Saving Seafood

Groups praise updated US government seafood guidance

July 9, 2019 — U.S. seafood groups are lauding an updated government guidance that encourages pregnant and breastfeeding women and children to eat more seafood.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is updating its 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released in 2017, which recommends that Americans eat at least eight ounces of seafood per week, based on a 2,000-calorie diet. While FDA did not increase the amount of seafood adults should eat, it is emphasizing the nutritional benefits – particularly to pregnant and breastfeeding women as well as children – of eating at least eight ounces of seafood weekly.

The agency also aims to help consumers who should limit their exposure to mercury choose from the many types of fish that are lower in mercury – “including ones commonly found in grocery stores, such as salmon, shrimp, pollock, canned light tuna, tilapia, catfish and cod,” the FDA said in a press release.

However, “it is important to note that women who might become pregnant, or who are pregnant or breastfeeding – along with young children – should avoid the few types of commercial fish with the highest levels of mercury listed on the chart,” FDA said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Alaska Congress members ask to tap relief funds for seafood

June 20, 2019 — Alaska’s congressional delegation said the state’s fishermen and seafood processors should be included in a federal trade war relief package, a report said.

Lawmakers asked the Trump administration to give its seafood industry access to $15 billion earmarked for farmers, The Anchorage Daily News reported Wednesday.

“Unjustified retaliatory” tariffs are eroding Alaska seafood’s market share in China, U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young said in a June 11 letter.

“New market growth has stopped and Alaska seafood consumption has dropped,” the legislators wrote to Perdue.

China’s 25% tariff on Alaska salmon, pollock, cod and other fish implemented in July boosts the overall tariff to 32% on some fish species, they said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the San Francisco Chronicle

Port of Seattle would sink without Alaska’s fisheries

May 24, 2019 — If not for Alaska’s fisheries, the Port of Seattle would not be what it is today.

How important is Alaska to its bottom line?

An economic report released this month by the Port of Seattle reveals that Seattle is home  to about 300 fishing vessels and of those, all but 74 make their fishing living in Alaska. The Seattle-based boats harvest Alaska pollock, Bering Sea crab, flounders, salmon and many other high value species, and they vary in size from huge, 150 crew catcher-processors to much smaller seiners and trawlers.

In 2017, fishing vessels that moored at one of Seattle’s three terminals and operated in the Alaskan fisheries generated gross earnings of more $455 million, or nearly half of the gross earnings from Alaska’s fisheries. That represented 44% of all gross earnings from the North Pacific fisheries.

Boats fishing in Puget Sound and other Washington areas earned $26.6 million at the Seattle docks.

An estimated 7,200 jobs were directly associated with commercial fishing at the Port of Seattle in 2017. Of that, 5,100 jobs were on fishing vessels, of which all but just 200 operated in Alaska fisheries.

Read the full story at Alaska Fish Radio

There are plenty of fish in the sea. Why do we eat so few?

May 7, 2019 — The waters off New England teem with a wide range of species, from scup, white hake, and mackerel to whelk, surf clams, and peekytoe crab. But despite this abundance, just a small handful of regionally available species dominate the marketplace—mostly lobster, scallops, and cod. Why don’t supermarket shelves better mirror the diversity of local waters?

That question is the subject of a new survey of fish and shellfish diversity in grocery stores and specialty markets in New England. The study, published on Monday by Eating with the Ecosystem, a nonprofit that promotes local and sustainable seafood harvesting in the Northeast, looks for “symmetry”: namely, the balance between the creatures found in nearby waters and the products found in the seafood section. For now, the study found, that proportion is greatly out of whack.

The report is based on the shopping experiences of 86 citizen scientists, who collected data over a six-month period of time. Each week, participants were randomly assigned four species from a list of 52 species commonly found in the waterways where New England fishers harvest their catch. They were instructed to seek their targets out at up to three markets, bring one home, cook out, and rate their experience. Basically, it was adult hide-and-seek but with pollock and sea urchins instead of people.

Read the full story at The New Food Economy

An international airplane feud could crimp one of Alaska’s most lucrative fisheries

May 3, 2019 — A new twist in a decade-long trade war over airplanes could crimp one of Alaska’s most lucrative fisheries: The European Union is threatening new import taxes on Alaska pollock.

The tariffs stem from a feud over government support for the American company Boeing and European company Airbus. Earlier this year, the World Trade Organization issued separate rulings that said both companies have received illegal subsidies.

In response, both the U.S. and EU last month proposed tariffs on billions of dollars worth of the other’s exports.

The potential effects underscore the global nature of the market for Alaska fish products, of which Europe and Asia are big consumers.

The proposed EU tariffs on pollock would hit the largest market for fillets of the Bering Sea whitefish. European processors turn blocks of frozen pollock into fish sticks and fish pies; more than $250 million in exports go to Europe each year, or a little less than 20% of the $1.4 billion value of the total annual pollock catch.

Read the full story at KTOO

ALASKA: Fisheries management a bright spot for state despite budget roller coaster

April 22, 2019 — Times are tight for state budgets these days. It’s easy to forget the crucial role government agencies play in sustaining our economy. Fisheries are a prime example. Most Alaskans don’t know that Alaska is world-famous for its management of fisheries through a system based on science.

Even those of us familiar with highly political “fish wars” over allocations of salmon between sport and commercial fishers sometimes forget that.

