About This Project
Most sustainable seafood research looks at either supply (fishers and fisheries), or demand (consumers). But I want to talk to the middlemen in the seafood industry--the folks that put fish on my plate.
Ask the Scientists
Join The DiscussionWhat is the context of this research?
I want to know how people who sell and serve seafood for a living respond to conservation efforts. I will talk to them about their challenges and their success stories. Working in restaurant kitchens, I will explore the following questions:
1) How do restauranteurs decide which seafoods they will buy and sell? What are their priorities?
2) What obstacles do they face--from the industry and from consumers--when they try to provide more sustainable products?
Using anthropological methods of inquiry, I will study seafood consumer culture, the relationships it forms, and what sustainability means to its community.
What is the significance of this project?
My project will help shed some light on what makes sustainability so challenging to define in the seafood industry, and what we can do to clarify it in the future.
Drop me a line, or post something you think might be useful for my project on my facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/MySeafoodResearch
What are the goals of the project?
Your donation will fund my dissertation research, and a short documentary film.
Check out my lab notes!
Budget
Project funding will support my dissertation research for one year. My research methods, interviewing and participant observation, require no lab fees. Thus, the majority of my funds will go toward basic living costs and travel. With a reliable, adaptive budget I will have the flexibility I need to make my research relevant to the market, and compelling for consumers. Plus, you will get to see a movie about my process and what I learned!
Meet the Team
Affiliates
BA in Anthropology and Certificate in Pacific Is land Studies from the University of Hawaii at Hilo.
Ethnographic Food Studies Field School in Belize, Summer 2011.
For the 2013-2014 academic year I have a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship to study Haitian Creole.
Team Bio
I started out as an undergraduate student at the University of Hawai'i at Hilo. There, I worked with local fishers on a project administered by a small NGO. The NGO was interested in subsistence fishing-- what they called "the flow of fish" from ocean to table. I interviewed fishers about subsistence—whether they were fishing to sell or fishing to eat, and what that meant to their survival. What I quickly learned from fishers is that "subsistence" had no singular definition. Fishing to survive meant not only fishing to eat fish but also fishing to sell for money needed to pay rent and buy food from the store, to trade for various household items, simply to have fun and eat a little fish on the side, or to gift fish to members in their community who needed it or had given them something useful in the past. I left this research project wondering what other concepts, like subsistence, get lost in translation between when fish leave the sea and when they land on a plate, or in a can.
Lillian Brown
I started out as an undergraduate student at the University of Hawai'i at Hilo. There, I worked with local fishers on a project administered by a small NGO. The NGO was interested in subsistence fishing-- what they called "the flow of fish" from ocean to table. I interviewed fishers about subsistence—whether they were fishing to sell or fishing to eat, and what that meant to their survival. What I quickly learned from fishers is that "subsistence" had no singular definition. Fishing to survive meant not only fishing to eat fish but also fishing to sell for money needed to pay rent and buy food from the store, to trade for various household items, simply to have fun and eat a little fish on the side, or to gift fish to members in their community who needed it or had given them something useful in the past. I left this research project wondering what other concepts, like subsistence, get lost in translation between when fish leave the sea and when they land on a plate, or in a can.
Additional Information
Blog Post about my research on the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
Ted Talk about how hard it can be to tell if your seafood is sustainable or not
Another Ted Talk that says the best seafood is less seafood, sustainability requires responsible consumerism. What does this mean for chefs and restaurants? And should we hold consumers responsible for maintaining healthy fish stocks?
Project Backers
- 16Backers
- 17%Funded
- $2,955Total Donations
- $184.69Average Donation