Saving Seafood

Maine lobster industry feels impact of China’s tariffs

August 16, 2018 — The ongoing trade war kicked off by U.S. President Donald Trump is beginning to hurt the lobster industry in Maine, U.S.A.

In response to a wide swath of tariffs on Chinese goods instituted by the U.S., China created a set of tariffs of its own that target U.S. seafood and have already hurt some members of the lobster industry who relied on shipping their product to China. Once a niche export market of just USD 4 million (EUR 3.5 million) in 2010, Maine exported USD 132 million (EUR 116.3 million) worth of the crustacean in 2017, according to the Maine International Trade Center.

Of that number, exports to China have been steadily increasing. Maine exported USD 42 million (EUR 37 million) worth of raw and frozen lobster to the country through June in 2017. This year, that number had more than doubled to USD 87 million (EUR 76.6 million) over the same period.

Those numbers have made China the second-largest export market, equal to the entire European Union. As the market grew, some exporters began to increasingly plan on shipping lobsters to China. The new tariffs, however, have made thrown those plans into disarray.

Stephanie Nadeau of The Lobster Co. in Arundel, Maine, has become the “poster child of Chinese tariffs,” she said.

Nadeau has been featured in a wide number of news reports, from the local Portland Press Herald to stories on CBS. Her company relied on Chinese exports, but now is struggling to find a way to make up the lost sales.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Demand for Maine oysters continues to skyrocket

August 16, 2018 — Maine’s cold-water oysters are a hot item on the regional shellfish market, and market research shows the industry will be able to continue expanding well into the future.

Demand for oysters is expected to continue its rise, outpacing the state’s supply through 2026, according to a report delivered to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s Aquaculture Program by an outside consulting firm.

“There has been a lot of investment going into Maine’s oyster farms recently, both in existing operations and new leases,” said Sebastian Belle, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association. “And these new leases are typically being tended by either members of working waterfront families or commercial fishermen themselves, either shifting out of another fishery or looking to diversify their income.”

Oyster farming has become a popular option for fishermen nearing retirement age who have the boat skills and knowledge to be successful but are looking to move away from the physical tolls of fishing.

For decades Maine’s oyster operations were focused on the Damariscotta River, but they’ve spread out in recent years. Oyster operations can now be found anywhere along the coast from the Canadian to New Hampshire borders. With a growing variance in farm locations comes a diversity in taste, a boon for increasing markets.

Maine is in the process of approving a minimum harvest size for American oysters — 2.5 inches with a 10 percent tolerance — in order to increase the average quality on the market.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: Gloucester wins $110,000 to promote its fish, lobster

August 16, 2018 — The city’s Gloucester Fresh seafood marketing program got another boost this week when the Seaport Economic Council awarded it $110,000 to continue branding and promoting locally landed seafood to restaurants, retail seafood dealers and institutional purveyors.

The money, part of the $3.8 million dispersed in the latest round of Seaport Economic Council grant awards, will help the city enhance its website with more video and other technologies to attract what appears to be a growing international audience.

“We’re really excited about the attention the program is getting,” said Sal Di Stefano, the city’s economic development director and its point man on the Gloucester Fresh campaign. “This was just a concept a few years ago and now it’s an internationally recognized brand. We’re really proud of that.”

The grant also will allow Gloucester Fresh to embark in a new direction: to brand the Massachusetts lobster — thus removing it from the formidable shadow of Maine — and increase awareness of Gloucester as the Bay State’s premier lobster landing port.

In 2017, Massachusetts trailed only Maine in lobster landings, hauling in 16.57 million pounds with an estimated value of $81.54 million.

“We’re going to be working with the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association to promote and brand lobsters caught in our state’s waters,” Di Stefano said. “It’s time to bring attention to that. I know here in Gloucester, our mayor is tired of hearing about Maine lobsters. So, we want to get the word out there.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Bahamas’ spiny lobster fishery achieves region’s first MSC certification

August 14, 2018 — The Bahamas spiny lobster on 7 August became the first Caribbean fishery to receive Marine Council Stewardship certification, placing it among an elite group of just 8 percent of developing countries’ fisheries to be certified.

