September 29, 2020 — Even as some U.S. municipalities and states are expanding capacity for indoor dining, restaurants are pressing Congress to pass the RESTAURANTS Act.
The U.S. House of Representatives included the RESTAURANTS Act in its most recent COVID-19 relief proposal, and the Independent Restaurant Coalition (IRC) is urging the Senate to follow suit.
September 29, 2020 — The New England Fishery Management Council is considering the adoption of a new rule that would require the expansion of current monitoring mandates.
The new rulemaking, called Groundfish Monitoring Amendment 23, has been in process for over two years and is intended to overhaul the way groundfish monitoring takes place. The council had been seeking comments on the new amendment over the summer, and is now considering the implementation of the new rules.
September 28, 2020 — Alaskans eyed the coming of summer’s fishing, resource and tourist seasons warily.
The influx of outsiders brought new risks of the spread of COVID-19 to a state that had so far escaped the deadly surges overfilling emergency rooms in other places.
Daily coronavirus case counts for people from out of state, dubbed “nonresidents” in state data, rose quickly by July. On some days, they accounted for a quarter or a third of all the new reported infections.
Now the number of out-of-state workers and visitors with confirmed COVID-19 cases has dropped to zero some days, single digits most others.
The reason is pretty simple.
By early September, the tourists and thousands of fishing industry workers who made up the bulk of Alaska’s nonresident population all but disappeared.
September 28, 2020 — Maine’s lobster fishermen braced for a difficult summer this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, but then the unexpected happened. They kept catching lobsters, and people kept buying them.
The pandemic has posed significant challenges for the state’s lobster fishery, which is the nation’s largest, but members of the industry reported a steady catch and reasonable prices at the docks. Prices for consumers and wholesalers were low in the early part of the summer but picked up in August to be about on par with a typical summer.
The Maine lobster industry is in the midst of a multiyear boom, and fishermen have caught more than 100 million pounds (45,360,000 kilograms) for a record nine years in a row.
September 28, 2020 — The results of testing completed at the end of last week show the current coronavirus outbreak among workers at processing plant in Warrenton, Oregon, U.S.A. have bumped the count of affected employees to 94, up from the 77 announced last week.
However, the company’s most recent round of testing, conducted on Thursday and Friday, 24 and 25 September, revealed only five positive COVID-19 tests out of 106 workers, with one test result still pending.
September 28, 2020 — In harsh news for seafood suppliers and distributors, the United States institutional foodservice sector is not expected to recover until 2023.
The new Rabobank projection is based on current trends and assumes no major resurgence in U.S. COVID-19 cases, which could alter projections, according to Amit Sharma, executive director of food and foodservice for Rabobank.
Read the full story at Seafood Source
September 28, 2020 — The following was released by the Northeast Seafood Coalition:
As the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) considers adopting universal at-sea monitoring requirements for commercial groundfish vessels, a diverse group of fishermen and fishing organizations is raising concerns about the long-term negative impacts on the fleet of a drastic expansion of current monitoring mandates.
The groups, which include organizations like the Northeast Seafood Coalition and the Associated Fisheries of Maine, and several of the region’s organized seafood sectors, have raised issues about the cost and efficacy of expanded monitoring. Many submitted these concerns as public comments on the NEFMC’s Amendment 23 to the Northeast Multispecies Fisheries Management Plan, which deals with changes to the monitoring requirements.
Specifically, these groups are concerned that many fishing vessels will be unable to take on the increased monitoring costs; that the cost will fall disproportionately on smaller vessels; and that the benefits of additional monitoring tools, and the effectiveness of electronic monitoring to reduce costs, have not been proven.
September 25, 2020 — The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ Marine Resources Division announced this week that it is currently accepting applications for its CARES Act relief program for fishery-related businesses.
The program was established to provide financial relief for losses suffered by the state’s marine fishing industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For more information about the program, visit this website.
Congress awarded $3.2 million of CARES Act money to the state of Alabama to address financial losses caused by the pandemic that occurred in the state’s seafood industry between March 1 and May 31, 2020.
September 25, 2020 — Imagine trying to run a Main Street business — a restaurant or gift shop, maybe — during the COVID-19 pandemic. A cratered economy and the threat of disease make each day a challenge and the future uncertain. Now imagine the government dropping another $700 in fees on you every time you open your doors. There’s no way your mom-and-pop operation could survive.
Yet that’s just what the New England fishing industry is facing as regulators move closer to requiring that boat owners pay to have a government monitor on every trip. The monitors — the federal government calls them “observers” — assess the health of fish stocks and make sure fishermen are following the rules.
The New England Fishery Management Council, which essentially sets the rules for commercial fishing in the region, will meet next week to decide how often monitors will be required on fishing vessels — 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% of trips. Early indications are that councilors will require a monitor on every trip, with the average cost of $700 to be borne by fishermen. Regulators have thus far turned their backs on industry pleas to have the government pay for the program, or develop less-intrusive electronic monitoring programs.
September 24, 2020 — By the end of summer, the tourists leave, the breezes get cooler, and Maine lobstermen hunker down for the harder yet sometimes more fruitful months of fishing only for lobster.
During the summer, “catch landings are probably down. But we can gain quite a lot in October, November, and December,” says Mike Dawson, a lobsterman who fishes off the coast of Maine. “August was kind of slow. Not an overabundance of lobster.”
State lobstering rules are eased each year starting Nov. 1, at which time lobstermen can fish 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In the summer months, when congestion on the seas is high, lobstermen can’t haul traps on Sundays and there are restrictions on the hours lobstermen can fish.
Dawson, who had been fishing for bait fish called pogeys during the summer to supplement his income said that has wound down for the year. The pogeys have disappeared from the area, migrating to new feeding grounds, he said. So now Dawson says he plans to concentrate on lobstering throughout the fall and winter.