Specifications include, but are not limited to: Aquatic and marine foods (e.g., edible fish, invertebrates, and algae harvested from inland and marine waters) are among the most globalized commodities, with between 30-40% of wild-caught fish traded internationally. In the United States alone, $5 billion worth of seafood is exported annually, while 62-65% of the seafood consumed nationally is imported. The globalization of seafood has, in many cases, negatively impacted community-based fisheries and local food sovereignty, contributing to the consolidation and graying of fishing fleets, loss of decent post-harvest processing jobs and small-scale infrastructure, competition of American-caught seafood with cheap imported seafood, volatility in markets, vulnerabilities in supply chains, difficulty for local people in accessing locally produced seafood, and traceability issues, among other challenges. In response, a multitude of recent policy initiatives call for efforts to strengthen local and regional seafood systems, which include seafood harvesting, processing, distribution, marketing, consumption, and food loss and waste. In this project, we aim to understand who has access (I.e., is benefitting) from local and regional seafood systems (both past and present), what the perceived benefits are, how they are gaining access (i.e., through which mechanisms), and what possibilities there are for enhancing access for more just and equitable seafood systems. Here we define “access” as the ability to benefit from a ‘thing,’ typically resources, but access can also relate to different goods or opportunities throughout the food system, including job opportunities in the sector or access to seafood itself. Access is mediated by a variety of mechanisms in different contexts (e.g., formal rights, customary rights, capital, markets, technology, knowledge, authority, and social relations) that together shape who is able to benefit from aquatic resources, the marine environment, employment in the seafood sector, and the seafood ultimately produced. This project will explore the mechanisms mediating seafood access in local and regional seafood systems in the U.S. from a whole food systems approach. While historically, the academic literature and U.S. policy have conceptualized fish as resources managed to maximize economic productivity and efficiency, increasingly, fish are being valued as food, as they have been by Indigenous groups and coastal communities for centuries, understood as part of wider food systems. This research will combine a multi-sited case study approach with regional dialogues to understand 1) the benefits of accessing local and regional seafood systems, 2) the mechanisms or pathways enabling access (historically and at present) at different nodes in the food system, 3) the barriers to access, and 4) possibilities to enhance just and equitable access to local and regional seafood systems in the U.S., including its territories and internal sovereignties. Data collection will take place at both local and regional scales, with at least one local case study and regional dialogue(s) based on nine fisheries regions1 . At least one consultant will be recruited per region, where each consultant involved in this project will be responsible for leading a salient local case study on a focal seafood(s) and for supporting the regional dialogue by recruiting participants from the seafood system (see below for details on each method). Each consultant should have existing ties or a relationship with the seafood community with whom they propose doing this work.
