There are plenty of fish in the sea. Why do we eat so few?

The players didn’t always win. Often, it was a struggle to find their quarry. 

“I actually got skunked a lot,” Kat Champigny, one of the citizen scientists, tells me—“skunked,” in the sense of being badly defeated. Champigny works at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and thought the study would be a unique way to learn more about local seafood. But while she was sometimes unable to find the fish she’d been asked to look for, the study still pushed her toward a wider variety of fish and shellfish than she’d ever encountered. She discovered a new favorite species, bluefish—while other options were a little less appetizing.

“My least favorite experience was butterfish, which are these little tiny round fish that I could only find whole—it was my first time gutting a fish and my first whole fish that I ever ate,” she recalled. “That was a pretty eye-opening experience.”

Overall, the study found that a few types of seafood are overrepresented in the market, while other local species get very little play. Of the list of 52, only five species were available more than half of the time: lobster, sea scallops, soft shell clams, cod, and haddock. Meanwhile 37 of them, including razor clams, mahi mahi, and bonito, were spotted 15% of the time or less. The butterfish that Champigny scorned? It had a 3% chance of appearing in markets.

Other hard-to-find fish were rated highly, suggesting missed market opportunities. The John Dory, a spiny, notoriously harsh-looking marine fish, turned out to be delicious on the plate, with flaky white flesh some citizen scientists likened to “a better version of flounder.” But while that fish was ranked both tastiest and easiest to prepare among all the species surveyed, participants could find it only two percent of the time.

The survey was significant for collecting information on seafood availability from the average shopper’s point of view, says Kate Masury, program director of Eating with the Ecosystem. By looking at more than 1,000 meals prepared across nearly 3,000 market visits, the goal was to highlight ways New Englanders can better “eat like a fish”—or, rely less on a small group of over-targeted seafood options.

“Fish tend to be generalist predators, rather than specialists,” the report’s authors write. “Eating ‘like a fish’ means replacing our highly selective seafood eating habits with a flexible acceptance of whatever the ocean provides. It means opening our minds and our mouths to the rich diversity of ocean life—reducing the environmental and economic problems that come with overfishing in the process.”

“If we’re selective about what we eat, and we only eat a few species, then that has a cascading effect down the food chain,” Masury explains, referring to the disproportionate pressure that certain species can face when they are in high demand. “If instead we’re less selective, we’re adaptable, we eat a variety or diversity of species, then we’re eating more in balance with our actual marine food webs.”

Doing so would not only have environmental benefits—it could also give an economic boost to fishers.

Dean Pesante is a Rhode Island-based fisherman who has been gillnetting with his boat since 1997.

Pesante harvests and lands a wide variety of species depending on the season, then sells his catch to wholesalers, who price based on demand. He points to scup (a common fish also known as porgy) and dogfish (which is actually a small type of shark) as species that are abundant in the water, but don’t get too much love.

“If more people were accustomed to eating it, if it was marketed differently, demand would go up and then the price would go up,” he tells me.

But changing the way that people eat is not an easy undertaking. For many, food is a matter of familiarity and comfort. Turning us on to new textures, flavors, and even cooking techniques is a big ask—but it’s not impossible, and very well may have benefits that go beyond the kitchen. 

For what it’s worth, Champigny feels like a more adventurous eater now: “I’m pretty willing to try anything at this point,” she says.