Saving Seafood

Coronavirus Slams Florida’s Lobster Industry

February 7, 2020 — His boat loaded with empty lobster traps, Gary Nichols pulls up to his fish house on Conch Key.

“Another happy day to get to the dock,” as his crew tied up his boat and began unloading the traps.

Although China is 9,000 miles away, the coronavirus is causing the lobster season to end early for Nichols and many of the other lobstermen of the Florida Keys.

“Traditionally we fish to the middle or end of March,” Nichols explained. “But the Chinese have stopped the buying due to the coronavirus.”

With the virus spreading across China, commercial flights from the United States were recently halted. But even before the airlines stopped flying, the major buyers in China were canceling orders for Florida’s spiny lobster. Fear surrounding the virus was hitting the country’s economy and keeping people out of restaurants.

Florida lobster is considered a delicacy in China and is often the star of any celebratory dinner, especially during Chinese New Year which has been underway for the past week. For Florida’s lobstermen, this is when prices soar.

“We had just gotten our prices up to a decent level,” Nichols explained. “This is when our price is normally between $12 and $20 a pound for lobster.”

Read the full story at CBS 4

Crab, sole, plaice among nine seafood items receiving exemptions from US tariffs

February 4, 2020 — Nine seafood items have received special exclusions from tariffs placed by the United States on goods imported from China.

The items – which must be individually frozen or frozen in blocks to qualify, depending on the harmonized tariff system (HTS) classification code – include Alaskan sole, Alaskan plaice, flounder, sole, slipper lobster, king crab, snow crab, Dungeness crab, and meat from crabs other than king, snow, Dungeness, and swimming crab.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Final 2019 Maine lobster harvest landings were better than first feared

January 28, 2020 — Despite all of the concerns expressed about the 2019 Maine lobster harvest, landings improved at the end of the year and weren’t as bad as feared, Sheila Adams, vice president of sales and marketing and co-founder of processor Maine Coast, told attendees at the National Fisheries Institute’s Global Seafood Market Conference last week.

Though lobster can be harvested all year off the coast of Maine, the season typically picks up in earnest in July and August. So many in the industry were made nervous in November when Maine harvesters were widely reported as saying they believed their landings were going to finish 2019 between 30% and 50% lower than the 2018 season total (about 54,000t).

Based on Urner Barry estimates, shared at the event, the 2019 harvest in Maine was not quite as bad as that, garnering about 43,226t, down 21% from the year before. The state of Maine’s Department of Marine Resources never publishes its official tally for the previous year’s lobster harvest until March, so it will be a while before the final numbers are known.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Maine wants to ‘put the brakes on’ fast-growing lobster bait fishery

January 23, 2020 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources wants to close a fast-growing lobster bait fishery to newcomers for two years so it has time to come up with a new management, licensing and enforcement plan.

“Closing fisheries is kind of a radical step and a dangerous step because it eliminates diversity,” said Commissioner Pat Keliher. “We’re not saying close it in perpetuity. Close it to see if there is a different approach here that would allow us to get both enforcement and reporting back under control.”

Vincent Balzano of Saco, who fishes for menhaden – also known as pogy – out of Portland, supports temporarily closing the menhaden fishery to new applicants.

“It allows us to put the brakes on, get a handle on the fishery,” said Balzano, a third-generation fisherman. “Sound, responsible fishery management is a benefit to all. It’s a benefit to the industry, a benefit to the resource and a benefit to the state as a whole.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Salmon’s rise, shrimp’s stagnancy, growing consolidation reshape seafood’s top 100

January 22, 2020 — The movements in this year’s edition of our World’s 100 Largest Seafood Companies report reflect some key trends that shaped the industry last year.

Salmon farmers, particularly those in Chile, and several key multi-species consolidators such as Canada’s Cooke and Parlevliet & Van der Plas (P&P) of The Netherlands had a strong year.

2019 wasn’t as fortunate for several other sub-sectors in the seafood business such as shrimp suppliers, and Japanese-based distributors and wholesalers that face the challenge of difficult population demographics.

