history of the white boot brigade
A troubled industry
The plight of commercial fishers is often misunderstood. Fiercely competitive, they harvest in public waters alongside their neighbors, friends, and competitors. Dogged by ever-falling prices at the dock — where they purchase ice and fuel on credit in advance of trawling expeditions, the pressure is always there to harvest greater and greater volume. What may have begun as a traditional craft with knowledge passing from generation to generation has morphed into a highly segmented industry with global supply and demand. As a result, the expected pressures of local supply and demand have little effect upon prices. The dock business (itself vulnerable in the global marketplace) is always jockeying for its place among farm-raised imports and other domestic competition.
Despite the fierce competition among fishers, they are also a remarkably democratic culture. They value fairness and process. After all, harvests take place out in the open in public waters. This requires a certain degree of cooperation among fishers and with state agencies (like the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries). Much of this cooperation comes with considerable government regulations. Each fisher maintains a roster of licenses per species per season per geographic zone, as well as a lengthy paper trail of landings and sales. As recreational fishers also covet many of the wild species swimming in Louisiana waters, legitimate concerns about over-fishing has led to several significant conservation efforts — Turtle Excluder Devices, Bycatch Reducation Devices, and a ban on Gill Nets for the harvesting of most species. By law, all commercial fishers are required to conform to these regulations. Indeed, when Chef Paul Prudhomme created a national sensation over his blackened redfish, consumer demand (both recreational and commercial) outstripped natural supply in Louisiana waters. This had led to tense relations between commercial fishers (who are highly regulated) and recreational fishers (who are not particularly). Where are the environmentalists on these tense debates? Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, they sided with the sports fishers against the commercial fishers. At the beginning of the 21st century, we opened up a new chapter in commercial fishing relations with consumers by inviting into our family of farmers markets the first wave of fishing families who recognized the need to get out of the commodity grid and stake out new allies and niche markets for their products. Like dairy farmers before them who grew weary beneath the weight of high volume production, this group of commercial fishers has informed us about both their needs as limited resource family businesses as well as their assets as expert harvesters of magnificently unique products — brackish water shrimp, softshell crabs, wild catfish, oysters, and more!
In our efforts, we hope to realign the landscape of practice and policy in concert with the hard-working commercial fishing families who have for generations lived off the bounty of the seasons and their hard work. If the logic of the now-global market for seafood rewards only high volume and low price, then we must find alternatives. For us, the alternatives reside in the assertive demands of consumers for ethical food choices, exceptional quality and taste. Through fun, engaging campaigns that bring the people, practices, and narratives of a wildly diverse community of Louisiana commercial fishers to new consumers and allies, we hope to retool an endangered livelihood for boutique opportunties in this post-industrial era.
