congressional representatives submitted a bipartisan letter to the
Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture, Thomas Vilsack,
urging the department to take immediate steps to support fi shers
in the Northeast by using funding created by Section 32 of the
Agricultural Act of 1935 to purchase dogfi sh and create a domestic
market for the resource (Warren et al., 2013). This request was
followed by a call for proposals put forth by the National Marine
Fisheries Service in August 2013 soliciting projects that, among
other objectives, “promote and enhance the marketability of
regional US fishery products” (NMFS, 2013). Through this initiative,
the agency granted $245,246 to the University of New England to
develop new markets for underutilized species including dogfish
(UNE, 2014). Changes in the acceptable levels of PCBs in fish imports to Europe appear imminent, which would reopen the doors to
US spiny dogfish imports. However, the recent shocks and shifts to
this market reflect the fragility of the existing distribution system
and the cascading impacts that a narrowly focused distribution
system can have on fisheries when they are disrupted.