This year’s list also features six companies that are newcomers to our ranking: Spanish tuna processing and catching group Atunes y Lomos, Vietnamese pangasius producer Vinh Hoan, US lobster and scallops supplier East Coast Seafood, processors Iceland Seafood International and Seachill UK — which made past rankings under its past incarnation Icelandic Group — and Spanish fishing firm Grupo Iberica de Congelados, which is better known by its abbreviation, Iberconsa.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

American Lobster Benchmark Stock Assessment Workshop Scheduled for February 24-27 in Narragansett, RI

January 21, 2020 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will hold a second American Lobster Benchmark Stock Assessment Workshop on February 24 – 27 at the University of Rhode Island Bay Campus, 215 South Ferry Street, Narragansett, Rhode Island. The stock assessment, which is scheduled for completion in the summer of 2020, will evaluate the health of the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank and Southern New England stocks and inform management of this species.  The Commission’s stock assessment process and meetings are open to the public, with the exception of discussions of confidential data*, when the public will be asked to leave the room.

The draft agenda for the workshop is available athttp://www.asmfc.org/files/Meetings/AmericanLobsterAssessementWorkshopII_DraftAgenda_Feb2020.pdf. For more information about the assessment or attending the upcoming workshop (space will be limited), please contact Caitlin Starks, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at cstarks@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.
 
* Each state and federal agency is responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of its data and deciding who has access to its confidential data.  In the case of our stock assessments and peer reviews, all analysts and, if necessary, reviewers, have been granted permission by the appropriate agency to use and view confidential data. When the assessment team needs to show and discuss these data, observers to our stock assessment process are asked to leave the room to preserve confidentiality.

Seafood industry awaits details before celebrating ‘phase one’ US-China deal

January 17, 2020 — The US and China may have reached the interim trade agreement that loosely promises to commit China to purchasing more US seafood products, but the seafood industry is keeping its party hats and noisemakers in the drawer.

In a ceremony held Wednesday at the White House, US president Donald Trump and China vice premier Liu He signed the so-called “phase one” trade deal that has been described as hitting the pause button on a two-year trade war that has devastated the US agriculture and seafood industries.

The deal, which is expected to take effect in mid-February and spelled out in an 86-page document, commits China to buying $200 billion worth of additional US products, goods and services over the next two years, reducing the US’ bilateral trade deficit in goods, which hit $420 billion in 2018. It removes planned US tariffs on Chinese cellphones, toys and laptops, as well as halving the existing tariffs on approximately $120bn worth of Chinese goods, the Financial Times recounts.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Despite early-season worries, Maine lobster industry experiences solid 2019

January 13, 2020 — The Maine lobster industry is expected to have another year with more than 100 million pounds landed, a significant number during a year fraught with bait shortages and other challenges.

Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher gave the estimate to Maine Public’s “Maine Calling” radio show. More precise numbers are typically made available in March, during the state’s annual Fishermen’s Forum.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MAINE: Lobstermen say 2019 catch came late, but good prices made a profitable year

January 13, 2020 — Maine’s 2019 lobster catch was down from recent years, but after worries of a big drop-off, fishermen say most of them still made money. That’s important to the fishing industry and to coastal businesses, many of which depend on income from Lobstermen to make their own profits.

For much of last year, the lobsters just weren’t showing up, and that had a lot of fishermen worried. After several record and near-record years, there was concern that predictions of a big drop in the catch had come true.

By late September, many parts of the coast were reporting the catch down 40 percent, and even the Commissioner of Marine Resources shared that number at a meeting of New England fisheries leaders. But then came November and December, and fishermen say the lobsters finally showed up.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

Maine lobster landings sank about 16% last year, commissioner says, but still beat expectations

January 10, 2020 — Maine’s top fisheries official says lobstermen likely landed about 100 million pounds of the state’s signature crustacean in 2019, which is about 16 percent less than the year before but not as bad as had been predicted.

“Earlier in the season it looked like it could be bad,” said Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher on Maine Public’s “Maine Calling” radio show. “They caught a lot of lobsters in the last few months of the year and made up a lot of ground.”

Keliher told the show’s hosts that initial landing reports suggest the lobster industry would finish 2019 with a 100 million-pound harvest. If that number holds, it would be 16 percent lower than 2018’s 119.6 million pounds landed, and nearly 15 percent less than the five-year average.

That year-end lobster harvest would be the lowest Maine has recorded since 2010, when fishermen landed 96.2 million pounds of lobster. The catch every other year of the decade has surpassed 100 million pounds, with a peak harvest of 132.6 million pounds in 2016.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald