Last week I attended the Ninth Annual Rhode Island Local Food Forum, organized by Farm Fresh Rhode Island. The forum’s theme was “Center of the Plate,” reflecting its focus on local protein production. Particularly enlightening was a panel discussion whose moderator, academic chef Bill Idell, posed questions that resonate across the region.  These questions ultimately boil down to two big ones: First, what does a sustainable food system look like? And second, how can we make one happen?

The panel’s meat experts – local guru Pat McNiff of Pat’s Pastured and Mel Coleman from national good-meat powerhouse Niman Ranch – agreed that sustainable meat means raising animals in their natural habitats (not concentrated feedlots) and in a way that feeds both animals and soil. The panelists also highlighted that sustainable food systems require local capacity because geographically concentrated animal operations are at risk from extreme weather: last summer’s drought, for example, “force[d] livestock producers to liquidate herds because feed [wa]s too expensive.” All this means that local meat is not just grown in a place, but it also grows that place by enriching both land (ecologically) and community (economically).

Building capacity for local meat is tough, however, when farmers have limited access to land. This is the case in Rhode Island. Not only is land itself expensive here (as throughout New England), but property and estate taxes can make it almost impossible to keep productive land in agricultural use when it is more valuable as land for development (and is assessed as such for tax purposes). We at CLF are looking closely at this issue.

Moving from the land to the sea, the discussion yielded different insights from the panel’s seafood experts.  “Eating with the Ecosystem” founder Sarah Schumann and seafood-aggregation specialist Jared Auerbach of Red’s Best noted that sustainability means something much different for seafood than for meat, because so many fish and shellfish stocks are wild. They agreed that a sustainable seafood system should be biodiverse – instead of a singleminded focus on cod, for example, a sustainable system would mean sending more fluke, skate, scup, and squid to market. Diversifying the types of seafood we typically eat would allow overfished stocks to recover, and would also contribute to the resiliency of ocean life in the face of climate change and ocean acidification. Furthermore, a sustainable seafood system would mean – to borrow from Sarah Schumann – eating with the (local) ecosystem. Seafood brought in to local ports is easy to trace and to verify species, boat size, and fishing method – factors that are federally regulated but relatively easy to lose track of as more steps are added to the supply chain. Encouraging demand for diverse seafood products, localizing seafood markets with robust tracing and verification systems, and streamlining state and federal fisheries regulations would all help foster local, sustainable seafood systems.

All four panelists, farmers and fishers alike, agreed on another point: we need local, sustainable food systems both to limit and to respond to harms wrought by carbon dioxide emissions. These emissions cause climate change, leading to droughts and other extreme weather that disrupts agriculture; these disruptions, in turn, require robust local systems to add resilience to the global food system. And carbon dioxide emissions also cause ocean acidification, which poses an immediate risk to shellfish and a long-term risk to all ocean life.

All this highlights the importance of CLF’s farm-and-food and climate-change programs. Our work shutting down coal-fired power plants and promoting renewable energy helps to limit emissions that threaten our current food system (not to mention our planet). And our farm-and-food program promotes local and regional food systems that provide a broad range of environmental benefits. As CLF’s newest staff attorney, I am excited to be joining these efforts here in Rhode Island. The Local Food Forum made it clear that there are many good ideas brewing here – we just need to do the work to get our food policy right.

A red cod swims in the healthy kelp forest on Cashes Ledge

Note: This blog was originally posted on One World One Ocean as part of their National Sustainable Seafood Month Campaign. 

When you buy a piece of cod, do you wonder how many are left in the ocean? Are you curious about what kind of gear was used to catch the fish? Gillnets? Hooks? Or, maybe it was a bottom trawler? Do you consider a different choice – maybe there is a more sustainable fish to buy?

These are important questions to ask, but there’s something more basic to consider as well. Where do these fish live? What essential requirements do these animals have to survive and thrive in the ocean?

Figuring out what “sustainable seafood” means is a familiar dilemma for New Englanders. We have some of the most productive fisheries in the world, but we also have some of the most heavily fished areas in the world. New Englanders work very hard to manage our fisheries, and there is much we are still learning. Yet, there is one simple fact that scientists and many fishermen are very confident about – if fish don’t have healthy habitat, then we don’t have fish.

We have some very special ocean places in New England. Cashes Ledge, an underwater mountain range about 80 miles off the coast of Maine, is home to the deepest and largest continuous kelp forest in all offshore waters along the US east coast. Stretching 22 miles long and 17 miles wide, Cashes Ledge provides food and shelter to an enormous diversity of creatures – from bottom-dwelling tube worms and sponges to endangered North Atlantic right whales and highly migratory blue sharks and Atlantic bluefin tuna. Cashes Ledge is also rich in a variety of groundfish including Atlantic cod, white hake, monkfish, haddock, and redfish. Many kinds of offshore sea birds can be found dining here, such as sooty shearwaters and Wilson’s storm-petrels.

