Saving Seafood

JOELLE HALL: Alaskans need answers on Copper River Seafoods investigation

March 11, 2021 — As the president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, Alaska’s largest labor organization, my responsibility is to fight for workers’ rights, whether they belong to a union or not.

Protecting workers’ health and safety has been at the forefront of our work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recent media reports have uncovered that Commissioner of Labor Tamika Ledbetter blocked nearly $450,000 in proposed fines against a seafood plant that willfully violated COVID-19 workplace safety standards and was hostile with public health officials from the State of Alaska and the Municipality of Anchorage.

The question is, why?

Were the violations mild and isolated, causing them to fall through the cracks of an overburdened department?

Read the full opinion piece at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Board of Fish bumps back meeting schedule citing cost concerns, public outcry

March 9, 2021 — Alaska’s Board of Fisheries has bumped its meeting cycle back a year after cost concerns and public outcry. Commercial fishing interests had raised concerns that a packed schedule wouldn’t give stakeholders a fair amount of time with the board.

Alaska’s Board of Fish is a seven-member board of citizens appointed by the governor. They make critical decisions about the whos, whats and whens of access to the state’s fisheries.

COVID-19 caused Board of Fish meetings to be postponed, including its regional meeting for Southeast. In January, the board voted to cram two years’ worth of meetings into the next meeting cycle. That would’ve effectively doubled the amount of meetings this year.

The vast majority of public and advisory committee comments received in recent months raised concerns about the doubled schedule.

On Monday, the Dunleavy administration also weighed in. Fish & Game commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang says his agency does not have the budget for twice the meeting load.

“Right now we do not have money to double up on in-person meetings next year,” Vincent-Lang said. “I can tell you it’s my intent not to rob Peter to pay Paul to double up on meetings. I’m not going to dig into the department budget at a half-million dollars to fund those meetings.”

Read the full story at KSTK

Legal Sea Foods considers appeal after losing insurance case

March 9, 2021 — Legal Sea Foods is “considering its options” after a federal judge ruled against the seafood restaurant chain on its COVID-19 insurance case, the company’s attorney told SeafoodSource.

The Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based foodservice chain, which became embroiled in a separate controversy last month involving its creditors, sued Strathmore Insurance Company in May 2020 over failure to cover business losses Legal Sea Foods incurred from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fishing industry surveys seek data on pandemic impacts and tech priorities

March 9, 2021 — It’s likely that no other fishing regions of the world reach out for stakeholder input as much as Alaska does to gather policy-shaping ground truth by state and federal managers and organizations.

That’s demonstrated by two new surveys – one which aims to quantify how much Alaska fishermen and processors paid out over the past year to lessen COVID impacts and how much relief they got from government programs, the other to learn what technology needs are tops with harvesters.

The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute is collecting information not available elsewhere on the pandemic impacts.

Processors are being asked about financial losses due to COVID mitigation efforts, plant closures and employment changes, as well as their expectations for costs and employment levels in 2021, explained Jenna Dickinson, a consultant with the McKinley Research Group who is working with ASMI on the project. Processor costs include but are not limited to charter flights and hotel put-ups for worker quarantines, plant modifications, medical and testing supplies and related services.

Many fishermen also paid for similar coverages for their crews.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

One year in, researchers try to quantify COVID’s impact on seafood industry

March 9, 2021 — The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute has been diving into the effects of COVID-19 on the seafood industry for a while now.

Mainly, it’s been using interviews, anecdotal evidence and market research to compile briefings about how fishermen and other industry stakeholders have fared.

Now, the association is looking for more quantitative data about the effects of the pandemic. It’s sending out two surveys — one for fishermen and one for processors.

“We wanted to conduct this survey to really, fully measure the scale and breadth of the pandemic impacts on Alaska’s commercial fishermen, as well as processors,” said communications director Ashley Heimbigner. “Which hasn’t really been done yet, on a broad scale.”

Read the full story at KDLL

Yearbook: Fishing fleets flex

March 8, 2021 — With revenues up 3 percent in January and February of 2020, the industry was looking ahead to another strong year in the global marketplace.

In March, when restaurants across the country shuttered quickly under covid-19 outbreak restrictions, seafood supply chains ground to a halt in the early days of the pandemic. Fishermen who had been out harvesting to supply the once-solid market were stuck with their catch left unsold and their boats tied up.

In early March, New Jersey fisherman Gus Lovgren was headed to port after a Virginia summer flounder trip when his wife called him, “saying they’re shutting the country down, basically,” he recalled.

“We had been getting $1.75 to $2 (per pound). In the end we got, I think, 60 cents,” said Lovgren. “The market was flooded, and there was nothing we could do.”

Right out of the gates in April 2020, the Hawaii Longline Association worked with others in Hawaii’s fishing industry to donate 2,000 pounds of fresh seafood to Hawaii Foodbank, and planning larger deliveries.

The initial donation, coordinated with the with United Fishing Agency’s Honolulu auction, the Hawaii Seafood Council, Nico’s Pier 38, and Pacific Ocean Producers, “is the beginning of a new pilot program with the Hawaii Foodbank,” the association said.

“Through the partnership, Hawaii Foodbank plans to purchase $50,000 worth of seafood landed by Hawaii longline vessels,” according to a statement from the association. “The purchase will ensure that Hawaii Foodbank will be able to meet the needs of Hawaii residents facing hardship as a result of covid-19. It will also support Hawaii’s longline fishermen.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

NJ fishing community says virus aid helps keep it afloat

March 8, 2021 — With New Jersey’s commercial fishing industry about to receive a second round of federal coronavirus aid, boat owners and those who run fishing-related businesses say the extra money is helping keep them afloat amid a sea of red ink.

The state’s fishing industry received $11 million last March under the CARES Act, an early aid bill passed in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

And it should get roughly the same amount under a second bill passed by Congress in December, U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. said Monday. Pallone, (D-NJ) held a news conference Monday at the Belford Seafood Cooperative in Middletown with boat owners and those who run related businesses.

Many said the extra money could make the difference between working and not working this spring and summer. They declined to say how much each individually received under the measure.

“I’ve been on a boat with my family since I was 7 years old,” said Capt. Richard Isaksen, president of the fishing cooperative. “We still haven’t recovered from Superstorm Sandy that hurt us badly with eight feet of water on the dock and (which) wiped everything out.”

The 2012 storm caused widespread devastation in New Jersey, New York and other northeastern coastal states.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Study: Seafood’s response to COVID-19 can pave the way for future resilience

March 8, 2021 — The impacts of COVID-19 on the globalized seafood sector may offer crucial lessons for making the industry more resilient and capable of minimizing economic threats to food and nutrition security, seafood-based livelihoods, and local economies caused by global pandemics.

Published in Global Food Security, “Emerging COVID-19 impacts, responses, and lessons for building resilience in the seafood system” acknowledges the seafood sector is highly globalized, and that fish and other aquatic foods are among the world’s most-traded commodities, with an estimated value of more than USD 162 billion (EUR 134.7 billion) in 2018.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

West Coast Seafood Processors ‘Cautiously Hopeful’ for the Remainder of 2021

March 5, 2021 — The West Coast Seafood Processors Association (WCSPA) said seafood processors are hoping to see improvements in 2021 as the vaccination process rolls out nationwide and restaurants begin to reopen.

Both fishermen and seafood processors are often the backbones of coastal communities, the WCSPA explained. The industries provide economic stability and generate thousands of local year-round jobs.

Read the full story at Seafood News