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Export-oriented seafood trade faltered during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, alternative seafood networks (ASNs) that distribute seafood through local and direct marketing channels were identified as a “bright spot.” In this paper, we draw on multiple lines of quantitative and qualitative evidence to show that ASNs experienced a temporary pandemic “bump” in both the United States and Canada in the wake of supply chain disruptions and government mandated social protections. We use a systemic resilience framework to analyze the factors that enabled ASNs to be resilient during the pandemic as well as challenges. The contrast between ASNs and the broader seafood system during COVID-19 raises important questions about the role that local and regional food systems may play during crises and highlights the need for functional diversity in supply chains.

The Anthropocene, simply put, is characterized by the recognition that natural processes are inextricably entwined With human influence. Against this backdrop, managing natural resources needs to be fundamentally rethought as balancing human-nature entanglements continues to challenges policymakers and conservation managers obligated toward politically and scientifically feasible measures. A closer look at wild Atlantic salmon management in Europe reveals dynamic shifts over the past two centuries, particularly with regard to how hatcheries are used as conservation tools. We use case studies on Norwegian and Welsh wild salmon cultivation practices to trace these shifts in conservation and management practices. We frame our analysis through a lens of shifting conceptualizations of naturalness and human-salmon relationships. Starting at the multinational level and then moving to groundlevel cases, we show how naturalness is conceptualized by managers and hatchery stakeholders, and how those perceptions play into definitions of desired outcomes for wild salmon conservation as well as the strategies and technologies implemented to achieve these conservation goals. We highlight two paradoxes that are illuminated by the disputes and shifting perceptions surrounding salmon hatcheries. First, we show that hatcheries are no longer perceived as appropriate tools to increase wild salmon populations. Rather, hatchery technologies are being withdrawn, limited, or transformed, often resulting in local-level controversy. Paradoxically, these changes are, in themselves highly technical processes involving genomic testing and big data inventories. Second, despite the recognition of ever more complex human-nature entanglements, the practical outcomes for salmon conservation are oriented toward standardized testability and manageability and limiting certain human-salmon interactions, and although some technologies are instrumental, others are disregarded. As a result, those techno-social communities organized around hatchery technologies are at risk of being removed or otherwise excluded from their preferred conservation activities.

Efforts to scale up aquaculture are increasingly framed as essential to global food security and ocean sustainability, yet such narratives often obscure the complex and interdependent relationships between aquaculture and wild-capture fisheries. This paper critically interrogates the dominant “feed the world” framing of aquaculture expansion, arguing that treating aquaculture and fisheries as isolated systems undermines social equity, ecological sustainability, and effective food policy. Drawing on a novel classification of twenty-one aquaculture–wild fishery interaction types spanning ecological, economic, and social dimensions, we highlight the inadequacy of current policy frameworks that ignore these entanglements. Through mixed methods, including global time-series data and in-depth case studies from countries such as Chile, Fiji, Vietnam, and Zambia, the analysis reveals that aquaculture expansion often displaces traditional fisheries, privatizes marine space, exacerbates gender and class inequalities, and privileges export-oriented production over local food systems. The study argues for a paradigm shift in seafood governance that reframes aquaculture not as a stand-alone solution but as a component of deeply embedded, context-specific, and socially contested food systems. This critical lens pushes for policies that prioritize justice, local agency, and the co-governance of marine resources, challenging technocratic visions of blue growth with a call for integrated, equity-centered approaches.

In the context of climate change, the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, growing food insecurity, and rising inflation, the inequities in the dominant food system and subsequent vulnerabilities are being made ever more visible. Policies and programs that can support social and economic security while responding to intensifying environmental challenges are urgently needed. Basic income is receiving increasing attention as one such policy tool in jurisdictions around the world. However, its applications to food systems are underdeveloped. This discussion paper considers basic income as a policy tool for supporting food systems sustainability in Canada drawing on our collaborative research as part of Coalition Canada’s Case for Basic Income Series. We suggest that a basic income may contribute to addressing precarity in livelihoods and food access while offering potential co-benefits for local food production and community well-being. We also underscore that basic income is not a panacea for all problems facing food systems and must be considered alongside other public supports and initiatives. We conclude by identifying areas for further research and policy investigation for food systems scholars and practitioners.

In this paper we explore the relationship between food security and access to locally caught seafood for communities of the Kenai Peninsula region of Alaska. Seafood and fisheries are infrequently discussed in the literature on local and small-scale food movements; instead, they are more commonly construed as overexploited components of a global food system and a source of conflict with respect to global food security and fisheries conservation. By way of contrast, we argue here that many fisheries have the potential to be sources of healthy and sustainable \"local\" food, in support of the many values and goals embraced by local food movement, including conservation. With data collected via a by-mail survey, we show that many people in our Alaskan study region enjoy improved food security because they have access to locally caught seafood, especially those households at the lowest income levels. We also show, however, that access to these resources is still uneven for some, and we discuss strategies for improving the social-justice aspects of this component of the regional food system. Our findings are important not just to the fisheries and food security research communities, but also for contributing to a better understanding of the conditions within which local and regional food movements can achieve the ambitious social and ecological goals they seek.

