May 27, 2015 — For the Northeast fishing industry, the last several years has been an unending series of battles with federal regulators over access to the fishing grounds they need to harvest in order to stay in business.
There have been battles with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration over the most accurate way to count the number of fish left in the sea, tense meetings over the future of the city’s waterfront infrastructure, and fights over how much disaster aid the fleet is entitled to, when it will arrive and who will get it.
With all that going on, it’s easy to forget a key part of the industry puzzle — the customer. Like all small-businessmen, fishermen need to constantly focus on the end user of their “product.” It’s not the onboard monitors or the shoreside processors who are most important, but the shoppers who put fish on the family dinner table, or serve it in school cafeterias and other institutions.
Ignore those folks, and it won’t matter what federal regulators have to say.
Fortunately, there’s evidence that fishermen in Gloucester and along the East Coast understand the need to connect with the people who eat what they produce with marketing ideas for the 21st century, when people are more particular about what’s in their food and where it comes from.
Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Daily Times