Local fishers offer plenty of local catch. Consumers can make a huge difference in helping support them.

Katie Rodriguez here, weighing the pros and cons about what to buy at the grocery store and why.

You probably don’t need me to tell you that grocery prices are continuing to climb, significantly outpacing inflation over the past five years, with the egg becoming a national emblem of our grocery store grief.

So it’s tough, as costs rise across the board, to justify spending more money on an item when cheaper options are available.

I’m here to make the pitch to you that seafood is one of those places to spend more—if spending more means buying local.

For this week’s cover story, I provide a snapshot of our local seafood economy as we head into the holidays with yet another year (the seventh consecutive year) without an open Dungeness crab season, and a third consecutive year without a Chinook salmon season.

Here in the U.S., a vast majority of the seafood we eat—at least 75 percent—comes from overseas. Why? Because it’s cheap, and people are eating more seafood than ever. But often those cheap options are wreaking havoc on our environments, tied to human rights issues, or may not even be the fish you think you’re buying.

And it’s often underpricing our local fishers, who aren’t able to make a living selling at the prices of international markets.

My story goes into a bit of the economics at play that show why crab and salmon have been so lucrative for fishers to stay in business, and without it, how many are adapting or sinking—trying new forms of gear to catch crab without entangling whales, or fishing for different types of fish.

Long story short: we still have local fishers offering a local catch, but that price point for, say, a fillet of rock cod, might be a little more expensive than what you can find at Costco.

That extra few bucks goes a long way to keeping our local fishing economy going, and that fish is likely to be even fresher and better quality. I spoke with and followed around some fishermen who were bringing in their catch that morning to sell in wholesale markets that same day.

As we enter a holiday season full of feasting and treating ourselves, if you’re opting for seafood, let’s give our local fishers some love. In my cover story, there is a box of resources for where you can find our local catch. It might not be Dungeness crab (though some local wholesale markets do sell crab imported from Washington), but it’ll be fresh. 

Give it a read here.