The U.S. is the world’s second-largest seafood importer, despite the fact that U.S. fishers catch 8 billion pounds of seafood each year. Much of the fish landed here is eaten elsewhere. That conundrum makes it harder for American fishermen to sustain their operations and forces fish to be shipped thousands of miles before it reaches the dinner table. Climate change and global crises disrupting the international market only add to the complications.

Fisheries would be healthier and more sustainable if fish caught locally were consumed locally. But the discrepancy is by design, says Joshua Stoll, associate professor at the University of Maine and founder of Local Catch Network, a hub of seafood harvesters, businesses, researchers, and organizers that supports the growth of community-based seafood.

“We’ve built roads around the world that don’t have exit ramps to our local communities when it comes to seafood,” Stoll says.

A healthier system more reflective of the diversity of U.S. seafood is attainable, Stoll says, if we invest in connecting harvesters and consumers at the regional level. In a paper published in Nature in June, he and his colleagues found that seafood independence—the ability to meet the country’s consumption needs through its own production—is “within reach” for the U.S.

From 2012 through 2021, U.S. fishermen caught 76 percent of the country’s seafood needs on average, Stoll and his colleagues found. As recently as the 1990s, the average was 98 percent. Those numbers are based on the federal recommendation of eight ounces of seafood per week per adult, or 26 pounds annually; Americans currently eat about 20 pounds each per year.

Community supported fisheries (CSFs), where consumers buy shares of fresh seafood through pre-paid memberships, similar to the community supported agriculture model for produce, can help bridge the existing gap between what we catch and what we eat, Stoll says.

Currently, 12 percent of U.S. fishers sell directly to consumers, according to the first national survey of seafood harvesters, which he helped lead; the findings were published in Marine Policy in July. By avoiding middlemen like distributors and processors, direct sales allow harvesters to build relationships with the people eating their fish, mitigate shipping-related climate impacts and costs by keeping what they catch closer to home, and, typically, make more money in the process.

Civil Eats spoke with Stoll about why seafood self-reliance matters, where CSFs fit into the conversation, and how climate change is making these issues all the more urgent.

What are the benefits of seafood independence that make it a goal worth targeting?

Fishermen are really struggling to make their livelihoods work. We hear from people in the Gulf of Mexico, where prices are so depressed for shrimp that they’re tying up on the docks [rather than going out to fish]. We’re hearing about the price of salmon and the markets being flooded. A lot of that has to do with global trade dynamics.

At Local Catch Network, we’re working at the local harvester level, thinking about how to transform this system based on high volume and low value to one that’s deeply rooted in low volume and high value. Part of the way we get there is by localizing and working toward seafood independence.

This country is also facing a health epidemic. Something like one in 10 Americans is experiencing food insecurity on some level. That blows my mind. Seafood doesn’t fundamentally solve that, but there is a real opportunity to better integrate seafood into policy discussions around food systems that change our country’s health.

Part of that is thinking about self-reliance. The objective isn’t full self-reliance. I don’t think that’s realistic. The point of this paper was to stretch the boundaries of what is possible, because right now, we’re almost the opposite. It’s not a law of gravity that 90 percent of the seafood we consume in the U.S. has to be imported.

What stands in the way of our country’s seafood self-reliance, and how can we overcome those obstacles?

Almost everyone in the fisheries space can roll that 90 percent figure off their tongues. That figure has actually been challenged in the literature, but most of the seafood we eat is imported. And that narrative creates a vacuum for imagining alternatives. What if everyone knew that we could achieve seafood independence and that’s what everyone was talking about?

There are real policy barriers as well. We’ve seen massive consolidation in our fishing fleet at the harvester level, at the processor level, at the distribution level. We’ve made investments, both for better and for worse, in supporting a global seafood distribution system through trade policy agreements, trade missions, and marketing and promotion boards that are focused on moving product away from the places where it’s harvested and produced.

That’s come at the cost of investing in the infrastructure that we need to keep a product local and regional. We’ve lost public infrastructure—working waterfront infrastructure, small-scale community-based ice machines. We also need federal investment in processing and distribution. We’re trapped in this model: Catch it and get it out of here. [Also,] it starts in the water. Who has access to fishing? We need to find ways to support new entrants, whether it’s in wild-capture fisheries or aquaculture.

Which regions are in the best and worst position to reach seafood independence?

Alaska drives the bus. Alaska is a dominant player nationally in seafood production and plays an important role in the potential for seafood independence. But I don’t think that lets other regions off the hook. All regions make an important contribution.

