Yes, You Can Love Eating Lobster and Advocate For Their Conservation

As a child growing up on the coast of Maine, Kate Masury’s favorite food, and animal, was lobster. In high school, she wrote her AP English paper on “The Secret Life of Lobsters” by Trevor Corson. As a college student, she wanted to major in biology to study marine science and lobsters.

“I was a little obsessed,” said Masury, a member of the Holy Cross class of 2011 and an environmental studies major, recalling special lobster-themed gifts she’s received over the years.

As an adult, she traveled the country and world conducting research and teaching marine science — from catch to consumption to conservation — to children. During one summer camp, some students’ parents pointed out what they considered to be a contradiction between her love of eating seafood and her advocacy of marine conservation.

“To me, it made perfect sense. The two go hand-in-hand,” Masury said. “The lobstermen in my community were some of the greatest marine stewards. They were the ones who started a lot of the conservation measures. It felt so weird to me that people couldn’t see that because to me the two things are very much aligned.”

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Masury talks with Captain Rodman Sykes of the FV Virginia Marise in Galilea, Rhode Island.

As the current executive director of Eating with the Ecosystem, a Rhode Island-based nonprofit with a mission to promote a place-based approach to sustaining New England's wild seafood, Masury uses her platform to promote sustainable seafood consumption by highlighting all involved: the humans and the fish.

“We take a holistic view and provide a more in-depth understanding of the place your seafood comes from and include the communities of people and the culture involved in the seafood world,” she said.

Connection to the ocean

Masury spent countless hours in tidepools catching crabs and looking for sea stars and sea urchins under rocks as a child. She enjoyed eating the fresh catch of the day that was hauled in by her local fishermen. “I was drawn to the marine world. I felt at home in the intertidal zone and coastal ecosystem,” she said.

At Holy Cross, she decided to harness her innate curiosity and pursue a degree that focused on environmental studies, but remained unsure on what kind of science she would study. A marine resource conservation experience in Turks and Caicos through the study abroad program solidified her decision and future career focus.

“I knew then it was 100% what I wanted to do,” she said.

Throughout college, she taught conservation and marine science programs at various summer camps while continuing to take classes at marine labs along the New England coast. She also conducted lobster-focused research in the Isles of Shoals off the New Hampshire and Maine coasts. After graduation, she accepted science education positions at SoundWaters in Connecticut, conducted research along the Eastern Shore of Virginia and ultimately moved to Southern California to be the education coordinator on a marine science vessel that took children to Catalina Island. While there she was accepted at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, part of the University of California, San Diego system, and earned a masters of advanced studies in marine biodiversity and conservation, focusing on sustainable seafood and fisheries.

“I wanted to return to research and then use my education background to help others see the connection between eating seafood and conserving our marine ecosystems,” she said. Her research focused on supply chains for the California spiny lobster and the New England Maine lobster, as well as their cultural and influential ties. Wanting to return to the East Coast, she looked for an organization that shared her values and interest, and found it in Eating with the Ecosystem.

Eating with the Ecosystem

“Sustainable seafood campaigns, for the most part, focus on single species and tell you what to eat and what not to eat,” Masury said. “We need more than that. When we talk about sustainability, we need to talk about our interactions with those ecosystems, the communities of people who are involved in the seafood world, and then consider what is sustainable and what is not.”

Masury joined the organization in 2016 as a program manager and was named executive director in 2022. She sees her primary responsibility as bringing different groups — fishermen, scientists, food system planners, chefs and consumers — with similar interests together, groups that would not necessarily interact on a regular basis.

“In a way, we’re helping to connect those dots and build the relationships between these different players to show them and the community that working together can work,” she said.

The organization started hosting educational ecosystem dinners in 2012. Local chefs design a multi-course menu based on underutilized local seafood species. Scientists shared their research related to the ecosystem or the species in the meal. Fishermen talk about how they caught the species and the challenges they faced in the process.

“They were really cool educational experiences where people got to have a fun night eating local seafood and learning about sustainability. At the same time, they were engaging deeper on the topic and getting to meet members of their community that were actively involved in it,” she said.

In addition, the organization hosts events with panels featuring scientific researches, local fishermen, culinary professionals, and other members of the seafood industry; helps connect retail markets and chefs with wholesale suppliers that carry diverse local seafood species; hosts cooking demonstrations with local chefs; and helps to run a seafood donation program with the Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island.

“Our work is everything from research to education, outreach, supply chain facilitation, and marketing,” Masury said.

Rethinking ocean to table

Masury also partners with area academic, science and marine institutions that conduct biological and fisheries-focused research and connects the seafood industry and market components into the work. This includes working with scientists from UMass Dartmouth School of Marine Science and Technology on mapping supply chains for New England seafood species, taking into account conservation and economic trends that could be affected by warming ocean waters. It also involves partnering with the University of Rhode Island (URI) to think of new ways the New England food supply chain can adapt to shifting species distributions as a result of the warming ocean. An example would be how to incorporate new species of fish now found in abundance in the region into restaurant menus and seafood markets.

“Right now, we’re looking at what we refer to as the roadmap for climate resilience and working with the businesses and restaurants to better understand what they need to adapt and what would help them adapt,” Masury said.

Part of that effort involves working with fisheries to incorporate new practices when taking their catch from the water to the market, which could require infrastructure improvement or investment in new gear to catch the different species. The effort also means teaching fishermen or seafood businesses a new way of processing their catch.

One such method is Ike Jime, a Japanese technique considered as a more humane way of killing fish that minimizes the stress on the fish, which also produces a higher quality seafood product as it minimizes bacteria exposure which extends its shelf life, Masury said.

The organization is working with small-scale Rhode Island fishermen on how to use the method, which could allow them to bring different products that wouldn’t ordinarily be sold, such as scup and sea robins, to market and broaden their economic potential, she said.

“They are actually really delicious local species. If, through this new practice, the fishermen can expand their product availability and be paid a little more it would incentivize the process,” said Masury, who is working with an economist from URI to analyze market values and consumer willingness to pay. If successful, she sees it as a win-win for the environment, the fisheries, the market and the consumers.

“It allows fishermen to raise more money from fewer fish, involves better handling practices and ultimately produces a better-quality product, which can be used in a variety of different ways and has a longer shelf life,” she said.

And, in some way, it proves her point that there is a way for the people involved in every step of the process to bring seafood from the ocean to the table to be invested and work together to benefit the waters, businesses and consumers.

“There doesn’t need to be a gap,” Masury said.