Small boat, sustainable seafood processing centers bolster national food security

Summary: We sell our salmon direct in the isolated Alaskan town of Whittier. The pressures of the railroad, freight companies, cruise ships, ferries and recreational boaters have squeezed small boat fisherman out of selling their catch locally. This is extremely detrimental to national food security and the local economies that surround waterfront. In order to equitably promote US seafood consumption, more most be done to preserve the waterfront for small boat/processor commercial access.

Our experiences and struggles in this industry for the last decade have brought us to a point where we can pinpoint a few key things that could lead to more equitable and sustainable, local owned, seafood economies.

1. Create and enforce a standard that says: Where there are commercial fishing harbors, there will be a mobile processor, equipped with ice, crane and cold storage access.
2. Conserve a portion of land with waterfront access in all commercial fishing harbors in trust for public access for food consumption.
3. Create legislation that protects the actions of catcher-sellers and direct marketers so that corporate processors cannot punish and deny services to those contributing to the local seafood economy. In all of these we also want to include mariculture but we do not support ocean fish farming..

Sector: Industry, Fisherman direct sales
Organization: Straight to the Plate
POC: Emma Kramer, aksalmonfisherman@gmail.com