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in a Denver supermarket in four days. And frozen sales surged
more than 50 percent around the beginning of COVID lockdown,
according to industry publication Seafood Source.
It’s too soon to tell if armchair gourmands can absorb a sig-
nificant amount of the supply that used to go to restaurants.
Changing Tastes, a culinary consultancy, predicts that two-
thirds of sit-down, full-service eateries will not reopen after the
pandemic. But with both supermarkets and consumers showing
a new appetite for fish— and for insight into the provenance of
what they’re buying— Coronado and his group are well posi-
tioned to meet demand, and to do so at premium prices.ABOARD HIS BLUE-AND-WHITE PANGA, GUAYMAS
co-op member José Francisco Mendizábal follows a new routine
after he lands a grouper or yellowtail. He plunges a knife into
the top of its skull, bleeds it, then places it in an ice-water bath—
steps that help preserve flavor and texture. On shore, he scrubs
down his vessel while SmartFish processors fillet and freeze the
catch. By comparison, a gill-net fisherman outside the co-op
would dump seafood in the bottom of a boat, leaving it to decay in
the sun until it reached shore. Mendizábal’s methods may be time
consuming and leave him with less yield, he says, but it’s worth it:
Working with SmartFish will net the co-op 50 percent of the final
price, more than double what they made before. The system, says
Coronado, rewards them for their skills.
When COVID-19 first hit, demand for fresh fish from Guaymas
plummeted, and the only commercial link left was SmartFish. The
organization packages the co-op’s goods with a QR label pointing todetails about where it was caught, by whom, and how.
A Mexico City store sells the frozen, vacuum-sealed
product and manages exports to the US, its yellowtail
bound for San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. Sales
jumped by 30 percent between March and May 2020.
SmartFish’s work in Guaymas is not an isolated ex-
ample. Other communities have found a lifeline during
the pandemic by using technology to replace disrupted
supply chains. In South Africa, a smartphone app called
Abalobi, developed by the University of Cape Town,
has helped fishermen sell lobster directly to restau-
rants that have remained open. In addition to securing
higher prices, they also record their catches—and
therefore provide data that will help improve fisheries
management. Future of Fish, a nonprofit that supports
small-scale sea harvesters, jumped in to help Chileans
build online markets to sell their hake, and it will soon
test the Abalobi app there as well.
As their reach grows, technologies that shine light
on the sources of seafood are sure to be good for both
bottom lines and fisheries. Consider, for example,
the Tuna 2020 Traceability Declaration—signed in
2017 by the biggest retailers, processors, marketers,
traders, and harvesters—specifying that, to curb
overfishing, companies must make all products fully
traceable to the vessel and date on which they were
caught and comply with government- mandated
reporting. Since the effort began, the market for
responsibly sourced tuna has doubled, and the pro-
portion of sustainable tuna stocks has rebounded
from a 2014 low of 14 percent to 28 percent.FROM LEFT:
A fisherman pulls in a
rockfish by moonlight
near Guaymas, Mexico.
Traditional longlines
and hooks let locals
snag seafood by hand.
The previous night’s
catch gets put on ice.114 WINTER 2020 / POPSCI.COM