A celebration of the commonwealth’s commercial fishing and seafood industries, the annual Massachusetts Seafood Day was recently held at the State House. This year, frequent Seafood Day attendee Jynessa Dutka-Gianelli, extension assistant professor at the UMass Amherst Gloucester Marine Station, had much to celebrate. 

Image

Her Fish to Plate initiative, which pairs local fishermen and food pantries, has just been renewed and scaled up beyond its original Gloucester-only reach. And her Seafood is Medicine project, co-led with Kelseanna Hollis-Hansen of Tufts University, prepared and distributed medically tailored meal kits made with local farm produce and local seafood from Cape Ann Fresh Catch in Gloucester.

Organized by the Massachusetts Fishing Partnership Support Services, Massachusetts Fishermen’s Partnership and Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative, and sponsored by state Senator Bruce Tarr and state Representative Kathleen LaNatra, Seafood Day brings together fishermen, seafood harvesters, community leaders, legislators, researchers and members of the public to showcase the diversity of locally harvested seafood while honoring the generations of families who have built their livelihoods around Massachusetts’s working waterfronts. Held in the Hall of Flags at the Massachusetts State House, the event celebrates the state’s rich maritime heritage and highlights the importance of continued support for coastal communities and the seafood industry.

Image

Dutka-Gianelli’s two projects, Fish to Plate, co-led by Adrian Jordaan, professor of fish population ecology and conservation at UMass Amherst, and Seafood is Medicine, live at the intersection of fisheries science, nutrition, economics, local culture and sustainable development. 

Fish to Plate brings together fishing industry partners, food access organizations, processors, distributors and community stakeholders to increase access to fresh, locally caught seafood for underserved communities in Gloucester while at the same time working closely with Gloucester fishermen to provide a market for the less commercially desirable fish they bring back to shore. These fish go to The Open Door, a local food pantry, and provide a rich source of nutrition for a population in need. 

The first phase of the project, a proof-of-concept study focused on Gloucester, is complete, and Dutka-Gianelli, with the support of the state, has scaled up to a regional focus for the second phase, working with the Greater Boston Foodbank and fishermen beyond Gloucester’s waters.

At the same time, Dutka-Gianelli is collaborating with Tufts’s Hollis-Hansen in the Seafood is Medicine project, which is developing medically tailored meal kits that package all the ingredients for a complete dinner composed of local fish and farm products. Students in a class on the UMass Amherst campus co-taught by Dutka-Gianelli and UMass Amherst Extension Professor Amanda Kinchla analyzed more than 60 recipes to determine the handful that offered the best nutrition, and the winning recipes will be packaged into the kits along with all the necessary ingredients.

“We are grateful for all the political, local and industry support we’ve received from our partners, and it was a moment of pride to share our collaboration at this year’s Seafood Day,” says Dutka-Gianelli. “The support we’ve received validates the participatory approach we take with industry, local organizations and students, and all along we’ve been asking: How can we help, how can our UMass Amherst research better support your needs?”