Seafood Market Blitz
Our annual Seafood Market Blitz is a fun opportunity to advance knowledge about the state of New England’s seafood system through citizen science!
We launched our first Market Blitz as a pilot project in March 2018, in partnership with the University of Rhode Island. We recruited citizen science volunteers from across New England to help us gain a greater understanding of the composition of our New England seafood marketplace.
The Market Blitz is based on the concept of a Bio Blitz.
A BioBlitz is an intense period of biological surveying in an attempt to record all the living species within a designated area. Groups of scientists, naturalists and volunteers conduct an intensive field study over a continuous time period.
The pilot Market Blitz, was the first attempt to obtain a broad snapshot of what fish species are made available in New England retail markets. What percent of it is local? Where is the seafood that is sold to New England consumers coming from? Does this vary by state and/or store-type?
In March 2019 we launched a new and improved version of our Seafood Market Blitz with the help of a group of 5 undergraduate students from the University of Rhode Island.
Each participant in the Market Blitz is assigned a market to visit, usually during a week in March. During your visit, you record the data you collected either in the online survey or paper form with information about the seafood available such as what species are present, where they are from, price, and if they are fresh, live, etc.
The data collected through the Seafood Market Blitz goes into a database that can be used to help understand the composition of our New England seafood marketplace and track changes over time.
If you have any questions please contact Kate Masury at kate@eatingwiththeecosystem.org
SEAFOOD MARKET BLITZ MATERIALS FOR PARTICIPANTS [2019]
Stay tuned for the 2020 Market Blitz!
TRAININGS
Participants, we request that you attend one of our webinar trainings. Trainings will be held via webinar on Tuesday March 5th at 12:30 and Wednesday March 6th at 6:00. Each webinar will run about 30- 45 minutes depending on the amount of questions. You only need to attend one training. If you can not make either training, we will record the training and post it below for you to view. Please let us know if you have any questions by emailing kate@eatingwiththeecosystem.org.
Training Webinar Video Recording
MARKET BLITZ GUIDELINES
Market Blitz Guidelines
MARKET ASSIGNMENTS
You have all been assigned markets to visit. Your Market Assignments can be found here:
Market Assignments
If you would like to visit additional markets, or are unable to visit the market you are assigned please contact Kate at kate@eatingwiththeecosystem.org.
DATA COLLECTION
You can choose to record your data using our online survey via survey monkey or using a paper data sheet.
The online survey is designed to be accessed from the market via your smart phone or tablet. This is an easy way to record and send in your data. Accessing the online survey is just like accessing a website. However, be aware that many markets do not have wifi, therefore depending on your phone plan, data charges may apply. You are responsible for any data charges.
Online Survey
If you prefer to record your data the traditional way, we have also provided a PDF of the data sheet. You can print you data sheet and take it with you to the market. The data sheet has enough space to record up to 40 seafood items. If you think that your market might have more than that, print some extra pages to take with you. We recommend bringing a clipboard or hard surface to write on. Once you have completed your market visit and recorded all your data you can send paper data sheets to us by either scanning or taking a picture of the sheets and emailing them to EWEMarketBlitz@gmail.com.
Paper data sheet
MARKET BLITZ EXPLANATION
We have created a short blurb about the market blitz that you may print and either read or handout to the market you are visiting to explain what you are doing at the market. We have attempted to contact all markets before sending you to the market. However in some cases we were either unable to contact the market or the person working behind the counter may be a different person than we have talked to. Therefore we recommend printing and bringing this project explanation with you. If the market has any questions, they can contact Kate Masury at kate@eatingwiththeecosystem.org.