A seafood Habitat action AGENDA

Seafood habitat - the coasts, waterways, and ocean environments that grow and sustain our wild seafood - are to fisheries what soil is to farmers. Just as soil health is a critical input to the production of agricultural products and resilient farming communities, coastal and ocean habitat health is critical to the ability of our seafood system to produce abundant fish and shellfish while sustaining resilient coastal economies. 

However, managing seafood habitat is not as straightforward as managing cropland. Unlike farms, which are privately managed under the stewardship of individual farmers, the seafood system overlaps many different public and private jurisdictions. Seafood habitat includes virtually everything - from the headwaters of our rivers and watersheds to the continental shelf.  It even includes those farms mentioned in the last sentence, because everything runs downstream and all land use has implications for seafood habitat.  

The fact that seafood habitat is virtually all-encompassing geographically is not the only problem. In addition, seafood habitat it is a vague notion scientifically and is not a very tractable notion politically. Science is not yet able to assign quantitative value to sections of habitat in terms of its food production, in the way that farmers can estimate yield per acre. Most seafood species are highly mobile and utilize different habitats at different life stages, which means that a single fish can depend on places hundreds of miles apart to sustain its growth and reproduction. Politically, managing seafood habitat is difficult because the same areas that support seafood are used for many different things: housing, urban development, agriculture, recreation, energy development, waste disposal, and much, much, more. Fisheries managers - the entities in charge of sustaining and maximizing seafood yields - have only weak influence over human activities other than fishing that impact seafood habitat. 

As a result of these factors, the importance of seafood habitat is often overlooked when it comes to taking action to sustain seafood. This is a critical deficit in the public’s thinking. The public and its representatives must begin to think about seafood habitat as part of the food system, and invest in it as such. 

The purpose of this project is the define a role for members of the local food movement in advocating for actions and policies that support seafood habitat. The local food movement broadly includes:

• Food system planners, policy makers, and advocates (e.g., food policy councils) focused on growing the production and consumption of local foods 

• Individual eaters committed to supporting local food production through their purchases

• Farm-to-table and sea-to-table chefs and restaurants committed to purchasing from local food producers and educating the public through food

Eating with the Ecosystem believes that members of these groups represents a latent constituency for seafood habitat advocacy, and it is our goal to equip them with the tools they need to take action!