March 3, 2020 — Seafood coming from and going to China is piling up in freezer vans and cold storages indefinitely as the coronavirus continues to cause commerce chaos around the world.
Virus precautions mean that many ships can’t get into Chinese ports, others are stuck at docks waiting for workers to return, and still more are idling in “floating quarantined zones,” as countries refuse to allow crews of ships that have docked at Chinese ports to leave the boat until they have been declared virus-free.
Alaska seafood exports to China of nearly $1 billion include products for their own markets, but the bulk goes there for reprocessing and shipment back to the United States and other countries.
“If you have plants that have product coming in and no workers to fill it, you’re going to get that overflowing cold storage situation. So it’s definitely a problem on the reprocessing side. On the consumption side, if people aren’t going out to eat and going out to the market to buy seafood, that’s going to take consumption down as well. So there’s a couple different ways that it’s working against moving seafood through the supply chain,” said Andy Wink, director of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association and an economist who has tracked world salmon markets for more than a decade.