I met Eric and Amber Petersen from Muskegon, Mich., at the 2010 NF Profitable Harvest conference, and I’ve been in touch with them ever since. I loved their family fishing story so much that I asked freelance writer Dan Denov to go out with the Petersen brothers on their Lake Michigan whitefish trap net boats. (Click here to read that cover story from March 2012.)

Back then, Amber was scratching it out at the local farmers market, selling whitefish and slowly expanding her roster to include other local and wild fish. In the last four years, Amber has created a rapidly expanding local business with a new storefront in Muskegon, where she sells wild fish from all over the country, as well as smoked and prepared fish dips and sausages.

I jumped at the chance to meet up with her last September to see her new store and processing facility, as well as the dock from which the family has been launching commercial fishing boats since 1927. (Read the full story on page 21 of our July issue, or check out my slideshow of the ship-to-shore business.)

When I got talking to the rest of the NF staff about small-scale and local marketing efforts, the idea for our July issue special section began to grow. While the stories we have to share (starting on page 20) are just a small sampling of seafood marketing efforts across the country, they are representative of the range — family businesses, gear-type associations, state and national seafood promotion boards, small businesses that focus strictly on sourcing and selling local and wild seafood, and even an app that helps locals connect with fishermen and their catch.

The fact is, fishermen and seafood enthusiasts from coast to coast are plugging away at fresh ideas that might improve public access to wild American fish. Our federal government is supposed to be setting aside funds for grants toward exactly these kinds of businesses, but most of that money instead goes toward fishery assessments and research.

The Saltonstall-Kennedy Act of 1939 and its 1954 revisions (read about them in a story from the May 1954 issue of Maine Coast Fisherman) earmarked federal funds for seafood marketing grants. The National Seafood Marketing Coalition is working toward federal legislation that will reclaim a portion of those grant dollars. I hope they can pave the way for ventures like those featured in our July issue to get grants that will help them launch marketing efforts to put more local seafood onto American plates.