Saving Seafood

Disruption in the seafood supply chain ripples from empty Philly restaurants to idle N.J. docks

April 2, 2020 — The Monica should be steaming across the open Atlantic right now, cruising 80 miles southeast off the coast of New Jersey over the deep Hudson Canyon on a 10-day hunt for lucrative golden tilefish.

But the Monica’s owner, Dan Mears, had to call his boat back to the Barnegat Light docks after just two days. The COVID-19 pandemic had shuttered virtually every restaurant dining room in the nation. And by the time Mayor Jim Kenney ordered the closure of nonessential businesses for Philadelphia on March 16, the market value for tilefish had dropped by more than 50% overnight. Ernie Panacek, Mears’ seafood wholesaler at Viking Village, told him his catch wasn’t worth the price of diesel, bait, and tackle.

“Never had to do that in 42 years of fishing,” said Mears, 60, the son of a Barnegat Light fisherman, whose own son, Dan Jr., is now the Monica’s captain. “It’s Lent and people should be eating fish right now — but they aren’t. The (crew’s) food is still on the boat. We’re ready to go. But we just have to wait and wait for the word.”

That word — a return to normalcy of some sort — can’t come soon enough for Rodney Dickson, 55, a fish hauler who normally packs the Monica’s catch on ice but who’s spent his days of unemployment walking up and down Long Beach Island like a zombie: “Yesterday I took 22,945 steps and walked 10.9 miles.”

Read the full story at The Philadelphia Inquirer

Coronavirus places 2020 Alaska salmon fishery ‘in question’, exec worries

April 2, 2020 — The escalating COVID-19 crisis places the 2020 Alaska salmon fishery in question, as the industry works on solutions to getting thousands of workers to the remote state without spreading the highly infectious coronavirus.

As many as 15,000 workers can descend on Alaska from the other US states and overseas for the season, but numbers are expected to be lower than this in 2020, if indeed the industry can find a workable solution, sources told Undercurrent News.

“If you asked me a month ago that a situation like this would be possible, that I was contemplating that the successful prosecution of our 2020 salmon fishery couldn’t take place, I would not have believed you,” said Norm Van Vactor, executive director of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation (BBEDC), a community development quota group, which owns half of processor Ocean Beauty Seafoods.

“If you know what we know today — and we don’t know a lot — then the prosecution of the fishery is in question,” Van Vactor told Undercurrent. “I’m optimistic that if we all pull together — understanding that communities are going to put health and public safety first, and that’s the foundation of how we move forward — we can make it happen, to some extent.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

September dates announced for Seafood Expo North America

April 2, 2020 — New dates have been selected for Seafood Expo North America/Seafood Processing North America, the continent’s largest seafood industry exhibition.

The 2020 event will comprise an exhibit hall open 23 and 24 September at its regular home in the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A, and a conference program that will begin on 22 September.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Pollution Has Slowed Around The World. Scientists Wonder How That Will Affect Maine

April 2, 2020 — Atmospheric and oceanographic scientists are just as concerned as anyone about helping their friends and family, the nation and the world make it through the trials of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it is also their job to pay attention to a kind of grand experiment that’s underway — an unprecedented hiatus in human pressure on global ecosystems and what that hiatus could mean on the ground, and on the water, for Maine.

Paul Mayewski is the director of the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute. He says that the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the pause button on pollution worldwide.

“Unfortunately, like 9/11, this is a situation in which there is a tremendous shutdown in activity, even more dramatically than 9/11 because it is happening all over the world,” he says.

For scientists such as Mayewski, it’s a chance to study phenomena that hearken back to the pre-industrial era and, some believe, could provide a snapshot of what a post-fossil future could look like.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Seafood suppliers, traders forced to adapt quickly to shifting demand

April 2, 2020 — Facing a marketplace that has been drastically changed in the span of less than two months by the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. seafood suppliers, distributors, restaurants, and wholesalers are adapting by switching up their sales methods.

A number of larger seafood companies have moved further into retail sales. Others are urging greater industry collaboration and a joint “Buy American” marketing effort. On the more local level, small- to medium-sized seafood suppliers have shifted to a much more significant online presence, offering to ship orders directly to Americans’ homes. Online marketing data group eMarketer projects direct-to-consumer (D2C) ecommerce sales to surge 24.3 percent to USD 17.8 billion (EUR 16.3 billion) in 2020.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Hawaii’s fishing industry financially impacted by COVID-19

April 2, 2020 — The state’s fishing industry has been financially impacted by COVID-19 but it provided an unexpected benefit for consumers. United Fishing Agency runs the auction at Pier 38 every morning. The manager says they started to feel the effects around mid-March when restaurants were ordered to go take-out only. At one point, ahi dropped to about $1 per pound, that’s about a 500 percent drop from normal prices.