We investigate drivers of hybridization of local ecological knowledge (LEK) and scientific knowledge (SK) in small-scale Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) fisheries in western Norway through a case study from the Ørsta River. We find three primary drivers of knowledge hybridization in local fishing groups as part of wild Atlantic salmon cultivation activities: facilitating intergenerational knowledge exchange, coping with regulatory change, and improving the perceived validity of local knowledge sets. We also identify three challenges to knowledge hybridization, and discuss how both drivers and challenges relate to once complementary SK and LEK sets that have diverged as SK has become more technical and complex.We examine the processes by which LEK and SK develop, evolve, and are used to facilitate wild salmon conservation in these fisheries and discuss the role hatcheries can play adapting and utilizing large-scale SK and salmon policy to the local environment through hybridization processes.We conclude with recommendations as to how reframing managerial views on hatcheries as facilitators of knowledge production and transfer may improve both the accessibility of SK to local communities and the integration of LEK into Norwegian wild salmon management. Knowledge hybridization . Local ecological knowledge . Scientific knowledge . Norway . Salmo salar . Salmon cultivation

1. Stakeholders with shared interests in fish conservation often disagree about which specific conservation measures are appropriate, leading to conflicts with sometimes long‐lasting and disruptive social and political effects. Managers are challenged to balance opposing stakeholder preferences with their own mandates in a charged environment. Using the 2014 termination of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) stocking in Wales as a case, we conducted a critical discourse analysis of interview data, online print media, social media and policy documents to examine conflict and its mechanisms over time. The data sources represented four discourse planes: the social, media, social media and policy planes. We report five key findings: 2. The conflict around salmon stocking took place in three stages, beginning with a negotiated, manifest conflict that escalated during the 2014 policy process that terminated stocking, creating a persistent spin‐off conflict. 3. The stocking debate was shaped by two discourse coalitions promoting either pro‐ or anti‐hatchery arguments, and an emerging third coalition advocating for compromise. The coalitions disagreed on the effectiveness of stocking, the status of the salmon stock and had different management goals, revealing that the proor anti‐stocking debate was caused by complex, intertwined and partly opposing beliefs and values. 4. Different elements of the discourses emerged on different planes and arguments were mobile across the planes over time, explaining how selected key arguments were able to persist, gain dominance, re‐appear over time, thus dynamically fuelling and (re)shaping the conflict. 5. The policy change decision to terminate stocking in Wales institutionalized antistocking discourses. It forced all stakeholder groups to acquiesce to one perspective of stocking, creating a win‐lose situation for some stakeholders.6. The handling and result of the policy change led to the alienation of some stakeholder groups. Ecological management goals were achieved in the short term, but the acrimonious and yet‐unsettled social side effects affected the long‐term relationships and may negatively impact future conservation issues in the area. 7. We conclude that transdisciplinary active management designed for joint learning about stocking trade‐offs may be a suitable alternative to the ‘either‐or’ outcomes observed in Wales that fostered sustained stakeholder conflicts instead of joint production of knowledge and understanding.

n.b. The errors and associated corrections described in this document concerning the original manuscript were accountable to the production department handling this manuscript, and thus are no fault of the authors of this paper. Additionally, the online manuscript has now been updated with these corrections accordingly. In the original publication of this article [1], Figure 2 and Figure 3 were inadvertently swapped. The figures can be found below with the correct legends. The original publication [1] has also been updated to reflect these changes (Figs. 2, 3). https://static-content.springer.com/image/art%3A10.1186%2Fs40066-016-0070-8/MediaObjects/40066_2016_70_Fig2_HTML.jpg Fig. 2 Dipnet fishing. The Kenai River dipnet fishery is a popular annual event that draws thousands of local Alaskans https://static-content.springer.com/image/art%3A10.1186%2Fs40066-016-0070-8/MediaObjects/40066_2016_70_Fig3_HTML.jpg Fig. 3 Clam digging. Families dig for clams on Ninilchik Beach, Alaska

Commercial fishing represents an important cultural and economic cornerstone in the lives and livelihoods of the people of the Cook Inlet/Kenai Peninsula region of Alaska. Here, we discuss one aspect of commercial salmon fishing that we have found to be of particular social and cultural significance: the opening day. On the opening day, salmon are not as abundant as they will be later in the year, and as such this first chance to put nets in the water provides an opportunity for fishers to test their gear, train their crew, and renew important social connections with other fishers. The opening day also acts as an important and symbolic rite of passage for many fishers who fish seasonally and, despite working for the rest of the year in a variety of trades nevertheless consider fishing to be their primary occupation and identity. However, such ‘human dimensions’ are often not well accounted for by fisheries management regimes, and Alaska’s management of commercial salmon fisheries, which is done primarily with directed openings and closures, provides a case-in-point. We discuss the possible cumulative impacts of repeatedly losing the opening day to the long-term sustainability of the fishery and fishing communities, including contributions to the ongoing “greying of the fleet” trend. Using a framework for social well-being we argue for a more holistic approach to management that improves both ecological and societal outcomes by incorporating these human dimensions into ecosystem-based fisheries management.

Background Alaska is known for its many fisheries, which support an extensive global marketplace, a thriving tourism industry, and also contribute much to diets of many Alaskans. Yet, some research has suggested that Alaska’s food security has been impacted negatively by the development of export-oriented commercial fisheries and tourism-oriented sport fisheries. In this paper, we discuss two sets of interviews that we completed with participants in two food fisheries in the Kenai Peninsula region of Southcentral Alaska: sockeye dipnet fishing and razor clam digging. Results We encountered a great deal of cultural and socioeconomic diversity among the participants of each, though a far greater proportion of the clam fishery were Alaska Native than in the salmon fishery. In both fisheries, people report participating both as a matter of food security and family tradition. Likewise, participants in both fisheries reported a great deal of experience with and knowledge of the fisheries. Many clam diggers worried that the fishery was being overharvested, despite the apparent abundance of clams that year, and this proved prescient to the fishery’s closure 2 years later. In the salmon fishery, some people were similarly concerned about the sustainability of the fisheries. Conclusions Ultimately, our paper provides a descriptive account of participants in these two fisheries and sheds light on how important wild food harvests can be to the food security of Alaska’s urban residents. We recommend that future resource management policies continue to support the role of fisheries in local food security.