Saving Seafood

NORTH CAROLINA: Outbreak, safety measures start to take toll on fishermen

April 7, 2020 — Local commercial fishermen and seafood businesses are persevering through the novel coronavirus outbreak, but restrictions and safety measures are starting to take their toll.

N.C. Fisheries Association President and commercial fisherman Glenn Skinner said Wednesday retail markets are still doing business with fishermen and seafood dealers; however, he said these markets are “a small percentage” of the normal markets for locally harvested seafood, so retail markets alone are “not enough to keep fishermen on the water.”

“I don’t have an estimate of the economic impacts in terms of dollars and cents,” Mr. Skinner said, “but I can tell you that 80 percent of domestic seafood goes through food service businesses, primarily restaurants. With the entire country shutting down restaurants, there is very little market for most of what N.C. fishermen produce.”

Mr. Skinner said there is seafood available for harvest and “literally tons of product” that’s been frozen.

Read the full story at the Carteret County News-Times

NOAA seeks pandemic input to plan for future

April 7, 2020 — It might be difficult to fathom while we reside in the belly of the beast, but information being compiled by NOAA on the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the U.S. commercial seafood industry could improve the agency’s response in future natural disasters and economic crises.

NOAA said it has assembled a team of experts from a variety of disciplines throughout the agency — including economists and social scientists — to collect and analyze data on how the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 are impacting the U.S. commercial seafood industry, from harvesters straight up through the supply chain.

The agency is looking for stakeholders — both wild harvest and aquaculture — to relate their personal experiences from within the grip of the pandemic. Those stories, the agency said, could help frame NOAA’s future responses to disasters.

“We are interested in learning about the virus’s impacts on their employees, their business, the businesses they support and the broader supply chain,” NOAA said in the statement accompanying the announcement of the team’s formation. “Stakeholders interested in sharing information on the effects of COVID-19 on their businesses can submit that information to NMFS.COVID-19@noaa.gov.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Bristol Bay community leaders lay out minimum protocol needed to allow salmon season

April 7, 2020 — Leaders of several major community organizations in Bristol Bay have issued a list of minimum protocols they expect to be in place before the commercial salmon fishery can take place this summer.

Among other the protocol listed, fishermen and other seasonal workers would undergo a physical exam including a COVID-19 test with a negative result no more than 48 hours before traveling to the region. After arriving in Bristol Bay, the individuals would be transported to a quarantine location and remain in quarantine until a follow-up negative COVID-19 test is confirmed. The leaders listed out other expectations, including weekly health screenings, for the seafood industry to establish as minimum protocol for the 2020 season.

“We were hearing up until we came up with our own position statement for the lack of a better word, was that what everybody was advocating for was really based around quarantine – the 14 day quarantine period. That seemed to be what was going to fix everything and make us all comfortable. The reality is, our opinion is that it’s going to take multiple types of protocol, so we think that COVID-19 testing, in combination with quarantine gives us the lowest level of risk,” Norm Van Vactor, CEO of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation said. “There’s still some risk there, and at the end of the day, our communities are going to have to decide whether even that level of risk is acceptable.”

Read the full story at KTUU

Prices in Maine’s lucrative baby eel fishery sink to 10-year low

April 7, 2020 — A week after Maine’s annual commercial baby eel fishing season got under way, prices for the lucrative catch are the lowest they have been in the past 10 years.

According to information posted on the Maine Department of Marine Resources website, the average price paid to baby eel fishermen in Maine this past week is $512 per pound, which is roughly $360 lower than the lowest average annual price fishermen have received in the past decade.

From 2011 through 2019, baby eels in Maine fetched an average of $1,670 per pound, varying between an average of $875 in 2014 and an average of $2,366 in 2018.

Maine is the only state that has a significant legal fishery for baby eels, which also are known as glass eels or elvers. The vast majority of elvers caught in Maine are shipped live to China, where they are grown in aquaculture ponds and then harvested as adult eels for the global seafood market.

Fishery officials have said that the prices for elvers this year could be unusually low, given the severe adverse impact the global COVID-19 pandemic has had on the economy and the demand for seafood, and in particular on the restaurant market in Asia.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Safety protocols in Alaska evolving amidst growing COVID-19 concerns

April 7, 2020 — The seafood industry is adapting and tightening its safety protocols as fears grow over summer fishing activities spreading COVID-19 in rural Alaska.