The reason for such enormous diversity and richness lies in the mountain range itself, whose pinnacles interrupt the primary Gulf of Maine current and create a stunning oceanographic phenomenon known as internal waves, which carry high levels of nutrients and oxygen from the sea surface to the sea floor. This unusual circulation pattern results in an incredibly productive ecosystem. It’s no wonder that scientists have used Cashes Ledge as an oceanographic research lab for decades. It represents one of the healthiest existing marine habitats, and if more of the ocean was like it, there would be a lot more fish.

In 2002 many habitat areas in the Gulf of Maine, including Cashes Ledge, were protected from harmful bottom trawling, and these areas have begun a slow recovery. But as large reductions in the catch of cod, yellowtail flounder, and other groundfish loom in New England, there is increasing pressure to open these areas again. Places like Cashes Ledge must be protected if we are going to keep relying on our oceans to feed us and allow our ocean ecosystems to regenerate and thrive. These are irreplaceable resources, and the permanent protection of marine habitat should be a top priority for any sustainable fisheries management plan.

While it is important to think about fish in numbers – how many we catch, how big they are, how many are left – it is equally important to consider the ecosystem on a larger scale, with all its moving parts, dependent on each other for survival. When do the plankton bloom, and where? Where are the currents taking the food? Where will certain fish spawn if their favorite ledge is dragged? How will the animals adapt to our warmer, more acidic oceans?

So, as we celebrate National “Sustainable” Seafood Month, take a moment to consider where your seafood lived before it was on your plate. The ocean ecosystems that produce the oxygen in 2 out of every 3 breaths we take, regulate our climate, drive tens of billions of dollars of economic benefits, and provide us with considerable recreational activities won’t continue to produce such benefits unless we do a better job at protecting the basic components of a healthy ocean. And, while you enjoy the good decision you made about your sustainably caught fish, also be thankful that the fish came from a good home, and do what you can to help keep it that way.

Help support habit protection for special places like Cashes Ledge – click here. 

August 7 – Brooklyn’s Mermaid’s Garden tells us what it’s like to run a CSF – Bianca Piccillo and Mark Usewicz are the presidents of Mermaid’s Garden, a Brooklyn, NY based community supported fishery (CSF) and sustainable seafood consulting organization.

August 10 – More Congressional Fisheries Misdirection – Despite its caption, the “Transparent and Science-Based Fishery Management Act of 2012,” H.R. 6350, introduced by U.S. Representative John Runyun of New Jersey just hours before Congress adjourned for summer recess on August 2nd is a misguided piece of legislation.

August 10 – Fish Talk in the News – Friday, August 10 - This week in Fish Talk in the News: U.S. district court demands stricter regulations for Atlantic river herring; a NOAA workshop on catch per unit effort and landings per unit effort; new low-interest loans for small-scale fishermen; congressional delegates express concern over menhaden stock assessments; sustainable seafood is also the healthiest seafood; sustainable Maine squid grow in popularity; the Out of the Blue program to promote underutilized local seafood wraps up; and the Maine lobster glut causes protests in Canada.

July 31 – Local Summer Fisheries – Sea Scallops – In the last post of the Local Summer Fisheries series, read about sea scallops: one of the most valuable fisheries in the United States and a great success story in fisheries management.

August 1 – Bangor Daily News supports returning alewives to the St. Croix – In June, CLF attorney Sean Mahoney blogged about CLF’s lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in an effort to overturn a Maine law that has prevented the alewife, a forage fish crucial to marine and freshwater ecosystems, from accessing its native habitat in Maine’s St. Croix River. This week, the Bangor Daily News published an editorial expressing support for opening up the St. Croix River to alewives.

August 3 – Fish Talk in the News – Friday, August 3 – This week in Fish Talk in the News: expected reductions in catch limits for New England’s groundfish stocks have fishermen and congressmen up in arms; public support for opening the St. Croix River to alewives; an update on the December, 2011 removal of Shorey’s Brook dam in Maine; NOAA fisheries plans to conduct a survey to better understand the social and economic impacts of fishing regulations on the east coast; a new piece of legislation to prevent seafood fraud; the Maine lobster crisis continues, even as the Maine Lobster Festival kicks off in Rockland; Sport Fishing Magazine interviews Obama about his administration’s plans for and achievements in fisheries management; the Gulf of Maine Research Institute releases a study on changing zooplankton abundances in the Gulf of Maine; and the New England Ocean Odyssey blog posts about the Atlantic wolffish.

