‘Detectives of the Atlantic: from sea to table’ – CSA by ANFACO-CYTMA & Clusaga
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A citizen science activity developed within the framework of the Hub4Food project brought together fishing, aquaculture, the canning industry, and responsible consumption in a practical and
comprehensive experience for secondary school students.
What does it really take for a can of Galician tuna to reach a supermarket shelf in Paris? Who decides how much a catch is worth the moment it reaches the dock? And how can a twelve-year-old student tell a genuine sustainability label from a counterfeit one? These are not abstract questions. In the waters and on the pier of the Vigo Estuary, a group of students found the answers in the only way that truly works: by solving a case.
Atlantic
Detectives: From Sea to Table is a citizen science activity developed by ANFACO-CYTMA and Clusaga within the framework of the Hub4Food – Atlantic Food Innovation Hub project, and held during Vigo’s Blue Festival 2026. Designed for students aged 12 to 14, the initiative guided participants through the entire seafood value chain (from harvesting and aquaculture to the fish market, processing plant, commercial distribution, and the final act of cooking) through a team-based investigation format that kept learning grounded in reality at every stage.
The activity began with a story. Coral, a young sailor from Vigo, had discovered what appeared to be a fraud: an anonymous company was flooding European markets with seafood falsely labeled as Galician, undermining the work of local fishermen and deceiving consumers across half the continent. Before the situation got out of hand, Coral had hidden a trail of evidence alongher usual fishing route. The student teams had the mission of following it.
The narrative device was not just decoration. Each clue Coral had left corresponded to a real stage in the supply chain, and torecover it, the teams had to prove that they truly understood how that stage works. To move forward in the investigation, they had to know the difference between wild-capture fishing and aquaculture, understand how prices are set at the first-sale auction, identify the phases of the canning process, or read a distribution map and assess the carbon cost of different trade routes. The story gave each piece of knowledge a reason for being.
At sea. The first part of the day took place aboard a catamaran in the Vigo Estuary. With a skipper and an oceanographer onboard, the groups sailed toward the mussel raft areas and worked directly with the landscape in front of them: they identified fishing gear, distinguished aquaculture facilities from harvesting areas, completed field notebooks, and overcame a nautical and maritime culture challenge proposed by the skipper himself. The estuary was not a backdrop: it was the classroom.
The fish market. Back on land, the first station simulated a traditional Galician-style fish auction. Each student took on a role and bid on lots of different species, each with information on freshness, size, certification, and reference price. With a fictional budget to manage and time running out, the teams had to balance economic efficiency with sustainability criteria and defend their decisions out loud. Concepts such as the volatility of first-sale prices or the seasonality of species ceased to be abstract the moment fictional money was at stake.
The canning industry. The second land-based station drew directly on ANFACO-CYTMA’s sector expertise. The studentsreceived a deliberately altered “damaged file” (the stages of the industrial canning process were out of order, with sectionspartially crossed out) and had to reconstruct it correctly. They then examined a set of seafood product labels, one of which was asophisticated counterfeit. Finding it and being able to explain precisely what was wrong with it earned them the next fragment of Coral’s file.
Distribution and responsible consumption.
The third station addressed the less visible, but equally decisive, half of the chain.Working with a large-format European distribution map and a set of route cards with variables (transport cost, delivery time,carbon footprint, final sale price), the teams planned the optimal commercial route for a batch of Galician canned goods and had to adapt it on the fly when the instructor pulled out an envelope of unforeseen events: a port strike, a new EU labeling regulation, a rise in diesel prices. The station concluded with a true-or-false round on sustainability certifications, minimum catch sizes, closed seasons, and local-product labels, with gymkhana points at stake for every answer.
Cooking as the conclusion.
Once the three fragments of the file had been assembled, the back of the complete dossierrevealed a recipe made with authentic products from ANFACO-CYTMA member companies. The teams cooked it together,presented their dish explaining why they had chosen each ingredient based on what they had learned during the activity, and tasted it. The chain that had begun with a catamaran in the estuary came full circle around a meal that was fully understood.
Detectives reflects a shared conviction within the Hub4Food alliance: that the long-term resili
ence of the Atlantic foodsystem depends not only on technological innovation or regulatory frameworks, but also on whether the next generation of consumers understands where their food comes from, who produces it, and what their purchasing decisions really mean for coastal communities and marine ecosystems. Citizen science, in this sense, is not only about collecting data or involving the public in research processes. It is also about building an informed and engaged citizenry that makes sustainable food systems possible from the demand side. An activity like this (rooted in real sector knowledge, developed in real sector environments, and designed so that this knowledge is genuinely useful to a thirteen-year-old student) is a direct contribution to that goal. The activity also demonstrated the value of cross-sector collaboration within the Hub4Food framework. The combination of the expertise of ANFACO-CYTMA, CLUSAGA, and the local grounding provided by Festival Azul made it possible to offer students and interpretation of the value chain that was accurate to the Galician Atlantic context: a real portrait of a real sector.
