Colles Stowell, founder and president of the One Fish Foundation, joined the Marine Fish Conservation Network for an online Waterside Chat on May 30, 2024. Colles and host Tom Sadler discussed:
- How our seafood system has changed from mostly local or domestic to mostly imported in a few short decades
- How we’ve become so dependent on an industrialized food system that we don’t know where our food is coming from
- The power of One Fish Foundation’s Know Your Fish dinners, which connect seafood consumers with the people who catch their food and start people on the path to owning their relationship with seafood
- How One Fish Foundation goes to schools, including bringing a lobster trap to a kindergarten class
- Why “good, clean and fair” should be a sustainable-seafood mantra
- The important role of chefs in the seafood conversation
- How consolidation in the seafood-distribution industry hurts local fishermen
- And much, much more!
Colles Stowell’s love of fish, fishing and food started early. From the Louisiana bayous of his youth, he moved on to New Hampshire’s lakes and rivers and trout streams, world-class salmon rivers in Canada, and bonefish flats in the Bahamas. Along the way, he discovered a passion both for local seafood and for writing.
Stowell’s journalism career includes writing for The Boston Globe, United Press International and New Hampshire Public Radio. He began covering sustainable fisheries and seafood in 2011, and he now focuses on issues ranging from privatization of our oceans to the devastating impact of the proposed Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska.
Of the One Fish Foundation, Colles says, “Starting the Foundation is the confluence of my career and personal passions. My deep-seated interest in fisheries and in striking the right balance to support well-managed fisheries, transparent, local seafood systems, and healthy oceans for future generations drives One Fish Foundation.”
About Waterside Chats
The Marine Fish Conservation Network’s Waterside Chat series connects people who depend on healthy oceans and fisheries with the issues that directly affect them and their communities. Each episode the Network’s Deputy Director Tom Sadler talks with different guests about ocean policy and fisheries management topics. He engages them in genuine and thoughtful conversations about what policy decisions mean for people’s livelihoods, communities, recreation, and coastal ways of life.
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