In Bristol Bay, Alaska, a recently released document signed by local industry heavyweights like the Bristol Bay Regional Development Association and the Bristol Bay Native Corporation suggests that all workers test negative within 48 hours of traveling to the region.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford fisheries hopeful as restaurants adapt to COVID-19 crisis

April 7, 2020 — Commercial fishermen depend on restaurants to survive.

Keith Decker, President of Blue Harvest Fisheries in New Bedford, says demand for seafood is down by 65-percent, and much of that is because many restaurants closed down at the beginning of the crisis.

Decker says blue and yellow fin tuna have been hit hard. When their last tuna vessel came in right after the coronavirus shock, “there were no buyers for the fish. That market dried up to zero.” The company inevitably had to sell off the fish for a fraction of its price or freeze it.

And while it’s unlikely high end sushi restaurants will be opening up anytime soon, some fishermen are hopeful. Wayne Reichle, owner of a scallop fishery in New Bedford, says there could be an uptick in demand for less expensive seafood.

“Restaurants are starting to re-open after they figured out they could do customer pick-up or home delivery,” Reichle says. “It’s taken two or three weeks but people sort of figured out how to continue supplying meals and keeping fresh seafood in the supply chain.”

Read the full story at The Public’s Radio

FLORIDA: Local commercial fishermen and fish markets feel affect of COVID-19

April 7, 2020 — With doors closed to area seafood restaurants due to the coronavirus, there’s not much call for commercial fishermen to haul in those fish.

“We had just got a 14,000-pound load of red snapper in, anticipating a whole bunch of busy restaurants,” said Eddie Morgan of Harbor Docks Seafood Market. “But that didn’t happen at all.

“We’re not hardly selling anything to restaurants … we’re still selling a little bit to the fish markets,” he said such as Shrimpers and Goatfeathers in South Walton. “But the restaurants are not like they should be.”

Morgan said they opened their seafood market on Mountain Drive last week and sold whatever they had at wholesale prices to the general public.

But with restaurants closed for in-door dining, and only a few still doing carry out, the demand for fish is low.

“There are a few (commercial) boats fishing, but most of the boats that we work with … we’ve told them to stay at the dock,” Morgan said. “We don’t need much now.”

Read the full story at The Destin Log

NEW JERSEY: Pop-up seafood market at Jersey Shore helps fishermen hurt by COVID-19 restaurant closures

April 7, 2020 — A pop-up wholesale seafood market is helping to keep the fishing industry afloat in an Ocean County municipality.

Point Pleasant Beach’s Shore Fresh Seafood Market is collaborating with the Fishermen’s Dock Cooperative to sell the catch — brought ashore on the docks directly behind the business — on its outdoor patio on Channel Drive.

According to a posting on Shore Fresh Seafood Market’s Facebook page, the new offering is out of necessity.

Read the full story at WHYY

Feds extend waiver on monitors for some East Coast fisheries

April 7, 2020 — The federal government has extended a waiver on the requirement for at-sea monitors for some East Coast fisheries.

Fishing boats often carry human observers, or at-sea monitors, to gather data that is important to the management of fisheries. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the rule is waived in some northeastern U.S. fisheries until at least April 18.

NOAA said in a statement that it will “continue to evaluate the need for further extensions of this waiver on a weekly basis.” The waiver is a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bangor Daily News

Cape scientists forge ahead with right whale research

April 7, 2020 — Over the past week, New England Aquarium scientist Philip Hamilton, manager of the right whale identification catalog at the aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, has received photos of about 30 right whales taken by people walking the shoreline around Race Point and off Nahant.

Unfortunately, researchers hoping to see them from the air and sea during what they consider the epicenter of right whale migration into Cape Cod Bay essentially have been grounded by weather and coronavirus.

“We lost 22 days there,” said Charles “Stormy” Mayo, a senior scientist and director of the Right Whale Ecology Program at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown.

COVID-19 fears forced the New England Aquarium to close March 13. Admission fees account for 80% of their $3.5 million in annual operating expenses, and the aquarium announced layoffs and furloughs last week to cut costs.

The Center for Coastal Studies did not lay off anyone, spokesperson Cathrine Macort said, but its offices and lab are closed. The center is watching expenses and applying for federal payroll aid.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times