As expected, sales at restaurants and hotels have gone down during the coronavirus outbreak and the fishing industry is adapting to a new normal by changing up the way they do business.

“You see a lot of businesses selling retail, slabs of fish that normally wouldn’t have done in a regular market,” Michael Goto, United Fishing Agency auction manager, said. “It really hurts everybody. It hurts the vessels, it hurts us here at the auctions.”

Goto believes how well his industry does depends on how tourism is doing so he’s unsure when numbers will go back to normal.

Read the full story at KITV

NEW JERSEY: Commercial fishermen scale back production as market demand plummets

April 2, 2020 — With restaurants only permitted to offer takeout and delivery, and many specialty seafood markets offering limited products or temporarily closing amid the COVID-19 outbreak, commercial fishermen are scaling back operations, too, and they’re feeling the impact.

“It’s scary what’s out there, it really is,” said Ernie Panacek, 69, general manager of Viking Village, a commercial seafood producer in the borough.

“The money that we get comes from those people going out to dinner and going to retail,” he said. “It’s going to be a hardship for a while. No one is going to flip a switch and have it go away immediately. We’re going to feel this for a long time.”

Read the full story at The Press of Atlantic City

MASSACHUSETTS: Scallop Industry Kicks Off Season On Uncertain Terms Amid COVID-19 Crisis

April 2, 2020 — The scallop industry has been growing steadily over the last few years, valued at over $500 million. But the coronavirus spread has brought it to a halt, mostly because restaurants are no longer buying.

New Bedford scallop fisherman Eric Hansen says there’s usually an influx of landings when the season starts but the coronavirus spread has changed everything.

“I’m questioning myself whether I’m going to make a trip or wait to see if maybe there are restaurants open and a demand starts again,” Hansen said. “But right now everything is in flux.”

Read the full story at The Public’s Radio

Virus Economic Damage to Commercial Fishing Grows Daily

April 2, 2020 — The pulse of Viking Village’s commercial fishing industry this year will greatly depend on how long the coronavirus extends into the coming spring and summer season, local leaders say. But boats are already tied up at the docks.

Viking Village Inc. Commercial Seafood Producers in Barnegat Light sells a large chunk of its catch right now to wholesalers, who last week were still buying product and freezing it, but with restaurants closed down to all but takeout and delivery, the chain is tightened.

“There’s no place to sell them in the restaurants,” said scallop fleet owner Kirk Larson, whose family co-owns Viking Village with the Puskas family. Larson was speaking about metropolitan markets beyond New Jersey as well. Prices paid had also dropped. “We’re selling a few in New York markets, but not as many as we’re catching.

“If it doesn’t get sold at a seafood market, it doesn’t go anywhere, because restaurants are closed. They can sell takeout, but that’s not like when restaurants are full-bore. In summer, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Larson said last week. “There are plenty of stocks to catch; it’s whether we will have a place to sell them.”

Read the full story at The Sand Paper

Here’s How Alaskan Fishermen Are Dealing With The Coronavirus Pandemic

April 1, 2020 — In Alaska, salmon is kind of a big deal. According to NOAA Fisheries, more than half of the fish caught in US waters come from Alaska, and about a third of those fish are salmon. COVID-19 has been on the global radar for several months, however the focus now is mitigating rapid community spread. Shelter-in-place orders keep people indoors and away from grocery stores, markets, and restaurants. While the pandemic is crippling every industry, the seafood supply chain is at a standstill. Producing more by volume than all other states combined, Alaskan fisheries are exceptionally important to seafood markets. The outbreak could disrupt the start of salmon season for Alaskan fishers this year, and there is currently little understanding of how the seafood industry will be affected now and in the future.

The salmon season in Alaska runs from May through September. In this time, many fishers pull in a majority of their annual income. In 2019, the valuable salmon season brought in $657.6 million. Of the five species of salmon caught in Alaska, sockeye, pink, and chum salmon account for more than 90% of the total value, according to the Alaska Journal of Commerce.

Many remote Alaskan fishing towns rely on seasonal crews from other states or countries. One deputy commissioner of the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development estimates more than 20,000 workers are brought into the state each year to work in the seafood industry, according to Anchorage Daily News. With travel restrictions in place, questions remain as to whether essential workers will be able to travel to work in the processing plants this year.

Read the full story at Forbes