Saving Seafood

Why are so many whales washing up on West Coast beaches?

July 9, 2019 — The past year and a half has been harrowing for the world’s largest mammals, as an unusual number of gray whales have stranded on West Coast beaches this year, following excessive whale entanglements in 2018.

Gray whales have been washing ashore with alarming regularity, particularly in the San Francisco area and the Los Angeles and Long Beach Harbors, but also at some beaches in San Diego.

On March 29, San Diego lifeguards found a 30-foot-long dead whale off the shore near Mission Beach, just a day after another whale carcass was towed away from the coast off Torrey Pines.

As of June 27, a total of 171 whales have stranded on West Coast beaches off North America, with 85 of those turning up on the U.S. coastline and 37 beaching in California alone. Since most whales that die either sink or float out to sea, the beached whales represent just about 10 percent of total mortalities.

Gray whale deaths hit a peak in May, and continued through June. With whale carcasses drifting on shore, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on May 31 declared an “unusual mortality event,” which triggers heightened investigation and response to the strandings.

Read the full story at The San Diego Union-Tribune

PFMC: June 2019 Council Decision Summary Document Online

June 28, 2019 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The Pacific Fishery Management Council met June 20-25, 2019 in San Diego, California. The June 2019 Council Meeting Decision Summary Document contains the highlights of significant decisions made at that meeting. Results of agenda items that do not reach a level of highlight significance are typically not described in the Decision Summary Document.

Suppliers bank on supermarket deli growth

June 10, 2019 — Two large seafood suppliers are banking on the fast-paced sales growth in supermarket delis with new product launches.

San Diego, California, U.S.A.-based Anova Food launched seared ahi tuna steaks and tuna poke at the International Dairy Deli Bakery Association (IDDBA) conference in Orlando, Florida, which took place 2 to 4 June. Worcestershire, United Kingdom-based SeafreshGroup also unveiled a line of new seasoned marinated shrimp for grocers’ deli cases at the trade show.

In the U.S., the deli departments of supermarkets are growing faster than most other departments, as the demand for prepared foods and meals rises among millennials and other consumers. Nearly three-quarters of grocers said their deli sales rose in 2018, and more than 80 percent said they anticipate additional growth during 2019, according to a recent Progressive Grocer survey.

“The growth in supermarkets is in prepared foods, along with natural and organic foods. Millennials are looking for more grab-and-go items,” Gregory Cobble, director of sales at SeafreshGroup, told SeafoodSource at IDDBA. For example, Whole Foods features a number of different deli/ prepared seafood items, such as shrimp ceviche and tuna poke, Cobble said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Finfish Farming: Envisioning Aquaculture in San Diego

May 31, 2019 — About three miles from shore, a fishing boat tethers to an immense circular ring bobbing on the surface.

The fish pen sways with the current but is moored to the ocean floor nearly three hundred feet below. Inside the carefully structured net, hundreds of Yellowtail flash as they move effortlessly up and down the water column.

The pen casts a shadow and as with pads of broken kelp, wild fish cluster near, claiming shelter in the open sea while others shuttle beneath the pen looking for food.

This is the vision that Don Kent, CEO of Hubbs Seaworld Research Institute (HSWRI) shares with scientists, the Port of San Diego and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). While shellfish farming has been successful locally for years, ocean finfish pens would be a first for the region.

Today Americans import 90% of the seafood they consume. Fish farming could reduce that percentage and harvesting close to home would lower the carbon footprint.

How it would benefit local markets and fishermen is another question.

Eating fish is a healthy, environmentally positive option and aquaculture can make the benefits more accessible and affordable. The scientists at Sustainable Fisheries point out, “The more seafood that is eaten in place of cow, the better, since [industrial] bovine farming is the largest driver of rainforest and biodiversity loss on the planet.”

Read the full story at Edible San Diego

Restaurant, catering group nears settlement with Chicken of the Sea on price-fixing suit

May 28, 2019 — A group of restaurants and catering companies have reached a USD 6.5 million (EUR 5.8 million) agreement with San Diego, California, U.S.A.-based Chicken of the Sea and its parent company, Thai Union, to settle a lawsuit alleging price-fixing.

The lawsuit stems from a price-fixing scandal in the U.S. canned tuna market exposed by a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation in which Chicken of the Sea served as the whistleblower. The scandal led to prosecution of Chicken of the Sea’s primary co-conspirators, Bumble Bee Foods and StarKist. Both companies pleaded guilty to criminal charges in cases brought by the DOJ.

Chicken of the Sea’s potential settlement with the restaurants and catering companies, proposed Friday, 24 May, still must be approved by U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California Judge Janis L. Sammartino, who has not yet formally certified the grouping of affected companies involved in the agreement as an official class in the lawsuit. The parties suing claim to represent companies that indirectly purchased packages of tuna in 40-ounce sizes or greater from DOT Foods, Sysco, US Foods, Sam’s Club, Walmart, or Costco from June 2011 through December 2016.

Parties in the so-called “commercial food preparers” class involved in the proposed settlement include Capitol Hill Supermarket, Janet Machen, Thyme Cafe & Market, Simon-Hindi LLC, LesGo Personal Chef, Maquoketa Care Center, A-1 Diner, Francis T. Enterprises d/b/a Erbert & Gerbert’s, Harvesters Enterprises, LLC d/b/a Harvester’s Seafood and Steakhouse, Dutch Village Restaurant, Painted Plate Catering, GlowFisch Hospitality d/b/a Five Loaves Cafe, Rushin Gold LLC d/b/a The Gold Rush, Erbert & Gerbert, Inc., Groucho’s Deli of Raleigh, Sandee’ s Catering, Groucho ‘s Deli of Five Points, and Confetti’s Ice Cream Shoppe.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

PFMC: June 19-25, 2019 PFMC Meeting Notice and Agenda

May 16, 2019 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) and its advisory bodies will meet June 19-25, 2019 in San Diego, California, to address issues related to groundfish, coastal pelagic species (CPS), salmon, Pacific halibut, highly migratory species, enforcement, habitat and administrative matters. The meeting of the Council and its advisory entities will be held at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel Mission Valley, 7450 Hazard Center Drive, San Diego, CA 92108; telephone, 619-297-5466.

