Marine ecosystems all over the world are collapsing, endangering the climate, coastal communities, and global food security. Seafood is often overlooked in discussions and legislation about local food. Thankfully, communities all over the world are rising to the challenge by renewing traditional fishing methods, regenerating local fishing economies, and regulating marine resources at the community scale. And as the oceans are downstream of all land-based activities, many of the other Actions in this guide - from small-scale agriculture to zero-waste initiatives, divesting from fossil fuels to setting up bike shares - have a positive impact on oceans and fisheries as well.
# Fisheries Actions **Support local and responsible seafood and fishing communities. Expand Action**
Initiatives to promote local and responsible seafood, including community-supported fisheries – modeled on community-supported agriculture – enable production and consumption of local, responsibly-harvested, small-scale seafood. See the suggestions below to join the boat-to-fork movement.
# Take action
* In North America, find a community-supported fishery and small-scale seafood harvester through Local Catch 
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* Increase your community's awareness of local seafood with Hosting a Slow Fish Workshop , a guide by the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance in the US. Plan an event to connect food and community-based fishing communities, learn how to eat with the seasons of the oceans, reduce food waste, and more.
* If you are a fisher-person, check out the CSF Baitbox: A Fisherman’s Guide to Community Supported Fisheries , from the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance.
* Find responsible seafood options. In India, check out the Know Your Fish campaign. In the UK, support the Sustainable Fish City campaign.
* Join or support the Fish Locally Collaborative , “a network that connects nearly 400,000+ fishing families around the US, as well as in Canada, Latin America, and Europe ... to align many diverse people and organizations behind community-based fisheries in order to protect marine biodiversity and the overall health of the ocean.”
# Get inspired
Skipper Otto’s Community-Supported Seafood in British Columbia, Canada, not only provides access to healthy, local, responsibly-harvested seafood, but also supports ecological sustainability by enabling local fishermen to prioritize the long-term health of the marine ecosystems they depend on.
Through the TRY Oyster Women's Association in the Gambia, more than 500 women have organized into cooperatives to harvest oysters sustainably while conserving their habitat.
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# Policy action: Ban industrial fish farms.
Industrial fish farms apply the deadly logic of industrial land-based farming to the oceans, raising millions of fish and other sea organisms – some of them genetically engineered – in cramped pens, dependent on huge inputs of feed, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. These oceanic factory farms also cause terrible pollution and seriously threaten native fish populations. For the future of our oceans, they must be banned.
# Take action
* Join and support the Don’t Cage Our Ocean campaign to stop industrial ocean fish farming.
* Urge your government officials to ban industrial fish farms as has been done in Argentina , and in Washington State in the US.
* In the US, tell your congressional delegation to support the Keep Fin Fish Free Act to ban industrial ocean fish farms, by sending this letter from the Organic Consumers Association.
# Get inspired
* In 2018, the US state of Washington banned Atlantic salmon farming, just months after netting broke apart at a fish farm off Washington's Pacific coast, releasing as many as 250,000 Atlantic salmon into Puget Sound, posing a threat to native salmon. Read more in this NPR story .
* In 2021 the southernmost state in Argentina, Tierra del Fuego, unanimously passed legislation banning open net salmon farming. Since the seas around Tierra del Fuego are the only Argentine region where salmon farming takes place, the law effectively banned it country-wide, making Argentina the first country to ban salmon farming. Read more in this Buenos Aires Times article .