Saving Seafood

Innovative nonprofit brings together fishermen, food banks in need

June 24, 2021 — On an early, sunny morning, a fresh catch comes ashore.

“We deal with crabs, oysters, shrimp, fish,” said Jeremy Forte of Forte Seafood.

A new shrimp season just opened along Mississippi’s coast and Forte couldn’t be busier.

“It’s always keeping you guessing, that’s for sure,” he said.

However, this wasn’t necessarily the case during the pandemic. When restaurants shut down, it created a chain reaction affecting fishermen around the country.

“We’re highly dependent on the restaurant sales,” said Ryan Bradley with Mississippi Commercial Fisheries United. “And, you know, certainly when you saw these massive shutdowns of the restaurant, it caused a lot of uncertainty, a lot of disruption to the supply chain.”

At the same time, down the coastal road from the harbor, soup kitchens and food pantries reeled from the economic strain of COVID-19.

“We’re having a 30 to 50 percent request increase in requests for food,” said Martha Allen of the food bank Extra Table. “Many people were first-time patrons of food pantries and soup kitchens.”

That’s when the harbor met the soup kitchen, brought together by the nonprofit Catch Together.

“What we realized is not just the food insecurity crisis was deepening in terms of the number of people they needed to serve, but also many of the sources of their traditional proteins was drying up because restaurants and restaurants were closed, which is one source, and then also a lot of supermarkets were just sold out,” said founder Paul Parker.

Read the full story at KATC

Is Mississippi losing the catfish wars? Flood of fish imports continues despite USDA oversight

June 22, 2021 — Mississippi farmers are losing the catfish wars against their foreign competitors with the very weapon they saw as their salvation.

The domestic catfish industry along with representatives like the late U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi lobbied to move oversight of catfish processing from the Food and Drug Administration to the U.S. Department of Agriculture five years ago with the expectation the USDA’s stricter eye would limit the foreign imports that had decimated domestic production throughout the Mississippi Delta.

Instead, imports of siluriformes– the larger category of catfish and catfish-like fish sometimes referred to by their family name “pangasius”– have only increased since the switch to the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service in 2016. Meanwhile, domestic prices and production, mainly in Mississippi and other Southern states, have continued to decline.

Almost 65,000 additional tons of catfish were imported in 2019 than in 2015 before the FSIS took over according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service.

The Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce lists recent processing volumes at 5 million pounds per month less than in 2015 during FDA oversight. As domestic prices have declined, the average value of imports has grown with the added USDA label.

Read the full story at Magnolia State Live

Mississippi finalizes plans for $21M in fishery relief

April 23, 2021 — Mississippi is finalizing its plans for allocating $21 million in federal relief for fishing industries harmed by the 2019 opening of a Mississippi River spillway in Louisiana.

The money is supposed to go to businesses that were hurt by the spillway opening. It will also be used to improve oyster harvesting in Mississippi and seek ways to offset future openings of the Bonnet Carre Spillway north of New Orleans.

The spillway sends freshwater through Lake Pontchartrain and into the Mississippi Sound, which can kill oysters, shrimp and other marine species.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Myarklamiss.com

MISSISSIPPI: Meeting Notice: New NOAA Turtle Excluder Device (TED) Rule

March 17, 2021 — The following was released by Mississippi Commercial Fisheries United:

Taking effect on April 01, 2021, a new NOAA regulation will require all skimmer shrimp trawl vessels 40 feet and greater to use turtle excluder devices (TEDs) with 3″ bar spacing. Thus, MSCFU is hosting two virtual informational meetings (one in English on March 18 at 9:00 am and one in Vietnamese on March 19 at 9:00 am) to help shrimpers better comply with the new rule, discuss the potential availability of funding to reimburse shrimpers for the cost of TEDs, and provide insights & tips on which style of TED works best. These meetings will be hosted using Zoom and recordings will be posted on our website and on Facebook for you to view at a later date.

Read the full release here

MISSISSIPPI: MSU awarded $1 million NOAA grant to shore up U.S. aquaculture industry

February 12, 2021 — The following was released by Mississippi State University:

Mississippi State University scientists are receiving a three-year, $1 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Sea Grant College Program to establish national economic metrics for the U.S. aquaculture industry.

The project’s lead investigator Ganesh Karunakaran, a Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station assistant research professor, is guiding a team of nearly a dozen university researchers from eight institutions. The research will analyze the economic viability, impact and management measures of the U.S. aquaculture industry to help producers and stakeholders now and in the future. The grant, administered through the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium, is one of 12 awarded across the country and part of a $4.7 million investment aimed to strengthen the economics of U.S. aquaculture.