Please see the June 19-25, 2019 Council Meeting notice on the Council’s website for meeting detail, schedule of advisory body meetings, our new E-Portal for submitting public comments, and public comment deadlines.

Key agenda items for the meeting include Council considerations to:

  • Adopt Final Pacific mackerel Harvest Specifications and Management Measures for the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 Fisheries
  • Review Salmon Rebuilding Plans and Consider Adopting Final Plans for Sacramento River and Klamath River Fall Chinook and Preliminary Plans for Strait of Juan de Fuca, Queets River, and Snohomish River Coho for Public Review
  • Adopt Final Mitigation Measures for Seabird Interactions in Groundfish Fisheries Pursuant to the 2017 United States Fish and Wildlife Service Biological Opinion
  • Initial Scoping of Issues and Adoption of a Process for Developing Groundfish Harvest Specifications and Management Measures for 2021-2022 Fisheries
  • Adopt Final Groundfish Inseason Adjustments for 2019 as Necessary to Achieve but Not Exceed Annual Catch Limits and Other Management Objectives
  • Final Adoption of Criteria for Triggering Allocation Reviews

Seafood Without The Sea: Will Lab-Grown Fish Hook Consumers?

May 6, 2019 — High-tech meat alternatives are grabbing a lot of headlines these days. Last month, the Impossible Burger marked a meatless milestone with its debut as a Burger King Whopper. Meanwhile, Lou Cooperhouse was in a San Diego office park quietly forging plans to disrupt another more fragmented and opaque sector of the food industry: seafood.

His company, BlueNalu (a play on a Hawaiian term that means both ocean waves and mindfulness), is racing to bring to market what’s known as cell-based seafood — that is, seafood grown from cells in a lab, not harvested from the oceans.

BlueNalu is aiming for serious scalability — a future where cities around the globe will be home to 150,000-square-foot facilities, each able to produce enough cell-based seafood to meet the consumption demands of more than 10 million nearby residents.

But unlike Impossible Foods, BlueNalu is not creating a plant-based seafood alternative like vegan Toona or shrimpless shrimp. Instead, Cooperhouse and his team are extracting a needle biopsy’s worth of muscle cells from a single fish, such as a Patagonian toothfish, orange roughy and mahi-mahi.

Read the full story at New England Public Radio

Trump Administration Shortcuts Science To Give California Farmers More Water

March 11, 2019 –When then-candidate Donald Trump swung through California in 2016, he promised Central Valley farmers he would send more water their way. Allocating water is always a fraught issue in a state plagued by drought, and where water is pumped hundreds of miles to make possible the country’s biggest agricultural economy.

Now, President Trump is following through on his promise by speeding up a key decision about the state’s water supply. Critics say that acceleration threatens the integrity of the science behind the decision, and cuts the public out of the process. At stake is irrigation for millions of acres of farmland, drinking water for two-thirds of Californians from Silicon Valley to San Diego, and the fate of endangered salmon and other fish.

Farmers will only get more water after federal biologists complete an intricate scientific analysis on how it would affect endangered species. But an investigation by KQED finds that analysis will be done under unprecedented time pressure, with less transparency, less outside scientific scrutiny, and without, say federal scientists, the resources to do it properly.

“It’s a very aggressive schedule,” says a former federal biologist familiar with the matter who did not want to be named for fear of retribution. “And I think it runs the risk of forcing them to make dangerous shortcuts in the scientific analysis that the decisions demand.”

Read the full story at NPR

Maine lobster harvest topped 100m lbs again

January 23, 2019 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources is still auditing its 2018 lobster catch and won’t issue a report until February, but department spokesperson Jeff Nichols has reportedly confirmed that the US state landed more than 100 million lbs for the eighth year in a row.

Speaking at the National Fisheries Institute’s Global Seafood Market Conference, in San Diego, California, last week, Keith Moores, president of Gloucester, Massachusetts-based frozen seafood supplier J.W. Bryce, estimated that Maine’s 4,500 harvesters landed about 119m lbs of lobster in 2018, an 8m lb increase over 2017, the Portland (Maine) Press Herald reported.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Bumble Bee CEO Tharp sees bright retail future for tuna, but in pouches not cans

January 22, 2019 — Jan Tharp, the interim president and CEO of Bumble Bee Foods, sees tuna fish retail sales growing at a strong rate again but taking a different shape in the not-so-distant future, she told a packed room at the National Fisheries Institute’s Global Seafood Marketing Conference, in San Diego, California.

She was looking at charts of data from Information Resources Inc. (IRI), a Chicago, Illinois-based company that monitors retail sales trends. They showed total sales for seafood up 18%, from $9.8 billion in 2011 to $11.6bn in 2018, and the sale of tuna pouches up 12.3% in the past year.

The sale of seafood shelf-stable seafood was up only 2.9% in 2018, however. And household purchases of canned light tuna have dropped from 48.1% of tuna segment sales in 2014 to 39.3% in 2018, according to IRI.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News