Saving Seafood

“Seafood For Heroes” feeding thousands of US healthcare workers, first responders

May 6, 2020 — Across the United States, healthcare workers and first responders on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis are being treated to healthy, protein-rich meals courtesy of the “Seafood For Heroes” program, a collaborative effort established by the Napa Seafood Foundation, with help from its network of foodservice and seafood industry partners.

The Seafood For Heroes initiative has been gaining steady momentum since its launch in late April, with more than 7,500 meals delivered throughout 49 U.S. cities in 11 states so far. Funds for food are raised by meal drives, with financial contributions accepted on the Seafood For Heroes website. The meals themselves – which range from USD 10 to USD 20 (EUR 9.22 to EUR 18.45) each – are prepared and delivered by the program’s local and national restaurant partners, including popular chain Red Lobster.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Hawaii-based fishing boats caught in economic meltdown

May 6, 2020 — About 145 commercial longline fishing boats are based in Honolulu and the group that represents them say they are facing a financial disaster.

Each year, Hawaii’s fishing industry brings in about a $100 million worth of fish on a wholesale basis. That’s according to Eric Kingma, executive director of the Hawaii Longline Association.

He says that in the last eight weeks as demand from restaurants has plunged, revenue losses for longline fishing have run about 60 percent over that time period.

And Kingma says this is not just a short-term issue..

Read the full story at Hawaii Public Radio

Groundfish Monitoring Amendment 23: Join the May 12 and May 21 Public Hearing Webinars

May 6, 2020 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council has scheduled two more public hearings on Draft Groundfish Monitoring Amendment 23, which is being developed to improve the accuracy and accountability of catch reporting in the commercial groundfish fishery.

The Council held its first public hearing on April 15, 2020 by webinar. Given the continued restrictions on public gatherings due to COVID-19, the Council will hold the May 12 and May 21 public hearings by webinar as well. Here’s what you need to know to join in.

Read the full release here

The Fate of the WTO and Global Trade Hangs on Fish

May 6, 2020 — The World Trade Organization (WTO) is struggling to maintain its relevance. Protectionism has been rising for more than a decade as a growing number of countries have openly flouted WTO rules. Many are having second thoughts about the wisdom of allowing China into the organization, where it retains special developing-economy rights that help shield its domestic economy from foreign competition. Recent trade agreements have been bilateral or regional, undermining the WTO’s purpose of maintaining a global trading order. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, impediments to trade are only expected to grow.

This sorry state of affairs in the global trading order is mirrored in the lack of progress in the only major global trade negotiations still actively underway—WTO talks intended to impose discipline on fisheries subsidies, which have led to depleted fish stocks in the world’s oceans. These talks have been going on for nearly two decades, have missed yet another deadline, and seem to be in limbo.

The obstacle standing in the way of a meaningful agreement is not just the reluctance of countries to give up subsidies. It also does not help that a deal requires unanimous approval of every clause and stipulation by all 164 WTO member countries—including landlocked ones without a marine fishing fleet, such as Hungary, Mongolia, and Mali. At the root of the fisheries problem, however, lies the WTO’s own preferred negotiating approach: As long as the WTO continues to approach trade using two different sets of rules—one for developed countries, the other for developing ones—the fisheries talks are all but certain to continue to produce only irreconcilable conflict.

Fish do not respect territorial boundaries. Overfishing, which continues to deplete fish stocks worldwide despite decades of attempts to make fishing sustainable, is by definition a global problem requiring a global solution. An estimated 37 percent of all the seafood produced in the world is traded internationally—which makes the WTO the logical forum to take the lead in finding a solution.

Read the full story at Foreign Policy

MARTY SCANLON: Observer waiver expires, increasing risk to longline fleet

May 6, 2020 — The following is a letter to Randy Blankenship, NOAA’s Southeast Branch chief of the Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Management Division.

I certainly hope all is well. I would think that our federal government is still operating under the Social Distancing Guidelines that our country is under till May 15. With this being said, I am extremely disappointed to be taking calls from my membership that our pelagic longline industry’s observer waiver has not been extended.

Aside from the inherent danger of traveling from all over the country, the inability to practice social distancing within the confines of our small pelagic longline vessels puts both our crews and observers at increased risk.

We have an observer program that operates at a high standard of safety and at-sea risk criteria. I would think the danger of covid-19 to any observer through improper social distancing is far greater than if a vessel’s flares were to expire in the middle of the trip.

