What's 'in the net"? What's on the line"?
What's "on your plate"?
I'm heartened to hear about the sustainable fishing industry and Community Supported Fisheries (CSFs)
What's a Sustainable Fishery?
A sustainable fishery regards long-term sustainability of the fish population and the entire ecosystem the fish rely on. Inevitably, it's based also on a thriving local fishing community that can make choices about how to harvest and manage operations in an environmentally sound way--yet still prosper economically.
Moreover, sustainable fisheries offer consumers, both at home and in restaurants, fresher fish that can be traced back to communities, some of whose members caught the fish.
What's On Your Plate?
The person sitting down at the dinner table knows that the fish on his plate came from a population fished with the environment in mind and not from one threatening destruction of the fish habitat.
Community Supported Fisheries
A CSF or Community Supported Fishery is modeled after the increasingly popular community supported farming/agriculture programs (CSAs). This alternative business model for selling fresh fish locally offers members weekly shares of fresh seafood for a pre-paid membership fee.
The first fishery program in the U.S. began in Port Clyde, Maine, in 2007. Similar programs exist now across the United States and Europe. CSF programs started to help marine ecosystems recover from overfishing while at the same time helping fishing communities thrive.
CSF programs help educate distributors and their customers--consumers and restaurants--to learn about new types of fish. Knowing of the diversity of seafood available enables CSF members to avoid the monoculture trap so widely prevalent in the field of agriculture where continual cultivation of a single crop devastates the soil and surrounding environment
Fish--May you continue to live!
Men--May you continue to fish!
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