The MSC label is given to wild-caught seafood that has been certified as sustainable according to the MSC’s scientific standards. The fishery’s certification was awarded by the accredited third-party assessment body Control Union Pesca Ltd., following a detailed 19-month assessment.

“With the certification, the lobster tails are now eligible to carry the internationally recognized MSC blue fish label, which makes it easy for consumers to know that they’re choosing seafood that is as good for the ocean as it is for them,” the MSC said.

Mia Isaac, the president of the Bahamas Marine Exporters Association, said the certification “is a proud accomplishment”

“We eagerly accept the MSC stamp of approval. It’s been a collaborative effort and we are thankful to all the stakeholders, especially the fishermen,” Isaac said. “As we continually improve our spiny lobster fishery, we aim for product of The Bahamas to become synonymous with strength, collaboration and sustainability.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MAINE: Large pogy catch good news for lobstermen who feared bait shortage

August 14, 2018 — Maine has landed a record number of pogies this summer, forcing regulators to shut the bait fishery down just as lobster season peaks.

All of the landings have yet to be counted, but officials say it is likely that an unusually large pogy fleet will have caught almost 7 million pounds of the fish, which is more than double last year’s landings. This comes as especially good news for Maine lobstermen, who use pogies to bait their traps when the herring supply runs low, as it is expected to this year.

“Every pogy used was herring not used,” said Kristan Porter, a Cutler lobsterman and president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, which has been working with its members to prepare them for the herring shortage. “There also are some in coolers stored and ready. … The increase in landings is a good thing.”

State officials say Maine had run through its 2.4 million pound annual quota of pogy, also known as menhaden, by July 22, even though the quota was 13 times what it had been in 2017. Pogies were still running strong, however, with purse seiners harvesting them farther north than they had in decades, so Maine got regulatory approval to catch extra.

Over the last three weeks, the Maine pogy fleet has claimed almost all of the 4.5 million pound quota set aside for a handful of states to share when the oily forage species shows up in local waters in unusually high numbers. The high rate of catch prompted Maine to close the so-called episodic fishery on Saturday, with regulators expecting all of the shared quota to be used up.

Part of the high catch rate comes from the size of the fleet. In past years, only a handful of fishing vessels have entered Maine’s regular pogy fishery. This year, however, the fishery attracted 50 fishing vessels during the regular season and 64 in the special episodic event fishery, officials say – no doubt drawn to Maine by word of the large number of schools reported up the coast.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

The Trump administration is ensnared in another border dispute — this time with Canada

August 13, 2018 — Canadians often boast that their 5,525-mile boundary with the United States is the longest undefended border in the world. But tempers have frayed on at least one small stretch.

Machias Seal Island is a 20-acre, treeless island teeming with puffins, razorbills, terns, eiders and other seabirds, making it a prime destination for birdwatchers. Canada and the United States both claim sovereignty over the island, which is about 10 miles off the coast of Maine, and the surrounding 277-square-mile Gray Zone, where fishermen from both countries compete over valuable lobster grounds.

In late June and early July, Canadian fishermen said, U.S. Border Patrol agents in speedboats intercepted Canadian lobster boats in the Gray Zone.

“I have no idea where they came from,” said Laurence Cook, a lobsterman and representative of the Fishermen’s Association from nearby Grand Manan Island. “We’ve never seen U.S. Border Patrol in the Gray Zone before.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Ropeless lobster trap creators aim to save money, whales

August 13, 2018 — Ashored Innovations, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, has joined the parade of companies focused on improving lobster fishing.

But Ashored isn’t looking to build a better lobster trap. Driven by new regulations to eliminate the entanglement threat to the North Atlantic right whale, Ashored is focused on developing a reliable, submersible buoy that goes down with the lobster trawl, is geo-trackable, and retrieved via acoustic release technology.

“We’re not reinventing the lobster trap. It’s the buoys we are redesigning,” CEO Aaron Stevenson told SeafoodSource.

After meetings with lobstermen, Stevenson and his partners realized replacing the current-style lobster trap “was going to be a losing battle against fishermen because the cost to replace them would be astronomical.”

“We initially had that notion, but shifted pretty quick to a smart buoy concept,” he said.

Stevenson said a major concern of fishermen about this new, non-visible technology involved not knowing where another fisherman’s traps and lines were and which direction they were laid. Fishermen didn’t want to lay their traps and lines on top of others – or have others on top of theirs.

