a more sustainable Seafood Festival

While the Hampton Area Chamber of Commerce has committed to recycling plates and forks at this year’s Hampton Beach Seafood Festival, there’s more that fish fans can do to be sustainable. Local experts have been assessing sustainable practices for commercial fishing.

The festival takes place from Friday to Sunday, Sept. 5 to 7, at Hampton Beach. A new Recycling Committee aims to recycle all plastic containers collected during the three-day event. A public information station on recycling will be located in the middle of the food court, and area youth organizations will act as recycling educators. 
 
“The festival is taking this effort one step at a time,” said Jude David, chairwoman of the festival’s main committee. She hopes to expand recycling in coming years. 

Festivities include more than 50 of the Seacoast’s top restaurants serving an abundance of seafood delicacies. In addition, arts and crafts vendors will promote locally made products and Ocean Boulevard merchants will offer sidewalk sales. There will also be children’s activities with regional celebrities, culinary demonstrations and two stages of continuous entertainment with 15 bands and orchestras.

Sunny Anderson, host of the Food Network’s “Cooking for Real,” will be filming a special episode profiling this year’s Seafood Festival.

The annual festival promotes local restaurants by offering samples of their seafood specialties. With event attendance expected to exceed 150,000, that’s a lot of seafood. People interested in following the Chamber’s lead toward a more sustainable festival should consider which types of seafood they eat.

Bob Campbell, manager of the Yankee Fisherman’s Cooperative in Seabrook, said pollock stocks are healthy right now and cod stocks seem to have been rebuilt. He said lobster numbers are down this year.

The cooperative works to promote the domestic fishing industry. Campbell said local fisherman don’t exceed their allowed quotas. “We are heavily regulated,” he said. “We are all working for sustainable fisheries.” 

Campbell said people should look for wild caught fish as opposed to farm raised because the natural condition makes the fish more healthy and free of chemicals.

Andy Rosenberg, a fisheries expert and professor of natural resources at the University of New Hampshire, said wild fish stocks that are doing well locally right now include haddock and sea scallops. He suggested people look for the Marine Stewardship Council label on seafood products.

Rosenberg disagreed with Campbell, saying there is still concern about cod stocks, but he said haddock has recovered from over-fishing, thanks to regulations. Although regulations put stress on the fishing industry, he said, “There’s no way to get around it.”

A Collaborative Research Visioning Project between New Hampshire Sea Grant at the University of New Hampshire and the Northeast Consortium has assessed the impact of partnering the commercial fishing industry with science research in the Northeast over the past decade. A series of eight public meetings were held in July and August with fishermen, scientists, fishery managers, industry organizations, and conservation groups.

The meetings in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts included one in Portsmouth at the Urban Forestry Center on Aug. 4 with more than 40 people, according to Rachel Feeney, fisheries specialist for the Northeast Consortium. Stakeholders discussed how collaboration has impacted their communities and the management of marine resources.

On the Seacoast, collaborations between commercial fishermen and fishery scientists and managers have led to some positive outcomes, such as developing new gear technology that will decrease bycatch in the Gulf of Maine shrimp fishery, testing a new multi-beam sonar to improve the ability to detect fish under water, and holding programs demonstrating commercial fishing gear use to non-fishermen, said Rebecca Zeiber, science writer for NH Sea Grant.

Some attendees discussed how collaboration has helped establish a sense of trust between the fishermen and scientists that had previously been tenuous at best. Others mentioned the flexibility that collaboration allows when dealing with new fishery management regulations and economic hardships.

The comments gathered at the meetings are being compiled into a report due this fall. It will be available from the Web sites for the Northeast Consortium and New Hampshire Sea Grant.   

People were introduced to some lesser-known seafood products at a Sustainable Seafood Forum on July 22 at the Atlantic Culinary Institute in Dover. The event was intended to expand awareness of seafood products that are underutilized to relieve some of the pressure from over-harvested fish stocks, according to Zeiber.

Chefs from local restaurants such as Radici, The Dunaway Restaurant, Pesce Blue and The Black Trumpet Bistro, all in Portsmouth, showed off their abilities, said Zeiber. Forum attendees sipped white wine while tasting bluefish ceviche, grilled squid with spicy gazpacho, grilled mackerel with Dijon, rock crab and fish stew, and left with recipes to prepare different kinds of seafood.