To be able to fight over fish we need healthy fisheries, however. Thanks to the commitment of Alaskans over the years to science-based fisheries management — in fact, since we became a state in 1959 — we’ve been blessed with a huge natural resource that employs thousands and feeds millions.

The sustainability of that depends on science-based management. For that, Alaskans can give themselves a pat on the back.

Interestingly, Alaska was the first place where the scientific principles of sustained-yield fisheries management were put in place on a broad scale, first with salmon and now with all the fisheries we manage in both state and federal waters, including cod, crab, herring and pollock.

Before Alaska became a state, our salmon fisheries were overfished and depleted. There had been decades of mismanagement by the federal government.

Read the full story at Anchorage Daily News

Next stop, dandelion fleet!

April 12, 2019 — Someone once told me that no one was ever hired after responding to a help wanted ad in a newspaper. But that didn’t stop me, in the spring of 1997, from applying to become senior editor at National Fisherman.

In addition to 10 years’ newspaper experience, including five at the Boston Globe (“The 13th largest paper in the country!” they liked to say on the night desk), I had, going back to childhood, 20-plus years’ experience as a commercial fisherman, including as skipper and owner. I would be a lead-pipe cinch for the job!

And indeed, I was, after their first choice turned it down. I am eternally gratefully for having been the second choice, and for the ensuing opportunities.

Editing National Fisherman was a job with many benefits, the greatest of which has been meeting fishermen from around the country and in quite a few instances making trips.

Among the most memorable of these was aboard the 272-foot factory trawler American Dynasty in 1998. Capt. Jim Susol, a throwback who welcomed me aboard saying, “Smoke anywhere” (I don’t happen to), could not have been more gracious. For someone who came of age on lobster boats and side trawlers, the idea of a fishing vessel with air conditioning, flush toilets, and five main courses at mealtime was eye opening, to say the least – as was a 45-minute tow that yielded 88 tons of pollock.

Another large vessel I got out on, a few years later, was the 145-foot Retriever, skippered by Franz Morris, which was midwater trawling for herring off Rockland, Maine.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: Lured to Gloucester: Virginia business comes to buy haddock after expo visit

April 12, 2019 — When executives at Gloucester-based Intershell Inc. decided to ramp up the company’s presence at the Seafood Expo North America in March, they hoped at the very least to develop new relationships that could slingshot into additional sales.

Intershell did strong business during the three days the vast show ran at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center in South Boston, shipping orders to new customers stretching from New York to Texas.

Now it can add the bustling burg of Spotsylvania, Virginia, to the list of new out-of-state clients.

Intershell has entered into an agreement with the Spotsylvania-based Van Cleve Seafood Co. to fully source Gloucester-landed haddock for a new line of ultra-healthy frozen seafood the all-female-owned company is developing for national distribution from its facility near the Chesapeake Bay.

“We think this could evolve into a very good revenue stream for local fishermen,” said Frank Ragusa of Intershell. “We’ve also talked with them about sourcing North Atlantic pollock, as well, which would really help build up the market for pollock and help our guys out even more. And it all started with a conversation at the seafood show.”

In that conversation, the women from Van Cleve — mother Shelly Van Cleve and her daughters Monica Van Cleve-Talbert and Alexandra Cushing — explained to the Intershell executives that they were looking for the cleanest, freshest seafood they could find for the new line.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

USDA seeking even more Alaska pollock

April 2, 2019 — Soon after announcing its multimillion-dollar purchase of Alaska pollock from several key North American suppliers, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is seeking more of the frozen fish.

In a 29 March bid notice, the USDA said it’s looking to buy 646,000 pounds of frozen Alaska pollock fish sticks for the National School Lunch Program and other Federal Food and Nutrition Assistance Programs.

Trident Seafoods, High Liner Foods, and Channel Fish are the beneficiaries of the USDA’s March purchase of nearly USD 28.1 million (EUR 25 million) worth of frozen Alaska pollock.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Alaska’s Bering Sea is the Focus of a New NOAA Effort to Accelerate Science Delivery to Fisheries Managers

March 29, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The Bering Sea is home to some of the nation’s largest and most profitable commercial fisheries, including Alaskan pollock and Pacific cod. It’s also one of the fastest warming parts of the world, with fish stocks becoming increasingly vulnerable to marine heat waves, the loss of sea ice, low-oxygen waters, harmful algal blooms, and other conditions that stress species, ecosystems, and economies.

Environmental changes in this area are happening so rapidly that researchers are continuously seeking ways to deliver more timely and actionable information on changing ocean conditions to help resource managers, commercial and recreational fishermen, Alaska Native communities, and coastal communities prepare and respond.

For this reason, NOAA scientists selected the Bering Sea as a testbed for what they hope will be a new system that provides decision-makers with robust projections of ocean and fisheries conditions over short-term (daily or annual), medium-range (1–20 years), and long-run (10–50 years) scenarios, and then evaluates how different fishery management strategies might perform under those future conditions.

“Unlike other modeling approaches, we not only look at how climate change affects the marine environment but also the people who rely on it,” said Kirstin Holsman, who along with Anne Hollowed, has co-led a team of more than two dozen researchers from NOAA Fisheries, NOAA Research, the University of Washington, and other partner agencies in this effort. “Fisheries managers and affected communities across the United States. are interested in the impacts and opportunities that are associated with changing oceans. It is our hope that this strategy will help them achieve their immediate needs and long-term sustainability goals.”

Read the full release here