Ross Arsenault, Ashored’s COO, said they are working to have “the ability to recognize that someone else’s buoys are there, but not recall them. You will only recall your own by using a proprietary signal or a security code.”

“[While] acoustic release technology has existed for a long while, we’re working to develop a modified one and have a few other release mechanisms as our active retrieval release,” Arsenault said. “But the acoustic element is the standard at the moment and we are experimenting with ways to adapt away from that to perhaps find cost savings for the fishermen.”

Theirs isn’t a one-buoy-fits-all solution. In recognition of the various types and depths of waters that lobstermen fish in, Ashored is developing four prototype buoys.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fishing industry gears up for a fight over China tariffs

August 10, 2018 — A national fishing industry group is using local workers to put human faces on the plight that the commercial fishing sector faces amid the trade fight with China.

The National Fisheries Institute just released a series of videos featuring New Englanders — a processing plant manager in Boston, a Quincy seafood shop owner, a supplier to Maine lobstermen — extolling the virtues of free trade. Institute spokesman Gavin Gibbons says the group started featuring people in the Northeast because of the balance of import and export work that happens here. You can’t treat fish like steel, he says. Commercial fishermen, for the most part, face strict federal quotas. There’s simply no way to ramp up domestic production if it becomes tough to import seafood.

Gibbons’ group fears imports will become much more challenging if the Trump administration follows through on plans to impose tariffs of up to 25 percent on seafood imports from China. An NFI lobbyist will testify before the International Trade Commission on Aug. 20 to argue against them. (NFI represents all corners of the industry: fishermen, retailers, wholesalers.)

The US has plunged headlong into a tit-for-tat fight. China has already imposed a 25 percent tariff on US seafood exports, much to the chagrin of the lobstermen who had found a burgeoning new foreign market in that country.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Florida Lobster Fishermen Fear Trade War Amid Irma Recovery

August 7, 2018 –Just as they prepare for a crucial harvest in the wake of Hurricane Irma, lobster fishermen in the Florida Keys fear a trade war with China could undermine storm recovery in the island chain.

Lobsters are among the seafood and other U.S. goods hit by Chinese tariffs in early July, after the Trump administration put tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese goods.

Florida’s nearly eight-month commercial spiny lobster fishing season opens Monday. Keys fishermen had hoped the harvest would help them recoup losses from last September’s hurricane, which made landfall in the Keys with 130-mph (210-kph) winds.

But the industry has come to depend on Chinese exports over the last decade, and fishermen worry tariffs that could raise prices by 25 percent will send the Chinese market looking for lobster in another country’s waters.

“Coming into this year, we were hoping for better prices because of the loss of traps, gear and revenue,” said Ernie Piton, president of the Florida Keys Commercial Fishermen’s Association and a lobster fisherman.

“Hopefully the tariffs will get figured out because you can’t run your boat and not make money, especially after a hurricane year when you’ve lost so much,” Piton said in a recent interview outside his Key Largo home, where he docks his boat, “Risky Business II.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

US fishermen seek relief from trade war tariffs

August 2, 2018 –The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has estimated that the country’s seafood industry may need more than USD 1 billion (EUR 860.9 million) in aid as a result of the tariffs being discussed by the adminstration of U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese officials. And that figure only stands to go up as administration officials announced Wednesday, 1 August, that they’re considering boosting the proposed tariffs on Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in a statement Wednesday that the 15 percent increase would give the administration more flexibility in dealing with the world’s second largest economy. The list of goods that would be impacted by the 25 percent tariff includes a wide variety of seafood products.

“The Trump administration continues to urge China to stop its unfair practices, open its market, and engage in true market competition,” he said in a statement. “We have been very clear about the specific changes China should undertake.  Regrettably, instead of changing its harmful behavior, China has illegally retaliated against U.S. workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses.”

The revision to the tariff plan means the public comment period will now be extended through 5 September.

After the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would offer USD 12 billion (EUR 10.3 billion) in aid to American farmers affected by the tariffs, officials from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that relief package would cover less than a third of the damage caused to U.S. businesses, including the seafood industry.

Read the full story at Seafood Source