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by Anna Child

In his book entitled “Where the WaterSmokes,” American writer Bob Simpsonpaints a literary picture of the Downeast

coast of North Carolina, writing that it is aplace that is akin to “a state of mind, where thepeople like wooden boats and build them inback yards, beneath big live oak trees…it iswhere you watch the sun rise boldly from thesea, feel sand between your toes, and inhalethe pungencies of fish and brine, of marshand pine”. He wrote that the people are those“hardworking people who make up thebackbone of the land, independent, strong,and proud, the salt of the earth”.

This excerpt conveys the beauty and theculture of the area known as Downeast, NorthCarolina, historically referred to as the thirteensmall communities in Carteret County in theCoastal Plain region of the state. The areahas a strong connection to the sea – fornearly four hundred years, fishers haveworked on the water, building boats and nets,and selling seafood along the coast. Manyfishers today are able to trace their fishingheritage back four or five generations. AsSimpson notes, Downeasters arehardworking people, especially the fishers,who still fish using artisanal techniques, suchas pound netting for flounder in the fall or long

hauling for shrimp in the summer. Fishers stillsew and mend their own nets, and embodythe culture of Downeast with what is knownas the High Tider accent, a dialect remnantof Elizabethan English that was once spokenin colonial North Carolina and now mixeswith a general southern accent.

Decline of Downeastfishing

As an outsider, it is easy to get lost in thebeauty of a place like this, its history and

culture sodeeply steepedin the sea. Foranyone thatcares to getaway from theirbeach vacationto look a bitdeeper,however, itbecomes apparent that the Downeast culture,once so tied to commercial fishing, is facingtremendous challenges. Many Downeastfishers talk about themselves as a dyingbreed and one of the last in their families whowill be fishing. Indeed, from 1999 to 2006,more than 50% of fishers have stoppedworking in the commercial sector, withsignificant declines in both total landings anddollar values of their catch.

This trend is relatively recent; up until the1990s, it was possible for a fisher inDowneast to make a viable living and supporta family solely from commercial fishing. Sincethen, however, a collection of events andconditions has made it extremely difficult forthese fishers to sustain a livelihood. Today,the fishing community struggles to maintain aviable fishing industry and many are leaving

The successful CommunitySupported Fisheries project,

implemented in Carolina,USA, offers the potential forthe model to be applied indeveloping countries, if

small-scale fishers can belinked to a high-income

market that is willing to paya premium price.

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Anna Child

Sunset in Downeast.

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Community supported fisheries,an innovative model for developing countries

their lives on the water and their communitiesto work elsewhere. A major cause of thisdecline was an influx of less expensiveseafood from abroad. With 90% of shrimpfound in the US today originating fromoverseas, wholesale shrimp prices in the statefell roughly 40% from 1999 to 2002, hittingNorth Carolina shrimpers particularly hard.Additionally, increased regulations on fishingtechniques, amount, species and by-catchhurt the commercial industry in the state. Otherfactors such as increased population growth,development from the tourism industry, highfuel costs and runoff from the agriculturalindustry all led to increased challenges andthe decline of the industry.

While facing these economic andenvironmental issues, market options forNorth Carolina fishers were impacted as well.Traditionally, almost all Downeast fishers soldto the fish house, which offered them ice, fuel,storage capabilities and most importantly, aplace to sell their fish. In the 1980s, therewere over twenty fish houses in theDowneast area. Currently, there are onlyfour. With the fish houses rapidlydisappearing, fishers struggled to find newmarkets for their catch and were losing crucialinfrastructure, which required substantialcapital to obtain on their own. Unfortunately,all of these issues impacting fishers are notspecific to the state of North Carolina.Throughout the east coast of the US,particularly in the northeastern region, fishers

are facing these same challenges.

New market options –the CSF model

In order to remain viable in what many calleda dying industry, fishers who wanted to stayfishing had to begin thinking of new marketoptions. What new markets could they create fortheir seafood while obtaining the highest profitpossible? Fortunately, fishers could learn muchfrom small-scale farmers, who faced similarchallenges related to rising fuel costs and cheaplabour from abroad. Many of these farmersturned to local, direct sales, where they could cutout the middleman, obtain the highest profit, anddifferentiate their product by stressing the localityof where it was grown and its freshness. Byselling directly, these small-scale farmers, manygrowing on less than 20 hectares, were able to

make a viable income. With its first origins inJapan, Germany and Switzerland, farmersbegan utilising a community-supported-agriculture (CSA) model, which essentiallyfunctions as a buy-in club. Consumers, or“shareholders,” pay the farmer for a share of theharvest in advance of the season. For thefarmer, the payment covers seasonal start-upproduction costs. For the consumer, theyreceive a regular share of fresh produce duringthe production season. As interest in local foodand sustainable agriculture soared in the US,the CSA model took off across the country. Themodel worked so well with agriculture that fishersdecided to adopt the model for seafood, calling ita community-supported-fishery model or CSF.

The CSF model works in much the sameway as CSA; the prepayment of theshareholder is an investment in “their” fishers. Inexchange, a variety of fish species are providedon a seasonal basis and fishers are able to sell

Map of North Carolina.

Pound netting flounder.The working waterfront on the Atlantic coast.

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their products at a premium price. The firstCSFs were established in the northeasternarea of the US, in states such as Maine andMassachusetts. There are now a total oftwenty in the country. CSFs are also found inplaces in France, Spain and Japan.

