June 16, 2020 — Fishermen on the Seacoast are getting a boost from a fisheries specialist who created an interactive online map for people who want to buy directly off the boat.
Gabriela Bradt, who works for University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension and New Hampshire Sea Grant, is most commonly known for her work with tracking and marketing invasive green crabs.
June 16, 2020 — Two U.S. congressmen have filed a bill that would allow states to declare fishery disasters because of pandemics including COVID-19.
The legislation filed by U.S. Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Garret Graves (R-Louisiana) would update the Magnuson-Stevens Act to include pandemics as a disaster reason, which would open the door for additional funding.
June 16, 2020 — Vietnam’s shrimp sector has been reaping the benefits of the country’s successful containment of the COVID-19 outbreak, with growth seen in export and farming activities.
Official data from Vietnam government shows that the country has experienced more than 50 consecutive days without any new cases of the coronavirus in the community, thanks to its early and resolute actions by its government. As of 5 June, Vietnam had more than 300 confirmed cases, with zero deaths. Almost all restrictions during the social distancing order imposed in the first half of April have been lifted, and major economic and social activities have been brought back to a “new normal” since late April.
June 16, 2020 — Sam Martin has never had to deal with a housing crisis. Now, thanks to the pandemic, he’s got a big one. Ordinarily, when the oysters he raises along the Delaware Bay shoreline outgrow their bags and cages, he ships them to market and starts over again. But with “virtually all our sales coming from restaurants,” and the restaurant industry on hold, Martin’s oysters have nowhere to go.
“It’s a big bottleneck,” he says.
Atlantic Cape Fisheries, of which Martin is chief operating officer, is a large commercial fishery as well as New Jersey’s largest producer of farmed oysters. Based in Port Norris, about 20 miles northwest of Cape May, its oyster operation has “doubled in size each of the last three years,” Martin says. “Last year we sold 2.5 million oysters, and we planned to sell 5 million this year, but sales so far are down about 80 percent compared to last year.”
Lodged in the water in their bags and cages, the oysters continue to grow. But once they exceed the ideal raw-bar size of about 3 1/2 inches, they lose as much as 60 percent of their value and wind up in the commodity breading-and-frying market. This month, the company will make a difficult decision. To free up bags and racks for future crops, it may have to dump its unsold, now-oversize oysters into the bay.
Three counties away, the Barnegat Oyster Collective is facing similar straits on the Atlantic coastline. Before the pandemic, “tens of thousands of people were eating our oysters in restaurants,” says CEO Scott Lennox. But since the collective was selling to distributors, “we didn’t know who they were. So we had to completely pivot and turn ourselves into an e-commerce company. We created the party pack. You get two dozen chilled oysters in a foam box with gel packs, a free oyster knife with instructions, and free shipping. And we do a Saturday Instagram shucking demo.”
June 16, 2020 — The reopening of Long Island restaurants for outdoor dining hasn’t translated into banner days for the region’s commercial fishermen and fish dealers, who say demand for wholesale fish, clams and oysters is inching up but nowhere near past levels.
While many local fishermen sell to local retailers, a steady local business even through the pandemic, the lion’s share of local fish go to companies that distribute to restaurants throughout the region and across the country. Three months of lockdowns over the coronavirus has backed up the market for the products, leaving warehouses for local frozen fish such as squid fully stocked, while drastically reducing demand for local clams and oysters. Market prices for most have fallen, though some, like fluke, are on the rebound.
Local fishermen have been catching and selling fluke, but with the New York quota at 100 pounds a day, the market isn’t lucrative. The market for porgies, also known as scup, has picked up as the plentiful fish come into season and more consumers learn to appreciate its value (and cook it whole).
Bill Zeller, owner of Captree Clam in West Babylon, said his business is down by around two-thirds from where it was a year ago, nearly all of the drop tied to restaurant closures. He delivers to distributors across the nation — Florida, Boston, the West Coast, where protests in recent weeks also led to some order cancellations just as some states were reopening.
June 15, 2020 — Kevin Conway started Cape Cod Local Seafood with a mission to bridge a gap between fishermen and consumers.
