Saving Seafood

NJ’s Multibillion-dollar Fishing Industry has Reason to be Concerned About Turbines

May 19, 2020 — Scallops. Black sea bass. Squid. Oysters. New Jersey’s coastal fisheries harvest millions of dollars worth of seafood annually from the state’s bountiful coastal waters, but some in the industry fear an ill wind is blowing.

From Cape May to Sandy Hook, 313,990 acres of Atlantic Ocean have been leased to three energy companies, with plans to erect soaring wind turbines visible from the Jersey Shore. The worry from some in the New Jersey fishing industry is the green energy will limit access to fisheries, exacerbate the danger they face and hurt profits.

Read the full story at Seafood News

VIRGINIA: Northam administration says federal fisheries relief ‘falls woefully short’

May 12, 2020 — Virginia’s waters are unusually still this spring.

Ordinarily, May 1 is the start of the charter boat season, a day that sees convoys of boats head out from the ports of coastal Virginia for deeper waters where fish are sought by daytrippers. By then, crabbing and oystering, which usually begin in March, are in full swing. So are the commercial fisheries, many of which operate year-round.

Not so this year. Like so many other industries, fisheries, whether commercial or recreational, have been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. And while U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross on Thursday announced $300 million in relief funding for fisheries around the nation, Virginia’s top natural resources official says the state’s $4.5 million allocation is nowhere near enough to stem the tide of losses.

“This funding falls woefully short of even beginning to address the devastating impacts fisheries and aquaculture businesses have suffered due to COVID-19,” said Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources Matt Strickler in a statement. “The fishing industry in Virginia supports thousands of jobs and generates millions in revenue. The administration must release more funding to help our coastal communities and businesses.”

Read the full story at The Virginia Mercury

The story of Louisiana and its oyster farmers who have no place to sell their crop

May 12, 2020 — Natalie Gerdes’ family owns Casamento’s, the Uptown restaurant famous for its oysters and tile decor. The restaurant switched to takeout when the coronavirus stay-at-home order began in mid-March, but it has seen a 75% drop in business, Gerdes said.

“We’re just trying to get by,” she said. “Some days are a struggle.”

Few people are ordering raw or chargrilled oysters these days, and those who do are mostly regulars, Gerdes said. “I’m sure that a lot people would prefer to eat them here and have the experience,” she said.

More than almost any other food, oysters tend to be consumed in restaurants. And that means oyster farmers are struggling mightily to keep their businesses afloat while restaurants are closed or running at limited capacity. The pandemic is just the latest blow inflicted on an industry already reeling from environmental disasters.

Most Louisiana oyster farmers lease areas of the sea floor from the state. The farmers plant “cultch” — a hard material for oyster larvae to latch onto — and harvest the oysters when they mature.

The crop is sold to processors, who sell to distributors, who sell to restaurants. When the restaurant industry screeched to a halt, processors froze the product they had on hand. With freezers full of oysters, they stopped buying.

Read the full story at NOLA.com

With Restaurants Shuttered, Oyster Farmers Face Market Collapse

May 11, 2020 — Oysters are a resilient species with ragged shells that will cut your hands when you try to pry them open, and adaptable insides that change from male to female and back to reproduce. They’ve been around for hundreds of millions of years, popping up in the Triassic period; they have survived human gluttony — in the 1800s, New Yorkers ate about 600 oysters per person every year — and, more recently, environmental degradation. Now, they and the people who farm them are facing a challenge they didn’t foresee: the coronavirus pandemic.

Of oysters, Roger Williams wrote, “This the English call hens, a little thick shell fish which the Indians wade deep and dive for.”

Valued more for their shells, which were used to make lime, in the early 1700s they were often chucked into kilns whole. By 1734, Rhode Island outlawed the practice, and people began harvesting them from estuaries and salt ponds for eating.

They soon realized what they had been missing out on, and developed a voracious appetite for the briny bivalve, so much so that by 1766 our predecessors’ hunger had to be checked, and a statute was instituted restricting harvesting to protect them.

Then, in 1798, the first oyster farm in Rhode Island was created, and the Ocean State’s aquaculture heritage was born — though it faced troubled waters.

Read the full story at EcoRI

Fisheries in Maryland, Virginia losing millions due to COVID-19 shutdowns

May 6, 2020 — Fisheries along the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Virginia are, like many other fisheries in the country, facing an economic crisis as restaurant shutdowns cause decreases in demand.

The region’s two most iconic fisheries – blue crab and oysters – are both being hit by COVID-19-based restaurant closures that caused a rapid drop in demand. Restaurants account for 70 percent or more of the demand for the two species, with retail channels unable to make up the demand gap.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

As Economy Has Faltered, New Jersey’s Fishing Industry Gets Walloped

April 27, 2020 — From Delaware Bay oysters to Atlantic scallops, the state’s fisheries are struggling to survive as retail sales dry up.

