NYC Fishmongers are turning butcher paper into a call to action

One hundred miles off the coast of New York City, there is an underwater canyon teeming with marine life. Seabirds soar overhead as whales, sharks, dolphins, sea turtles, and fish gather around Hudson Canyon.

With so many species calling the canyon home, the Wildlife Conservation Society wants Hudson Canyon to be designated a National Marine Sanctuary. The designation, awarded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, would protect the ecologically diverse area from companies hoping to mine the seabed for oil, gas, and minerals.

It’s not just the endangered species WCS is hoping to save from disruptive and dangerous mining—it also wants to save the fish you eat for dinner. With a striking new campaign created by the advertising agency McKinney, WCS is calling on seafood lovers to sign its petition urging NOAA to protect Hudson Canyon, home to the creatures that stock seafood markets in New York City and beyond.

“We’re protecting the species out there, we’re protecting their health, but we’re also protecting the economic viability of our waters,” says Christine Osekoski, executive director of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

To help communicate the importance of Hudson Canyon to the people who enjoy the spoils of commercial fishing there, McKinney took an analog-first approach to the campaign. They printed the petition right onto the butcher paper that seafood markets wrap around the fish they sell.

“What better way to get the actual cause, actual information, and actual petition into people’s hands . . . than at the moment you are consuming the very thing that is being threatened?” asks Omid Amidi, chief creative officer at McKinney.

To create an eye-catching design on the butcher paper, McKinney’s team members used a Japanese printing technique called gyotaku, brushing the types of animals found in the Hudson Canyon with blue ink and pressing them onto paper. The process yields nearly perfect impressions of the very same creatures the campaign is trying to save—black sea bass, scallops, and crabs, for example.

The fish prints are paired with maps of the Hudson Canyon, copies of the petition text, and QR codes to sign it. These elements, all in blue, are overlaid with blocky red letters reading “Quit Floundering, Then Save the Canyon” and “Save the Scallops, Then Sear Them,” among other sayings. The simple layouts and contrasting blue and red ink are meant to evoke the advertising and storefront design choices of old New York fish markets. The end product is a far cry from the plain brown butcher paper that markets traditionally use to wrap seafood.

“The design itself is just meant to stop you in your tracks,” Amidi says. “Even though it’s a light piece of paper, it has the weight of all the work and all the care we put into it.”

Adding to the campaign, McKinney designed window clings and counter cards for participating markets, as well as created signage displayed at the New York Aquarium and online videos featuring local fishmongers supporting the effort.

The campaign launched June 9, the day after the United Nations’ World Oceans Day. Since then, participating seafood markets in the New York City area have wrapped their fish in WCS’s petition and stirred up support among customers. Six markets are participating in the campaign: Mt. Kisco Seafood, Greenpoint Fish and Lobster, Metro Seafood, Mermaid’s Garden Sustainable Seafood, Marty’s Gourmet Seafood, and Lobster Place at Chelsea Markets.

“We definitely have a crew of loyal customers who are into sustainability,” says David Seigal, culinary director at Lobster Place at Chelsea Markets. “But we also have a lot of customers who want to know where their food is coming from, and I think those are the people who are most interested in this.”

Some participating fish markets are already asking for more shipments of the paper, Osekoski says, as more people see the design and sign the petition. This show of support is an important step in the process toward Hudson Canyon being designated a National Marine Sanctuary. Soon, NOAA will release its draft of the designation documents and solicit comments from the public before ultimately choosing whether to make the area a sanctuary. By the end of the public comment period, WCS hopes its petition will have 25,000 signatories—and the nonprofit is already one-third of the way there.

For Seigal, also an avid fisherman who frequently travels to the Hudson Canyon, protecting the area is a cause especially close to his heart.

“We’re in business with Mother Nature, when it comes down to it,” he says. “Any threat to Mother Nature is a threat to, at a minimum, our business, but really to our existence as a human race.”