Conway says it provides consumers with the opportunity to get a hold of “the freshest seafood at the best prices.”
Facebook users may connect with Cape Cod Local Seafood by subscribing to their page and signing up to purchase seafood fresh off the boat from various docks across the Cape.
Conway’s preorder system is designed to avoid a “free for all on the dock” that would make social distancing difficult to maintain. Signing up beforehand also gives consumers the added benefit of not having to “stand in line for a couple of hours” when paying for their orders.
The program is open to all people who want fresh seafood below market price. Conway says that “residents, tourists, people from off-Cape, anyone can participate.” The seafood available to consumers includes haddock, striped bass, bluefish, fluke, lobsters, tuna, blue tuna, yellow fin, and various types of shellfish.
Conway decided to launch Cape Cod Local Seafood’s page while using “other virtual marketplaces” on Facebook to buy some of his own fishing gear. His thinking was “this is pretty cool, I want to see if I could do this with seafood.”
June 15, 2020 — President Donald Trump came to Maine last Friday to visit Puritan Medical Products, the Guilford manufacturer producing swabs for COVID-19 tests. The century-old company has a right to be proud.
They took a traditional Maine resource—wood—and turned it into highly successful products that, like Maine itself, are more practical than glamorous. The humble toothpick, with a touch of mint flavoring added? Genius. And the tongue depressor, familiar to every child when it was time to say “aaah.”
Puritan added “tipped applicators” to their production line in 1978. They now make 65 different types of swabs, over 12 million per day. They are an accredited medical device manufacturer, perfectly positioned to respond to a critical need in a pandemic.
Presidential visits are planned in excruciating detail. This one was announced on the Monday prior and on Wednesday, just two days before it took place, the Guilford Town Manager said the town office had not been officially contacted about the visit. Nevertheless, it went off without a hitch.
If the visit to Puritan was a standard “grip and grin,” albeit without the gripping, the meeting preceding it was anything but. Air Force One landed at the Bangor airport where the president met with Maine fisheries representatives. Typically, the governor hosts a presidential entourage. This time it was the former governor, Paul LePage, who did the honors. Current Governor Janet Mills was not invited.
June 15, 2020 — The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries is seeking input from the public on a draft spending plan for $5.4 million in federal coronavirus fisheries assistance.
The spending plan must be approved by National Marine Fisheries Service for the state to receive the funding provided by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security, or CARES, Act.
The draft spending plan proposes an approach for disbursement of the funding through direct payments to eligible commercial fishermen, charter businesses, seafood dealers and processors, and qualified aquaculture operations who can document a greater than 35% revenue loss compared to the previous five-year average due to COVID-19.
The draft spending plan and other information pertaining to the draft can be found online on the CARES Act Fishery Assistance Information page. Written comments on the plan may be submitted through an online form that can be accessed via the website or by mail to: Draft CARES Act Fisheries Assistance Spending Plan Comments, P.O. Box 769, Morehead City, N.C. 28557.
June 15, 2020 — While thousands of fishermen around the country struggle to get relief funds promised in the CARES Act that was passed last March, two U.S. representatives from different parts of the country introduced a bill yesterday that would resolve many of the problems.
Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME)’s new bill would amend the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation Act (MSA) to allow fisheries disasters to pandemic, such as COVID-19 to be added to the list of disasters eligible for relief.
June 15, 2020 — COVID-19 has affected the fishing and aquaculture food supply chains like no other shock before, according to an addendum to the recently launched Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s SOFIA 2020 report.
“The protection measures taken by governments to contain the spread of the disease, while necessary, have impacted each step of the seafood supply chain, from fishing and aquaculture production to processing, transport, wholesale and retail marketing,” it said.
The addendum also claims that global fishing activity may have declined by around 6.5% and that more than 90% of small-scale fishers in the Mediterranean and Black Seas were forced to stop due to an inability to sell their catches — often exacerbated by falling prices — as a result of restrictions and labor shortages due to COVID-19.
On a webinar held by the organization on June 8, FAO’s director-general Qu Dongyu confirmed those findings and said the pandemic has also shown the need for accelerated efforts “to achieve sustainability at all levels, where fishery management is critically important”.