and distributors to sell their fish, and customers will purchase through a restaurant or grocery store.

Now that direct sales are the only option, the industry is scrambling to keep up and adapt to a new way of business and the map is meant to shoulder some of the burden. “They’re bringing in people from sales to pack boxes, the last thing they should have to worry about is finding new markets,” says Jack Cheney; a senior project manager at seafood sustainability organization FishWise, and contributor for Sustainable Fisheries UW, a grant-funded website dedicated to explaining the science of seafood, “this is the least we can do to try and promote them in some small way.”

“About a month ago we sent out a newsletter saying that we were planning to launch something that would support small business during the coronavirus outbreak,” says Max Mossler, managing editor at Sustainable Fisheries UW.

An estimated 70 percent of seafood is purchased in restaurants, says Mossler, “that’s really what separates it from other kinds of meat.” Now that restaurants aren’t buying, fishers are relying on dockside sales and community-supported fisheries (CSF) boxes, where subscribers receive a box full of fresh catch from local fishers on a weekly or monthly basis. “Fish are still being landed, and fishermen need to find a home for their fish,” says Cheney.


However, shifting to a direct sales approach is not such an easy feat. “There are so many more steps and it’s so much less efficient,” says Cheney, “seafood suppliers don’t know how to do this stuff, they’re figuring it out on the fly. Working with FedEx, printing shipping labels, they are having to learn an entirely different assembly line and set of skills.”

While the scramble to adapt is ongoing, the businesses that have managed to shift to direct sales are seeing a positive response to their efforts with an uptick in CSF subscriptions and more people cooking seafood at home. Restrictions on movement and travel have increased demand for community-based and locally-sourced food. “Theres a little bit of an opportunity amongst all this crap,” says Cheney.

A main barrier to the seafood business is that many people don’t know how to cook seafood at home, and therefore they don’t buy it. In addition to selling direct, many seafood suppliers are attempting to educate people on how to properly prepare seafood dishes at home in the hopes of doing away with the intimidation factor. “It’s not like chicken, beef or pork where there is only one species,” Mossler explains, “there are so many kinds of seafood and each one cooks differently and tastes differently.”


The map, launched today, includes 211 seafood businesses. Drawing from existing databases of seafood suppliers, the intention is to include more businesses over time. “I would love to expand the map as much as possible,” says Mossler, but given the urgency of the situation, populating the map will be an ongoing process. Disseminating information in an expedited manner is very important right now.

In order to get on the map, suppliers have to first reach out. They must also have a website, listed prices, and an easy way to order. “I want this to be a tool for consumers,” says Mossler, who considered how everyday shoppers might benefit from this tool while he was developing it; “consumers aren’t going to want to find a Facebook page for a business and send a message to somebody, they’re going to want an easy ordering system with prices already listed.”

The team also wanted to encourage people to shop local. When seafood can be moved shorter distances by truck rather than by plane, it is both more eco-friendly and less expensive for the suppliers; “shipping costs around $.50 to $.75 per pound, on a plane that same order costs $3 to $4 per pound.” The map encourages seafood lovers to choose businesses that are nearby. Users can see which companies ship locally, regionally and nationally as well.

Ready or not, the seafood industry will be forced to shift to a web-based business model, with increased focus on direct sales. It is evident that the most resilient seafood suppliers will be the ones that are able to adapt to this new way of doing business. Even when restaurants do open up, reduced seating capacity and new social-distancing guidelines will continue to impact the industry long after shelter-in-place orders are lifted. Mossler is hopeful that this tool will grow to benefit as many businesses as possible: “We’re hoping that going forward businesses will reach out to us about getting on the map.”

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