May 27, 2020 — Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada-based AC Covert is rolling out new seafood boxes available for home delivery in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.
The seafood distribution company, which is owned by Cooke Inc., caters to retailers, restaurants, and the tourism and hospitality sectors, but has pivoted its sales focus due to the coronavirus pandemic.
May 27, 2020 — Lusamerica Fish, located in Morgan Hill, California, has become the center of a “COVID-19 cluster,” San Jose Inside reported.
The company, which sells a variety of seafood under the “Tasty Catch” brand, has had 38 employees in the distribution facility test positive for COVID-19, public health officials have stated. According to Mercury News, Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said, during a committee meeting on 26 May, that the outbreak started with a spouse of an employee at the plant being hospitalized due to the virus.
May 27, 2020 — Even if Americans are cooking at home like they probably never had before, and even if they are consuming more seafood, increased domestic demand has not been enough to offset lost income earned from restaurants, where 70 percent of seafood across the country is consumed (via Wall Street Journal). To give you an idea of how cheap seafood is these days, South Coast Today says that the price of flounder, which used to be sold to New York restaurants, had come down “quite a bit” while the price of scallops is down by 40 percent in the case of larger shellfish, and 30 percent cheaper for the smaller scallops which we find in warehouse stores like Costco and BJ’s today.
Halibut caught at Pacific fisheries used to cost more than $30 at high-end restaurants in Vancouver, but wholesale prices were down about a dollar in mid-April — and those prices are projected to go down further (via The Conversation). The scenario echoes the one experienced by the lobster industry during the early days of the pandemic when quarantines across China during the Lunar New Year period killed demand for shellfish.
One Philadelphia-based company that supplies seafood to restaurants, hotels, and casinos saw its sales plunge 75 percent in March. The situation was so dire, its owner, Sam D’Angelo told the Wall Street Journal that workers stored what they could in freezers and disposed of what they couldn’t save into landfills. The company lost about $100,000 worth of fresh lobster, clams, and mussels; and it’s a scene that’s been repeated several times over in America’s farms (via CNBC). The seafood distributor has since laid off half of its 400 employees.
May 26, 2020 — Concerns relating to the coronavirus have meant many state, federal and international fishery management meetings have gone virtual. But now two of those meetings are tackling COVID-19’s direct effect on fisheries and fisheries management.
The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council is seeking input on COVID-19 impacts on fisheries and management when it meets virtually for its June 2020 meeting. The council may also consider management changes to ease those impacts, according to an industry notice.
May 26, 2020 — NOAA Fisheries announced Friday that it will cancel five out of its six large-scale research surveys in Alaskan waters this year due to COVID-19. The canceled surveys include the Aleutian Islands bottom trawl survey, the eastern Bering Sea bottom trawl survey, the northern Bering Sea bottom trawl survey, the Bering Sea pollock acoustics survey, and the Fall Ecosystem Survey. The Alaska Longline Survey is not affected.
“We determined that there is no way to move forward with a survey plan that effectively minimizes risks to staff, crew, and the communities associated with the surveys. For instance, conducting the key groundfish and crab surveys in a limited timeframe would require extraordinarily long surveys, well beyond standard survey operations,” wrote NOAA Fisheries in a statement. “Extended quarantines for the survey team prior to and following surveys would also be necessary to ensure survey team and public health and safety.”
May 26, 2020 — The aquaculture industry may be getting a kick start from the federal government, due in part to the coronavirus pandemic. President Trump issued an executive order on May 7 designed to support and promote domestic aquaculture, an industry that has struggled to gain its footing in California.
Aquaculture is the practice of breeding, raising, and harvesting fish, shellfish and aquatic plants. The industry lies at the cross-section of farming and fisheries. According to the California Aquaculture Association, 80-90% of the seafood consumed in the United States is imported and approximately half of that is produced through aquaculture.
Though not prominent along California’s central coast, there are aquaculture enterprises right under our noses — in Monterey, that includes right under Municipal Wharf No. 2. The Monterey Abalone Company runs California’s only in-Ocean Abalone farm, occupying the space below the pier that was previously left to sea lions and waves.
But U.S.-based aquaculture makes up very little of the market. “We are the second-largest consumer of seafood in the world,” says California Sea Grant Aquaculture Specialist Luke Gardner, “but produce far less than 1% of the aquaculture produced seafood.”
May 26, 2020 — The seafood lobby says assistance from the federal government has not been enough to help everyone along the supply chain. That is leaving fishermen, processors and distributors worried about their ability to stay in business as the economic slowdown from the pandemic ravages the industry.
Various sectors are getting a $300 million boost from a coronavirus emergency aid package from Congress that will be distributed by states to help make up for lost sales after restaurants closed their doors. In addition, the Agriculture Department has promised to buy up $70 million of catfish, haddock, pollock and redfish to distribute to food banks and nutrition programs.
An industry coalition asked the Trump administration in late March for a combined $4 billion to be spent on buying surplus seafood, supporting supply chains and aiding fisheries, but only a fraction of that has been awarded.
Some in the industry say the meager aid doled out so far reinforces a long-held complaint that the industry is neglected on Capitol Hill, where power players like the beef and pork industries dominate in agriculture. The industry’s fragmented nature also makes it difficult to form a political force, compared with other agriculture sectors that lobby to support producers of a single animal, especially those from politically powerful farm states in the Midwest and South.
“The U.S. fishing industry is overlooked a lot when it comes to the food supply,” said Jason Jarvis, a fisherman in Rhode Island who catches fluke, black sea bass and scup. “Now it’s going to change. I think it has to. We’re looking at empty stores.”
May 26, 2020 — The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new considerations with regards to social distancing and travel restrictions, and these have had a significant impact on the monitoring, control, and surveillance of fisheries activities.
This is a particular worry for developing countries that are vulnerable to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, and there’s evidence that these conditions – with fewer active inspectors and observers – are being exploited by unscrupulous operators, according to the U.N. Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, Ambassador Peter Thomson.
May 26, 2020 — Despite the coronavirus pandemic – or maybe because of it – the market for yellowfin tuna from the Gulf of Mexico is holding up just fine.
David Maginnis, operator of Jensen Tuna in Houma, Louisiana, the major supplier of gulf yellowfin, says he’s seeing stronger demand for domestic product – especially the higher quality, sushi-grade fish known as No. 1.
May 26, 2020 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has canceled five of the six large-scale research surveys scheduled to take place in the waters off Alaska this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an NOAA press release.
The release cited the unique challenges and uncertainties posed by the coronavirus crisis, which have resulted in the cancellation of the Aleutian Islands bottom-trawl survey, the eastern Bering Sea bottom-trawl survey, the northern Bering Sea bottom-trawl survey, the Bering Sea pollock acoustics survey, and the fall ecosystem survey. The Alaska longline survey will go ahead as planned.