Photo by Markham Starr
Episode 1: Sustainable Seafood with Kate Masury
Kate Masury is program director of Eating with the Ecosystem, a Rhode Island-based organization that works throughout New England to promote a place-based approach to sustaining the region’s wild seafood.
On this episode, Kate explains why there’s a disconnect between the seafood species that are abundant in our local waters and what we’re actually buying and cooking; discusses why that’s a problem; and shares why we might want to try John Dory fish — and even periwinkles. She also talks about her new cookbook and explains how she developed a career in sustainable seafood education.
Tune in to nerd out on seafood with us!
Show Notes
Follow Eating with the Ecosystem on: Twitter / Facebook/ Instagram
3:39: “For me, I felt like … It didn’t have to be weird to eat seafood and also care about the species. I felt like they went hand in hand — because that’s how I had gotten into the science, learning about lobsters.”
4:09: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Sustainable Local Seafood
8:07: Eating with the Ecosystem’s Eat Like a Fish citizen science research project
11:27: “Overall, we concluded that our markets do not necessarily reflect the availability and diversity of our marine ecosystems. There tends to be five to ten species that are available in our markets pretty commonly, and then the rest of those species typically are not available.”
20:08: “There’s a lot of room for improvement [in terms of availability] within the region as a whole. New England is known for its seafood. We have great fisheries here. We have a lot of really high-quality seafood that’s produced here, and yet we’re not really seeing that reflected in the marketplace, if about a quarter is local and three-quarters is not local. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity to grow the scene here.”
26:19: “Simmering the Sea", Eating with the Ecosystem’s new cookbook
30:52: Harbor Fish Market, Portland, Maine
32:41 “Any market, I think, can turn into a great market in terms of availability of local species. It just helps if some demand exists.”
33:47: Fish scaler
34:10 Barton Seaver’s “American Seafood.”
37:00 The role of chefs in promoting sustainable seafood. “Chefs do definitely set trends in terms of making consumers comfortable trying fish for the first time and kind of giving it the seal of approval.”
41:16 New England Seafoodies Facebook group