In the town of Port Norris, on South Jersey’s Delaware Bayshore, the first weeks of spring have for well over a century marked the beginning of the annual oyster harvest, a time when the waters of the Maurice River burst to life with a commercial fleet eager for prosperous days ahead. But as the first few weeks of the season come to a close, Port Norris remains still, a sign of just how deep the COVID-19 pandemic has drilled into the state’s economy.

“It’s brought things to a halt,” said Steve Fleetwood, president of Bivalve Packing, South Jersey’s largest wild-caught oyster processor. Already, Fleetwood has had to lay off some of his roughly 20 employees, who, in a rural community as small as Port Norris, are friends and neighbors. “I hate to see people without jobs,” he continued. “Hopefully we can suck it up and wait it out.”

Read the full story at the New Jersey Spotlight

MASSACHUSETTS: Oyster Farmers Ready to Harvest, But Have No Place to Sell

April 23, 2020 — On Katama Bay, oyster farmers are still working, tending their mesh cages. But due to dramatically depressed demand, most oysters maturing this spring will not be harvested.

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted every corner of the agricultural and seafood industries. But the oyster farm industry occupies its own unique corner in the emergency. Without a viable market, oysters that were seeded last year and just now reaching maturity will soon grow past their prime size for retail sale. With restaurants closed, weddings canceled and summer gatherings on hold, the oysters will have to be sold to a cannery for a fraction of the price — or discarded back into the sea.

Further complicating the process, mature oysters need to be sold to clear space for fresh seed, which can take up to 18 months to reach maturity. Without a crop in progress, losses this season could stretch out even longer.

Scott Castro runs the Blue Moon Oyster farm in Katama bay. He said sales usually ramp up around this time of the year. But he has not sold a single oyster since March 10.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

COVID-19 Is Hurting Texas Fisheries, But Eating Local Seafood Helps

April 20, 2020 — Typically, spring is a high-demand season for commercial fisheries, and many in the industry rely on these peak months to carry their income throughout the year. But, this year the widespread disruption from COVID-19 has caused seafood demand to come to a screeching halt.

Fortunately, there are ways to support these fisheries, and that means consuming more locally sourced seafood.

“One of the best ways to support local economies is to know where your food comes from and support local sources,” said Laura Picariello, fisheries specialist at the Texas Sea Grant program at Texas A&M University.  “Restaurant managers should be able to tell you where they source their seafood. You can call the restaurant in advance, or ask your server to check with the kitchen if it’s not printed on the menu.”

Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico, like shrimp and oysters, are Texas cuisine classics. These foods are rich in vitamins and minerals, low in sodium and a great source of omega-3 fatty acids and protein. Gulf seafood is healthier and more sustainable because of the highly regulated practices implemented by American fisheries, including using safer handling practices and fewer antibiotics.

Read the full story at Texas A&M Today

TEXAS: Oysters in Galveston Bay are on the rebound. Will it stay that way?

March 31, 2020 — Joaquin Padilla steered his white oyster boat, MISS KOSOVARE, in deliberate, counter-clockwise circles on an unusually placid Galveston Bay. The boat’s oyster dredge — a chain mesh net with a heavy steel frame – dragged on the port side of the boat along the floor of the bay, raking up dozens of oysters of various sizes.

Padilla lifted the dredge out of the water using a crank, and the net dumped a pile of oysters on a small table. His deckhands, Jaime Martinez and Miguel Vasquez, quickly went to work cleaning and sorting oysters, hammering with mechanical precision and chucking rocks and dead or undersized oysters back into the water.

As a kid growing up in San Leon and working as a deckhand for his fisherman-uncle, Padilla remembered seeing up to 150 oyster boats in Galveston Bay, competing for an abundant harvest.

Read the full story at The Houston Chronicle

Long road to relief: Mississippi oystermen slated for $1 million in disaster checks

February 21, 2020 — Oysters are having a moment, if you haven’t noticed. Even small towns are getting oyster bars, and national demand has skyrocketed.

But down on the Gulf Coast, oystermen (and blue crab fishermen) have spent the last decade struggling to stay afloat in the face of massive freshwater runoff events when the Army Corps of Engineers opens the Bonnet Carré Spillway to spare New Orleans infrastructure from floodwaters.

“The spillway openings had a devastating effect on our fisheries in 2011, 2016, 2018, and two in 2019,” says Ryan Bradley, executive director of Mississippi Commercial Fisheries United and a 2018 NF Highliner. “And the only time disasters were declared was 2011 and now 2019.”

A freshwater spillover shocks nearshore oyster stocks with a sudden and deadly change in salinity. That water quality change also affects young crab. Fisheries advocates were able to win a congressional disaster declaration for the 2011 losses to the oyster and blue crab fisheries.

Read the full story at National Fisherman