New consumer interest in local foods

including local seafood -- has proven to be a good thing for North Carolina’s coastal communities, and North Carolina Sea Grant, based at N.C. State University, is working with communities, businesses and individuals to focus attention on the importance of seasonal fisheries from Currituck to Calabash.

North Carolina fishermen catch and sell crab, shrimp, shellfish and a variety of finfish from our ocean and estuarine waters. But long before oil began gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, and even before the crush of imported seafood hit U.S. markets, N.C. Sea Grant was helping local fishermen to promote and brand their products.

Recent efforts include the Outer Banks Catch marketing and education program launched in Summer 2010, the fourth community-based educational and marketing program focusing on seafood from a particular North Carolina county or region. “The Outer Banks Catch project builds on two of our coast’s strongest economic drivers: the commercial seafood industry and tourism,” says Dan Gerlach, president of Golden LEAF Foundation, which provided the community program with a $150,000 grant through its Local Foods Initiative.

The new Outer Banks effort — serving Dare, Hyde, Currituck and Tyrrell counties — evolved out of a Dare County project that has spread to the northern coastal region. Organizers drew heavily on the success of Carteret Catch, Brunswick Catch and Ocracoke Fresh, all of which bring together varied aspects of the fishing community with seafood processors and dealers, local restaurants and business leaders, and the public

“Carteret Catch has certainly helped me promote the availability of local seafood.  My customers have been more inclined to try other local products when their favorite seafood is out of season.  The brand has given my business a unique image -- one that makes an effort to sell local when it is available.  My customers really appreciate that,” said Bill Rice of Fishtowne Center in Beaufort.

Sea Grant extension staff continue to provide professional guidance to all four community programs — each of which uses Sea Grant’s statewide outreach products such as Local Catch wallet cards, North Carolina Seafood Availability charts and the Quality Counts poster guide to selecting seafood. The programs also use recipes and information from Sea Grant’s seafood resource book, Mariner’s Menu: 30 Years of Fresh Seafood Ideas, and link to the blog at marinersmenu.org. The blog is a project of the N.C. State University Seafood Laboratory and the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum, with funding from the N.C. Fishery Resource Grant Program (FRG) administered by Sea Grant.

Other Fishery Resource Grant projects developed the business model for Community Supported Fisheries (CSF) programs, now creating new income streams for fishing families in North Carolina, Maine, Massachusetts, Alaska, Virginia and South Carolina. Students at Duke University started Walking Fish, a variation on the CSF model, in 2009. Core Sound Seafood started making deliveries from Down East Carteret County to the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area in 2010. The CSF concept has received national media attention, has been featured in Sea Grant’s Coastwatch magazine, and has inspired postings on the popular Chowhound website from folks eager to have a CSF in Raleigh.

Working with the Carteret Catch partners, Sea Grant was a critical factor in bringing a focus on local seafood back to the annual North Carolina Seafood Festival in Morehead City. Now standing-room only crowds fill the “Cooking with the Chefs” tent each year — helping the event to earn international honors. All four of the community-based catch programs will have chefs featured in 2010.

Riverworks at Sturgeon City

N.C. State and its partners in Riverworks at Sturgeon City were recognized with a Regional Engagement Award at the 2010 National Outreach Scholarship Conference. Riverworks at Sturgeon City is a unique program delivering community recreational and educational engagement that evolved from a city-community-university partnership. The project started with plans to restore the degraded ecosystem of Wilson Bay, on the New River near Jacksonville. N.C. State has helped turn a potential environmental problem into a thriving community resource.

A novel city-community-university partnership evolved that led to the creation of Sturgeon City, a 26-acre community greenspace, site of a summer leadership program for high school students, the Sturgeon City Institutes and now a nonprofit that is driving efforts to fund and build Riverworks at Sturgeon City, a civic and environmental education center. Programs of Riverworks at Sturgeon City now serve more than 4,000 visitors annually and have created the civic pride envisioned at its inception. 

Wilson Bay was historically a recreational water resource for the residents of the area. But the bay and the New River became degraded, so the bay was closed to recreational use. Jacksonville’s Economic Development Coordinator and N.C. State alumnus Dr. Walter Timm described problems with the bay, the treatment plants and the dire economic conditions of the adjacent business district to N.C. State’s Dr. Jay Levine, College of Veterinary Medicine. Working together, N.C. State and the city acquired funding to restore wetlands and river habitat, reduce stormwater input and use the natural filtration capabilities of bivalves to “kick-start” recovery of the bay’s ecosystem.

The concrete wastewater treatment tanks and other structures were targeted for demolition, and the city had discussed using the site to house a vehicle maintenance facility. But Levine urged Timm and city leaders to consider using the site for civic, educational and recreational purposes. The site would serve as a celebration of the river as a natural resource and as a seedbed for urban renewal.

N.C. State’s School of Design organized student and faculty charrettes – planning sessions -- and a semester “studio,” and challenged students to develop alternative visions for the site, which were presented to the city council and public.

City Manager Jerry Bitner, coined the name “Sturgeon City,” after a prehistoric fish native to the New River, and the city set aside $4 million to support development of the site and a planned educational complex named Riverworks.

N.C. State University has a continuing commitment to the community through service on the Sturgeon City board, assisting with fund-raising and partnerships with many others in program delivery.