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  Photo credit: Sean Cosgrove

  May 17 – “Slinging Mud” – The mud in Casco Bay, Maine, is changing. According to an article last fall in the Bangor Daily News, areas that used to contain vast quantities of economically valuable clams are now “dead mud.” Local clammers are finding that sites of former abundance are now completely devoid of shellfish. Even efforts to seed the formerly thriving areas with shellfish larvae are not yielding results. Some scientists think that the increasing acidity of the mud, due partly to the increased carbon dioxide being absorbed from the atmosphere, is making conditions unsuitable for shellfish larvae to form, well, shells. We may not yet be able to quantify the damage ocean acidification will cause in New England waters – although researchers are trying. But we don’t want to sit on our hands and wait to see how bad it will get.

• May 18 – “Fish Talk in the News – Friday, May 18” – This week’s interesting fishing and seafood-related stories: the ethics of seafood; NOAA’s annual status of the stocks report; making sure funding for ocean programs stays in the federal budget; CLF’s Peter Shelley talking about seafood on WGBH; and what local seafood to keep and eye out for at the market this summer.

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  The NOAA Fisheries Northeast Regional Office in Gloucester (photo credit: NERO website).

  Monday, April 30: “Penny wise and politically foolish” – Two weeks ago, a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee determined that federal dollars would be better spent by closing down the Northeast Regional Office of NOAA Fisheries in Gloucester, MA and moving almost all operations to the NMFS headquarters in Silver Spring, MD. This move was proposed as a cost-saving measure, but we believe it is a short-sighted proposal.

• Friday, May 4: “Fish Talk in the News – Friday, May 4” – Interesting stories this week: a New York chef takes a trip to the Boston fish market; the Boston Globe supports NERO staying in MA; more confusion over which sustainable seafood guides to trust; a new stock assessment confirms that river herring populations are depleted; and upcoming trips to take a look at herring runs.

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  Bluefin Tuna in the Mediterranean Sea off Spain.

  Wednesday, April 11 – “Bluefin Tuna: Value Beyond Measure” – National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry writes, “I’ll never forget the first time I saw a bluefin tuna in the wild for I knew instantly that I was seeing a supreme ocean creature…I suppose I should have been afraid of being hit by something so large and powerful, but rather than fear I was struck with awe instead.”

• Thursday, April 12 – “Sustainable Seafood Teach-in April 29″ – Over the last few years, Boston’s Museum of Science has stepped up to the plate and sponsored some great programming on all aspects of food: the science, policy and reality of making healthy and sustainable food choices in our daily lives. As part of that conversation, the Museum is putting together a day of sustainable seafood discussions on Sunday, April 29.
• Friday, April 13 – “Fish Talk in the News – Friday, April 13″ – This week’s roundup of interesting fish stories: Legal Sea Foods to make supermarket seafood traceability easier with a new label; climate change could drastically reduce the economic value of the services oceans provide; the reasons behind and economic consequences of eating or not eating fish on Fridays; and taking a lesson from ancient Hawaiian fish stock protection.

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  TalkingFish.org interviews Chef Jeremy Sewall, shown here plating a delicious dish (Photo credit: Jeremy Sewall).

  Wednesday, March 28 – “Chef Jeremy Sewall seeks high-quality local seafood for his daily menus” – TalkingFish.org interviews well-known Boston chef Jeremy Sewall, the Chef/Owner of Lineage and Island Creek Oyster Bar and the Executive Chef at Eastern Standard.

• Thursday, March 29 – “Little Fish, Big Fishery” – The latest post in the “Bottom Line” series by Lee Crockett of the Pew Environment Group. Within the next few weeks, alewife and blueback herring, collectively known as river herring, will begin their annual migration from coastal waters to their native rivers.
• Friday, March 30 – “Fish Talk in the News – Friday, March 30″ – A roundup of fish stories in the news: the commercial striped bass fishery in Massachusetts will be allowed to continue; some rivers are reporting higher-than-average herring runs this year, and consumers are becoming more interested in eating the fish; warming Gulf of Maine waters may be bad news for ocean ecosystems; Whole Foods commits to keeping overfished seafood out of stores; and a lucrative elver season is underway in Maine.

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  The International Boston Seafood Show

  March 14: “How Investing in Our Fisheries Pays Off” – Lee Crockett of the Pew Environment Group explains how the Fisheries Investment and Regulatory Relief Act (FIRRA) of 2012 would provide financial support to fishermen and improve management of our oceans.

• March 15: “Some Thoughts from the Boston Seafood Show” - CLF Program Assistant Samantha Caravello writes about the Boston Seafood Show, U.S. reliance on seafood imports, and how important it is to try to support local fishermen instead.
• March 16: “Fish Talk in the News – Friday, March 16″ – This week’s roundup of interesting fish stories: a stop-motion video of where your sushi is coming from; fish is high on the list of disease-causing imported foods; a federal district court judge rules to protect river herring; and groundfish populations may have been overestimated in the 2008 stock assessments.