Saving Seafood

Seafood Processor Pleads Guilty to Selling Foreign Crabmeat Falsely Labeled as Blue Crab From USA

September 11, 2020 — The following was released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:

A North Carolina man pleaded guilty today before U.S. District Judge James C. Dever III in the Eastern District of North Carolina on charges that his company, Garland F. Fulcher Seafood Company Inc. (Garland Fulcher), at his direction, falsely labeled hundreds of thousands dollars’ worth of foreign crabmeat as “Product of USA.”

According to information in the public record, Jeffrey A. Styron was the treasurer of the corporate board of officers for Garland Fulcher, a North Carolina company engaged in the business of purchasing, processing, packaging, transporting and selling seafood and seafood products, including crabmeat from domestically harvested blue crab.

As treasurer, Styron was responsible for overseeing the daily operations of the company’s crab-related business, which involved managing and directing employees of the company with respect to the processing, packaging, and labeling of crab meat. Styron pleaded guilty to a one-count information charging him with substituting foreign crabmeat for domestic blue crab and, as part of the plea, Styron admitted to falsely labeling crabmeat with a retail market value of at least $250,000 dollars, which was sold primarily to small seafood retailers and restaurants.

“Blue crabs are a classic American seafood product and a vital resource for coastal communities in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and other parts of the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “This investigation is part of the department’s mission to work with our law enforcement partners in the protection of Atlantic blue crab populations and other marine resources.”

“Seafood mislabeling is consumer fraud that undermines efforts of hardworking, honest fisherman and the free market by devaluing the price of domestic seafood,” said U.S. Attorney Robert J. Higdon Jr. for the Eastern District of North Carolina. “In this case, the fraudulent scheme artificially deflated the cost of domestic blue crab and gave Styron and Garland Fulcher Seafood an unacceptable and unfair economic advantage over law-abiding competitors.”

Read the full release here

Despite early season fears, Chesapeake blue crab selling for record prices

May 14, 2020 — In March, the closure of most U.S. restaurants just as the blue crab season in Virginia and Maryland was getting started had retailers, processors, and watermen afraid that the bottom would drop out of the market.

Initial reports in local media indicated that pricing was off, in some cases, as much as 30 percent, and the fear was that the fishery would be in dire straits.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fisheries in Maryland, Virginia losing millions due to COVID-19 shutdowns

May 6, 2020 — Fisheries along the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Virginia are, like many other fisheries in the country, facing an economic crisis as restaurant shutdowns cause decreases in demand.

The region’s two most iconic fisheries – blue crab and oysters – are both being hit by COVID-19-based restaurant closures that caused a rapid drop in demand. Restaurants account for 70 percent or more of the demand for the two species, with retail channels unable to make up the demand gap.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Less Seasonal Help, Coronavirus Deliver One-Two Punch To Bay’s Blue Crab Industry

May 1, 2020 — Crab season is off to a slow and foreboding start around the Chesapeake Bay, with many crabmeat processors crippled by an inability to import seasonal workers and by watermen worried they’ll be unable to sell all they can catch as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Chilly, windy weather limited commercial harvests of blue crabs through much of April, the first full month of the season. Warming spring weather usually brings better fortunes, but those in the business of catching or picking crabs say they fear for their livelihoods amid the double whammy that’s hit the Bay’s most valuable fishery.

“It’s kind of a really scary situation,” said Bill Sieling, executive vice president of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association, which represents Maryland companies. “It just doesn’t look good.”

Read the full story from the Chesapeake Bay Journal at Patch.com

Effort aims to curb number of abandoned crab traps in Louisiana waters

April 20, 2020 — A new program is targeting the thousands of abandoned crab traps that litter Louisiana’s coastal waterways.

Louisiana Sea Grant, a coastal advocacy and research group based at LSU, has received a $40,000 federal grant to lead the project. The money comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Louisiana leads the nation in the number of commercial blue crab fishermen, with more than 2,500 license holders who have no limit on the number of traps they can operate, Louisiana Sea Grant says in a news release. Some commercial crabbers run as many as 800 to 2,000 traps each.

In addition, Louisiana has more than 6,600 licensed recreational crab fishermen who can operate 10 traps each.

Between commercial and recreational crabbers, there can be more than 66,000 traps in the water, the group says.

“On average, 130 traps per crabber are lost each year due to storms, accidents and intentional abandonment,” Sea Grant says. “The result is in an estimated 11 million crabs lost to ghost fishing by derelict traps. Other fish, such as red drum, black drum and summer flounder also can get stuck in the traps.

Read the full story at Houma Today

ALASKA: Blue king crab fisheries in the Bering Sea are struggling

September 4, 2019 — Every year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports to Congress on the status of U.S. fisheries. The report breaks the data down by region, and highlights which stocks are in “overfishing” and “overfished” status, as well as which stocks have been rebuilt.

The 2018 report, released in August, shows an Alaska stock was just added to the nation’s overfished list.