New England has witnessed a relative decline [in seafood harvests], but I’m hopeful for the innovation that’s happening there and the investment in the seafood sector, especially in a place like Maine with oysters and kelp. The wild-capture fisheries continue to be anchors of coastal communities there, too, and unlike most places I’ve been, they’re still part of the fabric of daily conversations. When you get to the point where seafood is an afterthought and not part of those conversations, that’s when you’re in slippery territory.

Beside policy, consolidation, and lack of infrastructure, what accounts for the discrepancy between what we catch and what we eat in this country?

The average consumer doesn’t understand seafood as a protein and struggles with knowing what to do with it. Then you offer some species they’ve never heard of, and it’s end of story. Part of it is education. We need to invest in people understanding different species and what is seasonal and local. Researchers have found that today, while there is some regional variance in seafood consumption, it’s awfully similar no matter where you are—you’re going to get salmon, shrimp, and tilapia or some other white fish.

Where do community supported fisheries and other harvesters selling directly to consumers fit into the future of these conversations?

CSFs will likely never be the dominant mode of distribution, and that’s OK. But diverse supply chains are critical to the functioning of a vibrant seafood economy in the U.S. Sometimes it makes sense to distribute globally, but you can’t just rely on that, [especially] with increasing global shocks. Our research [for the Marine Policy paper] was the first attempt at documenting the number of people participating in the sector. The USDA has been collecting similar data [for agriculture] for decades, and seafood, except for aquaculture, has been sidelined from that process. When you see that one in 10 harvesters are involved in direct sales, that changes the dynamic. It’s a sector worth investing in. This is part of the off-ramp infrastructure.

How did the pandemic influence direct-to-consumer sales by harvesters, and what policy changes emerged there that could bring the U.S. closer to seafood self-reliance?

One change was around permitting for direct sales. There’s always been this narrative that seafood is a little bit fishy, it will make you sick, and therefore it needs to be regulated in a different way than ag commodities. There’s some reality to that, but it’s often been a red herring used [by regulators] to thwart these types of activities. During the pandemic, we saw policies relax. And guess what? People weren’t getting sick. Harvesters were able to connect with consumers. And now those emergency rules have been institutionalized and continue to exist. A place like Rhode Island [where a new law allows fishers to obtain permits for docksides sales] is a good example of that.

Our survey of seafood harvesters was done in partnership with the USDA and the National Marine Fisheries Service. If we’d gone to either of those departments pre-pandemic, I’m not sure we’d even have gotten a meeting, let alone been able to co-lead this national effort. The funding we received and the support from leadership in both agencies reflects a recognition that diverse supply chains are really important.

How is climate change impacting the seafood system and both our need and ability to become more self-reliant?

Climate change has a whole range of effects, and one is the level of uncertainty it brings. Many of our management decisions are based on stock assessment science. I often hear people in stock assessment say, anything they thought they knew before, they’ve had to throw out the window and admit, ‘We don’t know what the future is going to look like.’ That has massive ripple effects in setting annual catch limits, policies, regulations, and [ultimately] business decisions like whether to participate in fisheries.

We’re also seeing a spike in major weather events. In Maine this past winter, we had massive storm surges that had absolutely devastating effects on our working waterfront. We’re still grappling with that. Climate change adds layers of stress to a sector that is already struggling with competition from foreign imports, with decline in the industry, with aging fleets—a whole suite of compounding issues. That creates a lot of anxiety for what the future holds, and it affects self-reliance by introducing uncertainty.

If you’re eating a menu of seafood that reflects global production, you are undermining your ability to understand how climate change is affecting an ecosystem, because the production system can hop between climate disasters. It can dodge those effects by saying, “Oh, there’s a failure here? We’ll source seafood over there.” It’s harder to do that when you’re sourcing seafood from the Gulf of Maine to support New England or from the South Atlantic to support the Southeast. It really connects people to their source of seafood and makes them better positioned to be engaged consumers and to engage in change.

How can the average person play a role in supporting a healthier seafood ecosystem?

Know your fisherman. If you can trace your food back to the source, inevitably you will gain an understanding of the context in which that food is produced. That’s a luxury, though. Many people don’t have the privilege to be able to choose where their food comes from. It’s up to policymakers, funders, and decision-makers. They need to recognize the disconnect between [reality and] an idealized food system where an idealized consumer knows their fisherman—and implement policies that create access to that food.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.