Jim Harmon is executive director of SeaShare, a non-profit, national organization focused on the acquisition of seafood for donation. Since its inception in 1994 SeaShare has donated 200 million seafood servings to US hunger relief efforts through America’s Second Harvest and its national network of 200+ food banks. Ten percent of its volume is bycatch, because SeaShare is the only organization authorized by NMFS to retain Prohibited Species Catch.
SeafoodSource: How have your quantities of seafood donations changed in the past 22 years? What has driven that change?
Harmon: We started with one goal – to retain and donate fish that were caught incidentally in trawl fisheries off the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands. That successful donation model enabled SeaShare to develop other donation projects with fishermen, processors, support companies, and financial donors across the country. Today in addition to salmon and halibut we work regularly with pollock, cod, tilapia, shrimp, tuna and other species. We’ve gone from donating 250,000 pounds of seafood in 1994 to 1.89 million pounds in 2015, distributed to 28 states.
SeafoodSource: Who are your donors and what are they giving?
Harmon: SeaShare is proud to work with a wide variety of partners, from individual fishermen to large, multi-national corporations. Some donate a pallet at a time, while others donate multi-truckloads. We also recruit cold storage, freight, packaging and financial donors; asking each of them to provide whatever they can. SeaShare does not place a dollar value on donated fish. Some donors provide whole/round fish, while others donate finished, retail-type products.
SeafoodSource: How do you measure SeaShare’s success?
Harmon: There are a lot of ways to measure our success: the number of partners involved; the pounds donated each year; the states we cover every year; the number of corporations and foundations who support us financially. But I think the primary measure of our success is the number of servings we’ve provided to hungry families…200 million meals and counting.
SeaShare started on the back deck of a trawler, when Tuck Donnelly talked with fishermen who were not happy throwing back perfectly good fish. Tuck went home and started working on a program that would include not only fishermen, but processors, cold storage operators, and freight companies; each giving the piece that they were best at giving. Since then, we’ve spoken at food bank conferences, showing others how to build efficient donation partnerships in their regions. SeaShare’s donors, collectively, are one of the largest sources of protein to the food bank network.
SeafoodSource: Your donors go way beyond fishermen and processors - there's freight companies, food banks, financial donors, etc. Can you describe one or two of the donations that have made a huge difference, and that you were surprised to see come to the table?
Harmon: A great example came up just recently. Fourteen years ago SeaShare provided a grant so the Seafood Products Association (SPA) could purchase and install a large freezer, and thereby save the salmon generated during their inspection programs, from being destroyed. Feeding America’s affiliate, Food Lifeline, has been picking up an average volume of 15,000 pounds of salmon per year of this salmon and using it at local feeding centers. When the SPA called last week to say the freezer had broken, SeaShare’s board quickly approved a proposal ($6,000) to replace that freezer and it should be back on line in a week. This is a great example of a partnership SeaShare developed between a seafood supplier, a food bank and a financial donor.
SeafoodSource: If you could address seafood industry executives, what would you say?
Harmon: Every company, large or small, should have a well thought out philanthropy program. It makes sense for fishing companies, processors, distributors, and importers to focus their giving in a program that promotes seafood consumption.
