September 11, 2020 — Every New Year’s Eve, fisherman Bill Amaru makes clam chowder for about 200 people at Chatham’s Masonic Hall for First Night. He takes it very seriously, adds just the right spices – and a lot of butter.
But this year, on account of COVID-19, he won’t be making that chowder. He’s part of a more ambitious chowder undertaking — with the main ingredient haddock, in a project also born out of the pandemic.
Nearly 20,000 18-ounce containers began rolling out to food banks across the state a few weeks back, with a big goal accompanying those small containers: Feed America’s hungry and keep local fishermen at sea.
Amaru is among the Cape’s fishermen out catching the haddock.
“If in the first year we can deliver 100,000 pounds of chowder to food banks while guaranteeing fishermen a fair price and a steady buyer that would be an amazing win-win,” said Seth Rolbein, director of Cape Cod Fisheries Trust, a unit of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen Alliance, in Chatham.
The even bigger hope is that the initiative, launched with philanthropic support from Catch Together, could expand into federal food programs run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.