Saving Seafood

NEW YORK: Fishermen Finding Windows Of Opportunity, Necessity Opened By Coronavirus

May 28, 2020 — In the early days of the coronavirus shut-downs, commercial fishermen were among those gut-punched by the impacts of an economy screeched to a halt.

Fishermen were told they could keep working, and the fish they sought were plentiful, but the value of fish at markets reeling from the forced closures of tens of thousands of restaurants and people fleeing into their homes was minimal.

But fishermen say that as the pandemic has settled into the habits of humans across the world, where one window of opportunity has closed, others have opened and helped the industry keep itself … well, afloat.

They have been buoyed by a steep drop in the amount of seafood being imported to the U.S. from other countries — the practice itself a plague that many fishermen said the country needs to rid it self of — and a populace that has still eagerly sought out seafood to eat while in quarantine.

With restaurants either closed or doing a fraction of their usual business, fishermen have relied more on selling to retail seafood markets, or at retail farmers markets, selling fish off the back of their boats or pickups and, in some cases, door-to-door deliveries, to peddle their catch.

Read the full story at the Sag Harbor Express

New Map Launching Today Helps People Find Local Seafood

May 28, 2020 — The seafood industry relies heavily on restaurants and retail stores for the majority of sales. With restaurant closures and coronavirus shelter-in-place orders, the seafood industry has been hit hard. The sudden drop in demand has forced fishers and fish farmers to get creative in their methods, turning to direct sales to stay afloat. A new tool through the University of Washington Sustainable Fisheries initiative has compiled information about where to find seafood in the form of a map that can be used to easily track down local, sustainable catch for delivery or direct sales.

The goal of the map is to support small seafood businesses by making their transition to direct sales just a little bit easier. Generally a supplier (fishing boat or farm) will deal with processors and distributors to sell their fish, and customers will purchase through a restaurant or grocery store.

Now that direct sales are the only option, the industry is scrambling to keep up and adapt to a new way of business and the map is meant to shoulder some of the burden. “They’re bringing in people from sales to pack boxes, the last thing they should have to worry about is finding new markets,” says Jack Cheney; a senior project manager at seafood sustainability organization FishWise, and contributor for Sustainable Fisheries UW, a grant-funded website dedicated to explaining the science of seafood, “this is the least we can do to try and promote them in some small way.”

Read the full story at Forbes

COVID-19 accelerating negative trends for pangasius sector

May 28, 2020 — The coronavirus has delivered a large blow to Vietnam’s pangasius sector, which was already hurting before the pandemic.

Vietnam has not recorded any COVID-19 deaths through the crisis, and the entire country has only seen around 300 cases of the disease due to the extensive preventative measures it took beginning in January. But while most of social and economic activities in Vietnam have been brought back to a “new normal” since late April, disruptions in foreign markets, tangled supply chains, and suppressed demand have hurt its seafood export sector, upon which the country’s pangasius traders depend heavily.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

‘New Normal’ Trumpets a Bigger Role for U.S. Seafood

May 28, 2020 — The following was released by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council:

Leaders of the nation’s eight Regional Fishery Management Councils convened the first of their biannual meetings in 2020 today by teleconference. The Council Coordination Committee (CCC) meeting provides the Councils and heads of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to discuss issues relevant to all of the Councils. Heading today’s agenda was COVID-19 impacts on U.S. fisheries and federal efforts to address them, including President Trump’s Executive Orders on Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness and Economic Growth and on Regulatory Relief to Support Economic Recovery and the CARES Act $300M stimulus package for fisheries and aquaculture.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has made our responsibility more poignant and highlights the often overlooked fact that managing our nation’s fisheries is about ensuring that Americans have food,” stated Taotasi Archie Soliai, chair of the Western Pacific Council, which hosted the meeting. “Yes, management is about making certain fish stocks and protected species remain healthy. Yes, management is about guaranteeing that our fishermen can earn a decent living, pursue the sport of recreational fishing and continue their cultural traditions. But the bottom line is the goal of management of our fisheries is to ensure that our nation can provide nutritious seafood to its people from its waters, which comprise the second largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the world.”

Assistant Administrator for NOAA Fisheries Chris Oliver said the agency “is looking to support a ‘new normal’ where seafood plays an even bigger role in our economy and in our households. … The Presidential Executive Order greatly adds the horsepower we needed, by codifying our role to support you. It calls for regulatory reform to maximize commercial and recreational fishing opportunities and enforcement of common-sense restrictions on seafood imports that do not meet American standards. And it places NOAA firmly in charge of coordinating the federal process for aquaculture permitting. The Executive Order and the CARES Act funding create an exciting new opportunity to address long-term challenges to expanding the domestic seafood sector.”

Offshore wind issues, bycatch and changing stock assessment status were among other items covered today. The meeting continues tomorrow and is open to the public. The agenda and conference call-in instructions are posted at http://www.fisherycouncils.org/ccc-meetings/may-2020.

In survey, Alaska fishermen offer guidance for use of pandemic relief funds

May 27, 2020 — A rapid survey response by nearly 800 Alaska fishermen will provide a guideline for giving them a hand up as the coronavirus swamps their operations.

The online survey from April 14 to May 3 by Juneau-based nonprofit SalmonState asked fishermen about their primary concerns both before the COVID-19 outbreak and in the midst of the pandemic in April. It also asked what elected officials at local, state and federal levels can do to help them directly.

Over half of the 817 responses came in over four days, said Tyson Fick, SalmonState communications adviser.

“Clearly, people were interested to have their stories heard and to weigh in. In several ways we feel like we had a very broad swath of regions and gear types and fishermen,” he said.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

How small-scale fishers are struggling amid COVID-19 crisis

May 27, 2020 — As COVID-19 affects global food systems, tremendous impacts are being felt by coastal communities and small-scale fishers, many of whom are self-employed and rely on the catch to feed their own households or local communities.

In a review published in Coastal Management, researchers explore the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on small-scale fisheries in Canada and worldwide, and provide recommendations on how to support them.

We spoke with lead author Nathan Bennett, research associate with the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at UBC, and Chair of the People and the Ocean Specialist Group for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), about the findings.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

California seafood distributor center of “COVID-19 cluster”

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.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Why the pandemic is causing seafood prices to fall

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.

Read the full story at Mashed

Two Fishery Management Council Agendas to Focus on COVID-19 Effects on Fisheries, Management

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.

Read the full story at Seafood News