April 7, 2020 — When COVID-19 began to spread across the country, the impacts on Rhode Island’s commercial fishing and shellfish industries were immediate and devastating.
With restaurants closed, Robert Rheault, executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association, said fish and shellfish that had already been harvested ended up in landfills.
“There’s no market,” he said. “The dealers were taking tractor-trailer loads of shellfish to the dump because they didn’t have money to send it back to the growers they’d bought it from. Nobody’s going to pay for that. And they weren’t allowed to throw them in the water because they come from different growing areas and you’re worried about introducing disease.
“… Mountains and mountains of fresh fish went to the dump, too, because when you lose your food service, most people don’t like to cook fish at home. The vast majority of fish is cooked in a restaurant.”
Until the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rhode Island aquaculture industry had been expanding. In 2019, the the total value of shellfish crops was $5.8 million and the industry employed about 200 people.
Coastal Resources Management Council Aquaculture and Fisheries Coordinator David Beutel said the consequences of the evaporation of the major markets for shellfish are now being felt at all levels of the industry.