June 2023 project update

We are well underway on our project. Thank you to our backers for making this progress possible!

Our team has grown! In addition to Sarah, Noah, and Chandler, we have been joined by Erika, Tim, Joe, and Casey.

We are conducting research simultaneously on both coasts. So far, we have completed one-on-one interviews with 110 commercial fishing vessel owners in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, as well as a workshop for shell fishermen in Rhode Island. By the end of July, we hope to talk with vessel owners in northern New England to make our sample complete.

Then, we will be pairing our findings with some policy research conducted by partners at the Sea Grant Legal Program to understand the current availability of federal and state support for low-carbon innovation in the fishing industry, and how existing programs could be improved or supplemented to really accelerate a low-carbon transition.

We are finding lots of innovation around the coasts. For example, some fishermen are gaining low-carbon propulsion assistance from sail power and used veggie oil, while others are making their boats go further on less by adding fuel flow meters, bulbous bows, and propeller nozzles to their vessels.

Findings suggest there is ample room to support "low hanging fruit" -- the affordable and proven technologies that won't necessarily displace diesel fuel in the fishing fleet altogether, but cab help fishermen use less fuel, emit less carbon dioxide, and save valuable dollars immediately. By helping fishermen overcome relatively low financial hurdles to wider adoption of these technologies, public dollars can scale up the their deployment and make a sizable dent in fossil fuse consumption in the short term.

In the long run, there will need to be a considerable effort to identify non-fossil alternatives that will work in a fishing context. Whether this includes battery power, biodiesel, hydrogen, or a number of other possible alternatives, there is no easy answer, as none of these other fuels are anywhere near as reliable, proven, and affordable as the diesel fuel that the fishing industry has relied upon for a century. The key to unlocking the potential of these alternatives will be bottom-up testing through pilot projects and co-development of solutions that involves combining the practical know-how possessed by fishermen with the technical expertise provided by engineers and manufacturers.

Both the engineering of innovative long-term solutions and the short-term scaling of proven solutions require allocations of funds to support this important work. Through our Experiment project, we intend to supply a roadmap, created by fishermen themselves, for how states and the federal government and step in and get this transition underway.

Thank you for being part of this important effort!