“Our overall objective is to provide basic and comprehensive information about various sectors in U.S. aquaculture. Aquaculture is different from other agricultural industries such as beef cattle or row crops because it encompasses so many species. Production budgets are available for most commodities with the exception of aquaculture, and we’re hoping to change that,” said Karunakaran, who is based at MSU’s Delta Research and Extension Center.

Read the full release here

Mississippi fishermen partner to bring catch to families in need

January 14, 2021 — Extra Table and shrimpers from Mississippi’s coast delivered 36,000 meals for families in need in Hattiesburg, Jackson, Biloxi and Gulfport on Wednesday.

Extra Table will aid in the distribution of 13,000 pounds of shrimp to its partnered food banks in the coming days; many of which reported a 30-50% increase in need due to the economic hardship created by COVID-19.

The shrimp were caught by members of Mississippi Commercial Fisheries United, which promotes fresh, wild caught fish from the Gulf. The shrimp were purchased with support from a grant by Catch Together, a nonprofit which raises funds to strengthen sustainable fishermen and fishing communities across the country.

Read the full story at WHLT

Mississippi, Connecticut join list of states with approved CARES Act spend plans

October 15, 2020 — Mississippi and Connecticut have been added to the growing list of states that have received CARES Act spend plan approval from NOAA Fisheries.

The two states will receive an allocated portion of the USD 300 million (EUR 256 million) that was released in May in order to offset negative revenue impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Of that sum, Connecticut will receive just over USD 1.8 million (EUR 1.5 million) and Mississippi will receive a little more than USD 1.5 million (EUR 1.3 million).

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Aquaculture advancement would benefit Mississippi’s economy

October 6, 2020 — During the past several months, Mississippians have faced many challenging situations. One way that we can embark on a path to recovery to grow our economy, create jobs and support our industries is by increasing the production of sustainable seafood through aquaculture.

Offshore aquaculture, the process of cultivating farm-raised fish in an ocean environment, is a safe and resource-efficient way to produce protein. In fact, it has a much lower environmental impact than other forms of food manufacturing.

Domestic aquaculture will complement wild fishing to increase American seafood production, provide jobs in communities along the Gulf Coast, and help revitalize our local seafood industry, which has faced devastating economic impacts from the coronavirus pandemic.

Read the full story at the Clarion Ledger

Gulf Fishing Family Hurting After Hurricane Laura Destroys Cameron, Wrecks Havoc on Surrounding Area

September 1, 2020 — The Gulf fishing fleet docked at or near Cameron, LA bore the brunt of Hurricane Laura as it roared ashore in the early hours of August 27th as a category four storm. In one area alone, ten of the 15 shrimp boats tied-up sank to the bottom of Bayou Contraband after being ravaged by rough waters and constant winds gusting up to 135 mph.  The Gulf Seafood Foundation is calling upon government officials in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi for an immediate coordinated seafood specific disaster relief effort for fishermen, seafood processors and the extended seafood family.

“We are calling upon both our state leaders and federal representatives to quickly get monetary help for our fishing communities,” said Raz Halli, president of the Gulf Seafood Foundation.  More than 120 miles of Gulf coastline was impacted by the storm, a coastline that is home a variety of commercial fishermen.  Even though Mississippi was not impacted by this storm, we are calling upon their representatives to join our effort because their fisheries still have not received compensation for the fresh water diversion that ravished their fisheries last year.”

Sitting a mere three feet above sea level, Cameron has been an epicenter for hurricanes.  In 2005 Hurricane Rita hit the city, home to just over 6000 residents, with winds clocked at more than 120 mph. Three years later Hurricane Ike leveled Cameron with a 12-foot storm surge.

Read the full story at Gulf Seafood News

The U.S. government is donating gulf shrimp to food banks

August 18, 2020 — COVID-19 has impacted agriculture around the country, and that extends to U.S. shrimp fisheries, which are largely located along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. With restaurants and hotels closed around the country the demand for shrimp is way, way down, leading to fears that the price of shrimp will collapse. To help offset this, the U.S. government has stepped in and announced it will be buying $30 million worth of U.S.-harvested shrimp.

As reported by the Associated Press (with a hat-tip to Modern Farmer for alerting us to the story), the massive shrimp buy is the result of lobbying from both Louisiana and Mississippi, two states that produce shrimp and stand to be impacted by COVID-related factors. In a press release Mississippi’s two U.S. senators and one of its house members stated that they had sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue in May, asking that the USDA purchase shrimp (thus propping up the industry) and distribute that same shrimp to people being impacted by the pandemic.

Read the full story at The Takeout