January 31, 2015 — From the late 1970s through the ’80s, the small, silver-colored butterfish was a high-flying commodity in Japan. Millions upon millions of pounds were bought and sold, and almost the entire harvest came off Rhode Island vessels.
But as often happens with boom cycles, this one was followed by a bust – and the whole butterfish market dried up and vanished. The end came in the mid-1990s, after the Tokyo stock market crashed, and the value of the yen sank further below the dollar. But there were problems on the Rhode Island end as well – the fish were getting too small for the prices U.S. sellers were asking. So the Japanese found a cheaper substitute.
For nearly two decades the East Coast butterfish market has been dormant. Landings have been stagnant, and the quotas have been too low to regain market footing.
But that could change. In the past two years National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries has begun raising the butterfish quota, with the largest increase set for last month.
Getting a lost market back won’t be easy for Rhode Island fish sellers. Two significant obstacles stand in the way: one is economic, the other biological.
“There is no way we’re going to just flip a switch with this and be back in boom time,” said Glenn Goodwin, co-owner of SeaFreeze Ltd., a Rhode Island frozen seafood company based in North Kingstown and the Narragansett fishing village of Galilee.
SeaFreeze has been in the butterfish business since 1984.
Goodwin owns the company with his brother Kyle, who is the captain of one of the company vessels, and their father, Richard, who started it, and who helped develop many innovations for at-sea freezing, sorting and processing.
Read the full story at Providence Business News