WABI, Fishing Wire highlight Local Catch Network partnership for Find Your Seafood Week
WABI (Channel 5 in Bangor) and Fishing Wire reported that the Local Catch Network, based in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine, is working with fisheries scientist and science communicator, Emily De Sousa, to facilitate the second annual Find Your Seafood Week. The social media campaign helps connect community members directly with fishers and seafood harvesters and to raise awareness of community-based fisheries across the United States and Canada. The initiative was inspired last year, after the pandemic exposed the importance of community-based fisheries in building resilient local and regional seafood systems. While global supply chains faltered, the direct-to-consumer businesses within the Local Catch Network saw an uptick in community support. During the last Find Your Seafood Week campaign, approximately 1,200 people visited the Local Catch Network’s Seafood Finder, an interactive directory of local seafood businesses, over the course of a week. This year, Local Catch Network will work with De Sousa to train fishers and seafood harvesters in developing social media and storytelling skills, so they can become self-sustaining, self-marketers. “It’s a campaign to promote local and regional values-based small scale seafood businesses across North America,” Paloma Henriques, a graduate assistant at the University of Maine, told WABI.