Krista Milani, a natural resource specialist with NOAA Fisheries in Unalaska, said the recently released report shows the number of U.S. fish stocks subject to overfishing remains at a near all-time low — meaning there are a lot of healthy, sustainable populations. But in Alaska, it’s not all good news.

“For the Alaska region, we didn’t have any fisheries that were in overfishing status, but we do have two stocks that are considered overfished,” Milani said.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

North Carolina blue crab stocks flourish, but Hurricane Florence wiped out infrastructure

January 24, 2019 — North Carolina’s blue crab season got off to a good start, but was slammed when Hurricane Florence hit in September and was expected to rebound as 2018 came to a close.

“Some crabbers lost everything, and several packing operations were completely destroyed. It’s been a very tough year for the industry in general,” said Glenn Skinner, executive director of the North Carolina Fisheries Association.

However, preliminary figures indicate the blue crab fishery came out better than expected.

“All in all, 2018 was a great crab year for us,” says Dylan Dunbar, manager of Paradise Shores Seafood in Pamlico County. “Around here, crabbing usually slacks off in early July, when Maryland and Virginia markets pick up, and the prices drop. Many pull their pots and wait for things to pick up after the new year.”

Not so for many crabbers to the south, where the devastation from Florence was more extensive and took a toll on the area’s fish houses.

The 2018 Semi-Annual Commercial Landings Bulletin (January-June) indicates a decrease in blue crab landings, down from 8 million pounds landed in 2017 to 5.8 million for the same period this year.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MARYLAND: Seafood restaurant wages war with PETA

September 7, 2018 — After People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) targeted Maryland’s blue crab industry in an ad campaign last month, seafood restaurant Jimmy’s Famous Seafood is fighting back to protect its livelihood.

“It’s our livelihood and the Maryland blue crab is the bloodline of Maryland.…Tens of thousands of jobs depend on the Maryland blue crab economy on a daily basis,” John Minadakis, owner of Jimmy’s Famous Seafood in Dundalk, Maryland, told SeafoodSource.

To that end, Jimmy’s launched a scathing Twitter campaign that, in part, accuses PETA of slaughtering kittens and puppies. The restaurant also posted a billboard featuring a photo of its steamed crab with the statement: “SteaMEd crabs. Here to stay. Get Famous.”

In late August, PETA placed a billboard near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, home to several seafood restaurants such as Phillips Seafood, McCormick & Schmick’s, and The Oceanaire Seafood Room. The billboard, which includes an image of a Maryland blue crab, states: “I’m me, not meat. See the individual. Go vegan.”

“Just like humans, crabs feel pain and fear, have unique personalities, and value their own lives,” PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman said in a statement. “PETA’s billboard aims to give Charm City residents some food for thought about sparing sensitive marine animals the agony of being boiled alive or crushed to death in fishing nets simply by going vegan.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Government policy could leave Maryland crab houses shuttered for the summer

June 20, 2018 — Hoopers Island sits in a remote section of the Chesapeake Bay, but at this time of year, this end of the road community is bustling — crabs are running out and a steady parade of watermen are arriving at Harry Phillip’s dock to unload bushel after bushel of blue crab.

But as of Tuesday afternoon, the watermen and the man who buys their crabs say their livelihood is being threatened by a new government policy on migrant worker visas.

“There’s something wrong with the system,” said Phillips, who owns Russel Hall Seafood.

With record low unemployment in the U.S. and demand for migrant workers way up, the government instituted a lottery system for worker visas.

After going through two rounds of lotteries, Phillips hasn’t been granted a single worker visa.

A few of the crab houses did get their workers and will be in business, but most did not and are facing a lost summer.

Read the full story at WJLA

Healthy fisheries and aquatic grasses fuel Chesapeake Bay recovery

June 19, 2018 — Booming aquatic grasses and bellwether fisheries are driving sustained progress in Chesapeake Bay health, which experts say is finally showing “significant” overall improvement.

The 2017 Chesapeake Bay Report Card issued by Virginia and Maryland rates the estuary a C for the third straight year as recovery holds steady or improves in five of seven indicators, the James River nails a B- for the first time and the fisheries index scores its first-ever A+.

Experts call their assessment “important evidence that the positive trend in ecosystem health is real” and that cleanup efforts across the watershed are working.

“It is the first time that the … scores are significantly trending in the right direction,” said Bill Dennison at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in a statement Friday. “We have seen individual regions improving before, but not the entire Chesapeake Bay.”

The UMCES compiled the report card along with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and other governmental agencies and academic groups both in this state and Maryland. This is the 12th year of its release.

The fisheries index is comprised of the average score for blue crab, striped bass and bay anchovy indicators. These species are considered ecologically, economically and socially important to the bay.

Last year’s fisheries index was 90 percent. This year, it rose to 95 percent, the highest ever recorded for the annual reports — the average of 100 percent for striped bass and blue crab, and 84 percent for bay anchovy.

Read the full story at the Daily Press