Core Sound Seafood is a communitysupported fishery business that works withfishers in the Downeast area of NorthCarolina that I helped to found. Weestablished the business in March 2010, withthe mission of paying Downeast fishers anaverage of 30% more than they could obtainfrom the fish house. We market ourselves as asocially and environmentally responsiblebusiness that provides high-quality, fresh,local fish. The drop off location for the seafoodshares is four hours drive from the coast,where our formative research found atremendous interest in fresh, local food and awillingness to pay for quality. The first seasonran for twelve weeks in the summer of 2010and there have been subsequent seasons inthe fall of 2010 and spring of 2011. Currently,we are halfway through our fourth season.We offer a variety of frequency (every weekor every other week) and size options (0.9 kgor 1.8 kg of filleted fish) as we have found thatmany consumers do not have the time to cookseafood every week. These choices also arereflected by a range of price options, whichallows both students as well as moreestablished professionals to join. We haveworked with about twenty fishers so far,providing them with an additional market fortheir fish in which they can get premiumprices.

Connectingcommunities

Perhaps one of the most exciting aspects ofCore Sound Seafood and the general CSFmodel is the connection it can create betweencoastal and inland communities. This connectionis often lost, with inland citizens only knowing thecoast as a place for vacationing. In theDowneast area, many inlanders visit the areafor the fresh fish, but are not aware of thesignificant challenges facing fishers. Core SoundSeafood and other CSFs provide informationabout these challenges, why it is important tobuy from local fishers as well as details aboutwhat is in the share, who caught it and how,

through a weekly email newsletter. Thenewsletter also teaches shareholdersabout fishing – the seasonality of fish,how the weather impacts fishing, etc.Shareholders enjoy reading about thecoast, how the fish has come to be ontheir plate and become more investedin purchasing from the fishers that livein their state.

Additionally, the CSF shares offer awide variety of fish, many of which areunavailable in mainstream grocerystores. With Core Sound Seafood, weoffer species such as red drum,triggerfish, sheephead, croaker, andothers that are underutilised and

delicious. This serves to expand theshareholder’s repertoire as to which kinds of fishthey like and by increasing people’s knowledgeabout these alternatives, market pressure canbe taken off some of the more exploited speciessuch as tuna or grouper. Core Sound Seafoodalso provides suggested recipes for how to cookthese types of fish as many people are unawareof what to do with them.

Now in its fourth season, Core SoundSeafood has experienced significant success onthe consumer end. We have been able to payfishers 30-50% more than the fish house paysand have served as a guaranteed market for aportion of fishers’ catch before they catch it. Wehave also established a Downeast AssistanceFund in which we donate part of our profits toand invest this money back into the communityby providing micro-grants for fishers to buyneeded fishing and storage supplies. We havegrown from one drop-off location to three andcurrently have over 200 shareholders.Shareholders enjoy learning about new fishspecies, seasonality in seafood and are proud tosupport the local seafood sector. We are alsoselling to grocery stores where we differentiateour products through informational signs thatexplain our seafood is a local, high-qualityproduct only purchased from small-scale fishersin North Carolina. Our Core Sound Seafoodlogo helps consumers recognise the product.Additionally, we have begun to sell our products

Seafood being loaded onto a truck for delivery to customers.

Core Sound Seafood’s display at the local supermarket.

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to restaurants and ask that they include that theproduct is coming from Core Sound Seafoodon their menus. A few restaurants have heldlocal, Core Sound Seafood dinners and haveadvertised the event in newspapers andthroughout the community.

As with any new business, these have alsobeen challenges. It has been difficult to buyfrom the same fishers consistently as manyhave long working relationships with the fishhouses and are wary of a new model, whichmay seem risky. It has also been challenging towork with some of the consumer perceptionsabout what kind of seafood is sustainable,which often depends on the type of gear usedto catch it, though sustainable seafood guidesdo not differentiate based on gear. Additionally,offering enough variety in weekly shares hasproven difficult, as shareholders want to getdifferent kinds of seafood each week.

Potential application indeveloping countries

Although the community-supported fisherymodel is certainly not without challenges, it is aninnovative model that is now occurring acrossthe US and abroad as a way to improve fishers’access to higher value markets. It is alsoteaching fishers how to market themselves andtheir product. There is potential for the model tobe applied in the developing country setting, ifsmall-scale fishers could be linked to a high-income market that will be willing to pay apremium price. In the developing country settinghowever, it is crucial for there to be a strongcapacity building piece to help fishers meetcertification and traceability standards.

As autumn sets in Downeast, fishers aredeep in flounder and oyster season. The otherday, a fisherman talked about the backbreakingwork of setting 1 000 wooden stakes by himselfto set his flounder nets. Another lamented aweek closing of the oyster beds due to heavyrains. This is the hard work and challengesfishers in this area have been experiencing andtalking about for hundreds of years, but to me, itis good news that they are still talking about it. Itmeans these fishers still have a market for theircatch and are thus still fishing. With thecommunity-supported-fishery model, we hope tocontinue to be able to support them.

Reader enquiry number 19

Anna Child is co-founder and co-owner of Core Sound Seafood, a CSFbusiness. She is finishing her Masters Degree in Public Health at the Universityof North Carolina in Chapel Hill and is part-time consultant for FAO on issues

related to the small-scale sector.

Reader enquiry number 20