Assessing & Developing Best Practices in Seafood Marketing and Consumption: A R Grant uri icon

abstract

  • As food products, fish and shellfish have been the subject of contradictory reports, simultaneously touted as high quality, low fat sources of protein rich in Omega-3 fatty acids and as potentially dangerous sources of bioaccumulated contaminants and susceptible to bacteria and parasites that can cause food poisoning and death. Paralleling the ambivalence about seafood have been the contradictory images of the U.S. commercial fisher as a hard-working person providing consumers with good local food, often at great personal risk, or as an environmental rapist depleting fish stocks or entangling sea turtles and porpoises in fishing nets. Negotiating among these contradictory public perceptions of both seafood and commercial fishing, public organizations and private interests have marshaled a variety of educational, marketing, and promotional efforts. Recently these have had the opportunity to take advantage of increasing consumer interest in alternative food markets and consumer demand to know more about where their food comes from, the conditions under which it was produced, its nutritional characteristics, and so forth. The research proposed here will investigate seafood marketing in the context of the shifting realities facing commercial fishers and professional recreational fishers (e.g. charter boat captains). Using a regional ethnographic approach, we will compare traditional and innovative seafood marketing methods and seafood consumption, as well as views about fishing, in ten ports1 port clusters: 1) Outer Banks, NC ; 2) Carteret County, NC; 3) Wilmington/Southport, NC; 4) Calabash, NC/Little River, SC; 5) Murrells Inlet, SC; 6) Georgetown, SC; 7) McClellanville, SC; 8) Mt. Pleasant, SC; 9) Savannah, GA; and 10) Brunswick, GA. In each site, we will elicit data about seafood marketing alternatives from observations and from commercial fishers, professional recreational fishers, seafood market owners, seafood festival organizers, and others involved in seafood marketing and sales. We will develop a classificatory system of seafood marketing methods, such as those branding local seafood, those emphasizing sustainability of fisheries, those emphasizing local products over imports, and so forth. Through interviews with professional seafood consumers (e.g. chefs) and general consumers, we will determine which are most effective in guiding seafood purchasing1consumption decisions, and how perceptions about fishing and fishers come into play in those decisions. Consumer interviews will elicit data about seafood qualities (attributes that appeal to consumers or undermine seafood consumption), about the consumption of seafood from recreational or subsistence fishing, and about fishing in general. Curricula based on our findings will be produced for distribution to seafood marketing outlets, including restaurants, chefs, and members of the fishing industry.

date/time interval

  • August 2010 - July 2013