Walking Fish Community Supported Fishery

Walking Fish is a community supported fishery (CSF) that links fishermen on the coast of North Carolina to consumers in the Triangle.  It is the first CSF in the southeastern United States.

Started with the help of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, the Walking Fish initiative seeks to facilitate creative community-based fisheries projects that increase the viability of local communities by fostering ecological stewardship.

A community-supported fishery (CSF) is based on the community-supported agriculture (CSA) model. A CSF involves pre-payment by consumers for a ‘share’ of fresh, locally harvested seafood (i.e., a set amount of seafood generally picked up by the consumer on a weekly or bi-weekly basis). Just as CSAs can encourage sustainable and profitable farming practices, CSFs have the potential to do the same for fishing.

This initiative takes root in the belief that people – whether they be coastal fishermen or local consumers – play an important role in creating solutions to the social, economic, and environmental challenges we face. The goals of this project are simple: to foster economic opportunities, to cultivate healthy communities, and to encourage environmental stewardship. As graduate students from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, we come from a conservation perspective – one which is ultimately concerned with the health of coastal and marine ecosystems – but we recognize that conservation is intimately linked to the well-being of people and communities. And we believe that in order to work towards ecological sustainability we must also work towards local economic stability and social equity.

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