Dock To Dish to Open Florida's First Community Supported Fishery in Key West in February 2015

Nearly 90% of all the seafood consumed by Americans is imported and nearly 50% of these imports are from aquaculture sources*. 

The fight to bring fresh and healthy local seafood back to American consumers now expands from one traditionally strong commercial fishing center to another.

Dock to Dish (www.docktodish.com), Long Island’s original Community and Restaurant Supported Fishery, headquartered in Montauk, New York, today announced plans to open Florida’s first ever Community Supported Fishery in Key West in February 2015 in conjunction with Key West restaurateur Chris Holland and the Florida Keys Commercial Fishermen’s Association (www.fkcfa.org).

Dock to Dish’s Chris Holland (left) and Sean Barrett (right) celebrate the launch of Dock to Dish Key West.

The goal of the new enterprise, according to Dock to Dish founder Sean Barrett, is to bring the health benefits of locally harvested fish and seafood back to local consumers while helping to strengthen the in-state commercial fishing industry. “This is the first small step in what we hope will become a Florida-wide enterprise that brings commercial fisherman, consumers, and restaurant owners together in a cause that will improve the community’s health and businesses. And do so deliciously!" 

Barrett said that he picked Key West to be the second Dock to Dish market for one reason, “Chris Holland. We get contacted regularly about all kinds of things, but when Chris reached out we immediately knew this was a special situation. He has been working in Key West on solving the same problems we are working on in Montauk, where all too often what we see on the menus and in the grocery stores comes far from our local waters. Chris is solution-driven and speaks the language of ‘fresh’ fluently.”

According to Holland, owner of the Stoned Crab Restaurant, “Americans need to take a stand now against the large Asian and South American fish farms that are negatively impacting our commercial fishing industry and poisoning unsuspecting consumers. People think that the fish they are buying in supermarkets is safe, inspected, and healthy — when it is none of these things.  In fact, nearly 90% of all the seafood consumed by Americans is imported and much of the fish that is imported comes from sources that are barely regulated or often completely unregulated.”

Holland and Barrett understand what they are up against. “Yes, this is a case of two small Davids taking on Goliath, but let’s never forget that David in fact slew Goliath.”

Dock to Dish Key West co-founders include commercial fisherman Tony Osborn (left) and local chef Paul Menta (right), pictured here sorting a fresh haul of Florida Stone Crab and Gulf Lobster!

According to Barrett and Holland, the new Dock to Dish Key West Community Supported Fishery will be launched in support of and in conjunction with the Florida Keys Commercial Fishermen’s Association, under the leadership of executive director Bill Kelly, who today noted,  “We are proud to be a part of this historic enterprise to bring fresh seafood back to Key West and strengthen the livelihoods of our commercial fishermen and our island economy.”

“Seafood is a renewable natural resource and cooperative efforts between fishery managers and stakeholders have kept all key indicator species in the Florida Keys at sustainable levels,” Kelly said. “Every year, our fleet harvests responsible amounts of seafood, which allows for stocks to rebuild themselves. None of our commercially-important species are overfished, including shrimp, lobster, stone crab, kingfish, Spanish mackerel, gag, red and black grouper, and mangrove, yellowtail and mutton snappers. Now, through Dock to Dish, these fish can be enjoyed by Keys’ residents and visitors again.  The in-state movement to reclaim our heritage starts here in Key West.” 

Initial plans call for Dock to Dish to launch its Community Supported Fishery memberships by June 2015 at a Dock to Dish Seafood Market that will open at the IBIS Bay Beach Resort, 3101 North Roosevelt Boulevard in Key West on February 14, Valentine’s Day.

Outreach to local restaurants to support the cause and consumer memberships will begin immediately thereafter. “Key West will get to know their fishermen again. Just like it used to be. They will be able to pick up their weekly subscription of seafood at the market. It’s just 20ft away from our dock,” Holland explained.  “Our goal is to stop the industry from sending our fresh, locally harvested and sustainable seafood abroad for someone else to enjoy. We need to be eating the tastiest, safest seafood in the world, not the worst.”

Details on the Community Supported Fishery membership packages are being finalized now and will be announced shortly.  Memberships will be available in June 2015. The Dock to Dish Seafood market is open to all members of the public starting February 14, 2015. For more information, please visit docktodish.com for updates as they become available.

Solsound Chooses Furman CN Series SmartSequencers™ For Mid-Atlantic Community Church

Mid-Atlantic Community Church is typical of many young 21st-century churches: steady growth has prompted moves to larger temporary quarters even as it embarks on the first phase of what will become its own permanent campus of buildings in Crofton, Maryland. The church’s headquarters office is located in an office park warehouse. The congregation meets at Crofton Middle School every Sunday morning, after outgrowing its original space at Crofton Elementary School where its first services took place shortly after it was founded in 2004.

What the church, which offers children and adult ministries as well as annual activities and volunteer events in the community, needs most is flexibility when it comes to its media systems for its incipient new location. “The church’s FOH mixer was very specific about how he needed his systems to power on,” explained Art Reiger, founder and owner of Solsound (www.solsound.net), the Edgewater, Maryland based AV systems integrator that just completed the installation of an RCF line array sound system as well as a distributed paging system in the church’s new “gymnatorium,” a huge building that will house basketball courts, classrooms and a performance space. “He wanted the systems to have very specific delays between power-ons, to avoid any hiccups with components such as the IDR rack at back of house and the laptop he has connected to the FOH console.” 

“We had just completed [another] project where we used a Furman CN-2400S and a Furman CN-20MP, and the combination proved stellar,” he said. “For the Mid-Atlantic Community Church project, the Furman CN series units let us program the exact delay intervals between component power-ups. In some cases that was as much as two minutes. In fact, the Furman system can give you as much as seven minutes delay time. No other product can do that. Plus, the ease of installation is excellent. As long as the cabling is correct, you can customize each unit perfectly and quickly using the DIP switches. From a designer and an installer’s point of view, you can’t get that combination of a high degree of flexibility and ease of installation anywhere else.”Reiger had the solution, one that began with a Furman CN-1800S SmartSequencer™ 15-amp bidirectional power sequencer for the BOH rack’s 15-amp circuit and a CN-2400S 20-amp bidirectional power sequencer for the building’s FOH 20-amp circuit. Used in conjunction with several Furman CN-15MP and CN-20MP MiniPorts, the Contractor Series SmartSequencer™ bidirectional power sequencers give Reiger and his team everything they need to meet the client’s requirements. 

The Furman CN-1800S (15 amp capacity) and CN-2400S (20 amp capacity) SmartSequencers™ are designed for commercial A/V installers.  The units combine AC power distribution, protection, filtration, sequential system power on/off, and optional compatibility with Panamax/Furman’s BlueBOLT® hosted remote power and energy management platform.

The CN-1800S and CN-2400S feature Furman’s SmartSequencing™ technology, which allows large and complex A/V systems to be powered on and off safely with the simple press of a button or turn of a key, even by nontechnical personnel. The SmartSequencer’s bidirectional communications between installed units enables a primary unit to control and sequence multiple secondary units, ensuring that multi-zone electronic systems are powered on and off safely and dependably from a single control point across an entire installation. Units can be connected via current loop at runs of more than 1,000 feet, with backwards compatibility with Furman’s legacy sequencers and/or third-party products.

Providing robust control options, the CN-1800S and CN-2400S are equipped with RS-232 ports and command sets for PC control or integration with control systems. An optional RS-232-to-Ethernet adaptor — sold separately — adds full IP-addressability to the unit so it may be controlled, programmed, and monitored from any Web-enabled device with Panamax/Furman’s cloud-based BlueBOLT platform.