NMFS not extending the observer waiver to our pelagic longline industry is a blatant disregard for the wellbeing of our individual captains, their crews, our observers, as well as the families they would be returning to. The Blue Water Fishermen’s Association and its membership will be holding the agency as well as observer program responsible for any negative results of this blatant disregard of the president’s social distancing guidelines.

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

A Quarantine Surprise: Americans Are Cooking More Seafood

May 5, 2020 — In 1963, on their way home from the hospital after he was born, Louis Rozzo’s parents stopped by a building on Ninth Avenue in Chelsea, where the family ran a wholesale seafood business, to weigh him in a scallop scale. This March, when virtually every restaurant, club and hotel that bought seafood from him closed and his firm’s income dried up in a matter of days, Mr. Rozzo went back to where it all began.

The F. Rozzo & Sons building was still in the family. Mr. Rozzo converted the ground floor into a makeshift store where he sells clams, scallops, sea bass and American red snapper to people who are suddenly cooking at home a lot more than they used to.

“I’m seeing people taking home fish, then coming in the next day and showing me pictures of how they prepared it,” he said. Some of them undertake recipes that require the better part of a day. Mr. Rozzo enjoys their enthusiastic feedback, although he also suggested that some of the energy New Yorkers are devoting to their kitchen projects is, like his overnight fish store itself, born of desperation.

“There’s not much else to do,” he said. “It’s either that or go home and drink all day.”

Read the full story at The New York Times

Fishermen, seafood businesses call for $1.5 billion federal covid-19 aid

May 5, 2020 — Independent fishermen and small- to medium-sized seafood business are calling on the Trump administration and Congress to come up with an additional $1.5 billion in covid-19 emergency funding, and new investment to build community-based supply chains to feed Americans.

The $300 million allocated for the industry by the CARES Act will help, but “it will not adequately mitigate the unprecedented losses that have been suffered nor the impacts that we anticipate over the coming months,” according to the letter, co-signed by a coalition of 238 including commercial fishing trade associations, seafood businesses, food and agriculture groups, and environmental and social justice advocates.

Much more is needed in “additional support from the federal government to maintain our livelihoods and supply essential food from the ocean to the American public,” the coalition warned in the letter – and with a video released on YouTube.

The letter makes detailed recommendations in five areas, including emergency aid; payroll protection and debt forgiveness for fishing businesses; resources to build up local supply chains; medical care and protective measures for fishermen and seafood workers; and getting more seafood supplied into the Department of Agriculture’s $19 billion Coronavirus Food Assistance Program.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: Local lobstermen face an uncertain season

May 5, 2020 — As Dave Cataldo Sr. loaded lobster traps into his boat with his son Monday at the Marshfield Town Pier, there was one person missing from the dock who in past years always made sure to stop by and say hello at the beginning of the season.

“This is the first year our dealer has not come down,” Cataldo said.

The wholesale lobster buyer normally comes down to the docks around the opening of the season to shake hands with him and his son, Dave Cataldo Jr., to check in and to ask how their winters were. The Cataldos’ buyer isn’t the only one missing.

“There’s nobody down here,” the senior Cataldo said.

Lobsters are normally a sought-after commodity and in past years, wholesalers have swamped the harbor with refrigerated trucks, ready and offering to buy the catch being unloaded at the harbor, he said.

With the economy on pause because of the coronavirus crisis, the future of lobstering, the demand and more importantly, the price per pound, is an unknown.

The younger Cataldo said restaurants, one of the biggest purchasers of lobsters, are mostly shut down and even when they are allowed to reopen, it will be with fewer customers spaced further apart.

Read the full story at The Patriot Ledger

MAINE: Lobstermen help schools amidst pandemic crisis

May 5, 2020 — When the coronavirus closed Maine schools, thousands of students who already qualified for free and reduced cost in-school meals faced the risk of hunger. With many parents suddenly out of work, many more students faced serious food insecurity.

At the same time, most Maine lobstermen found that there was no market for their catch. At one point, late in March and early in April, dealers were telling the lobstermen not to fish. In some places, the boat price for lobsters dropped as low as $1 per pound and many lobstermen began peddling their landings from the back of pickup trucks parked along the side of the road or in empty parking lots.

On Deer Isle, those unhappy circumstances sparked a move to turn lemons into lemonade or, more exactly, to turn unsaleable lobsters into lobster rolls for distribution to students from School Union 76, which includes Deer Isle/Stonington, Brooklin and Sedgwick.

According to Carla Guenther, senior scientist at the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, the idea originated with Deer Isle lobsterman Brent Oliver and his wife, Sue, while they, Guenther and her husband, lobsterman Dominic Zanke, were off island for a vacation at the beginning of March.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American