Saving Seafood

NSF Funds Texas A&M Research On West Coast Fisheries Management

October 27, 2021 — Climate change is posing new threats to West Coast communities dependent on fisheries. A new National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator-funded research project led by Texas A&M University scientists is tackling those challenges using cutting-edge modeling and decision-making technologies.

The project is a large multi-institutional endeavor, led by Piers Chapman, research professor in the Department of Oceanography, and brings together scientists from academia, federal agencies and industry.

NSF’s Convergence Accelerator Program aims to produce tangible solutions to national-scale societal challenges that cannot be solved by single disciplines but require innovative ideas, approaches and technologies from a wide range of sectors and expertise. Aligned to the program’s 2021 cohort, the project will last for one year and is funded at $750,000. If successful, the team will be eligible to compete for an additional two-year project funded at up to $5 million.

Read the full story at Texas A&M Today

 

National Fish & Seafood revived under new ownership, new name

May 24, 2019 — The assets of Gloucester, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based National Fish & Seafood (NFS) have been purchased by NSD Seafood, which said in a 22 May announcement it planned to restart production of NFS’ Matlaw’s stuffed clam line and other products.

NFS abruptly closed its doors on 10 May. SeafoodSource first broke the story on 20 May that an unnamed buyer wanted to acquire NFS and resume the company’s operations. On 22 May, NSD Seafood agreed to purchase all of National Fish’s assets and rename the company Atlantic Fish & Seafood, according to the Gloucester Daily Times. The operations team is hoping to begin production within a week at NFS’s former 60,000-square-feet facility in Gloucester.

Nicholas M. Osgood, a principal in NSD Seafood, along with two other partners from the NSDJ Real Estate company that owns NFS’s 159 E. Main St. facility, acquired NFS’s assets, according to the Gloucester Daily Times.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

National Fish, Tampa Bay resolve trade secrets case

March 11, 2019 –A federal judge dismissed National Fish & Seafood’s (NFS) trade secrets case against Tampa Bay Fisheries, its parent company Red Chamber, and former employee Kathleen Scanlon after the companies agreed to resolve the lawsuit.

Pacific Andes-owned NFS and Tampa Bay “jointly announce that they have satisfactorily resolved the lawsuit brought by NFS against Tampa Bay, Kathleen Scanlon, Red Chamber Co., and certain individuals affiliated with Tampa Bay,” the companies said in a statement provided to SeafoodSource.

As a result of the confidential settlement, all claims will be dismissed, NFS and Tampa Bay said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

National Fish exec appeals prison term

January 18, 2019 — Jack Ventola, the imprisoned founder and president of Gloucester-based National Fish & Seafood, is appealing his two-year prison sentence, claiming he received a more severe punishment than one of his convicted co-conspirators.

Ventola, 71, is in the midst of his 24-month sentence at the Federal Medical Center Devens he started last July. He was convicted April 27 in U.S. District Court in Boston of failure to pay taxes on $2.9 million he fraudulently diverted from National Fish in schemes that ran from 2006 to 2013.

As part of his plea deal, Ventola admitted conspiring with two other National Fish executives — senior sales executive Richard J. Pandolfo and head of operations James Corbett, who died in 2013 and was never criminally charged —and National Fish accountant and board member Michael Bruno in several schemes to defraud the IRS and majority National Fish owner Pacific Andes.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times