August 3, 2017 — For some, the focus was on collaboration and the need to build sustainable seafood partnerships.
“Much of what we have already learned comes from the farming sector,” said Jack Wiggin, head of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Urban Harbors Institute. Opening a Wednesday morning conference on the seafood industry at The Gloucester House, he noted cited parallels between harvesting America’s farms and seas.
To Anamarija Frankic, however, the future of the seafood industry is tied to a more basic approach.
“It’s like the chicken and egg,” said Frankic, a UMass-Boston teacher of biomimicry — the science of seeking solutions based on time-tested patterns and models. “How can you have aquaculture? How can you sustain seafood without protecting the ocean (waters), not just in the harbors but in watersheds? Much of what we do is very specific, protecting and rebuilding specific species or specific habitat, but we have to work to sustain the entire coastal habitat.”
Those were just two of the ideas raised over the course of the daylong conference, which was funded by the state’s Seaport Economic Council and drew more than 50 experts representing government agencies, fishermen, seafood processors and community leaders.
“This is a summit — I would call it that,” Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken said in welcoming the group to Gloucester. “We haven’t truly had something like this in 20 years.”