Saving Seafood

Best and Worst in Alaska Seafood: Laine Welch’s Picks and Pans for 2021

January 5, 2022 — Since 1991, the weekly Fish Factor column has highlighted Alaska’s seafood industry with its annual Picks and Pans — a no holds barred look back at some of the year’s best and worst, and my choice for the year’s biggest fish story.

Here are the choices for 2021, in no particular order:

Most business potential — Seaweed mariculture. The market value of U.S. seaweed is pegged at $41 billion by 2031. Driving the demand is increased use in pharmaceuticals, health supplements, as a natural thickening agent and in animal feeds.

Best fish invention — Lightweight, collapsible slinky pots for catching black cod that solve the problem of whales stripping as much as 75 percent of the pricey fish from longline hooks.

Biggest fish booster — The pandemic continues to push record sales of all seafood with no end in sight. Pre-covid, most Americans only ate fish and shellfish at restaurants. Now they are buying seafood to cook at home. Online sales also have soared and are expected to grow.

Best fish fighters — Reps. Sarah Vance of Homer, Kevin McCabe of Big Lake, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins of Sitka. They’ve put partisan politics aside to protect Alaska’s fishery resources.

Best fish knowledge builders — Alaska Sea Grant

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Sustainable seafood purchasing boosted by younger generations, pandemic pressures

December 30, 2021 — Consumers are becoming more interested in the sustainability credentials of the seafood they eat, a long-awaited trend the COVID-19 pandemic may have served to accelerate.

Data from GlobeScan found that in 2020, 38 percent of the consumers surveyed possessed a willingness to reward companies they perceived as responsible, a significant leap up from the roughly 20 percent the firm had historically tallied since 1999.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

Cheap imports depress US swordfish market

December 30, 2021 — Low production, the ongoing COVID-19 health and economic crisis, and a flood of product from Canada are depressing the U.S. commercial swordfish market in the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic, according to some industry members.

“Production levels are the lowest they’ve been since the beginning of time,” Fort Pierce, Florida, U.S.A.-based Day Boat Seafood Owner Scott Taylor said. “There have been no positive developments whatsoever. I have more boats sitting at the dock than I have fishing.”

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Christmas season driving US scallop prices higher

December 27, 2021 — The Christmas season demand for fresh seafood is giving another jolt to Atlantic sea scallop prices.

The holiday peak comes on top of a year with tight supplies, as the U.S. East Coast scallop fleet and fishery managers wound down pressure on the resource. With the bounteous 2012-2013 class of scallops fading away, supplies will remain tight after the New England Fishery Management Council issued its specifications for the 2022 fishing year.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Growing in popularity, local seafood movement picks up US government support

December 22, 2021 — From Alaska to California to New York to Maine, hyper-local seafood purveyors throughout the United States have seen a boom in interest the COVID-19 pandemic – and federal, state, and local governments are taking notice.

As the result COVID’s drastic impact on seafood supply chains and the U.S. consumer market for seafood, the local seafood trend has thrived in the pandemic, from direct-to-consumer seafood subscription services, to community supported fisheries (CSFs), to fishermen banding together to form sales cooperatives such as Real Good Fish and Get Hooked Seafood in California, Local Catch Network in New England, and Louisiana Direct Seafood.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

China’s seafood production, consumption continue to grow

December 9, 2021 — China’s seafood production will total 65.7 million metric tons (MT) in 2021, and will increase to 66.1 million MT in 2022, according to a Chinese research consultancy.

China’s overall seafood output rose from 64.5 million MT in 2017 to 65.4 million MT in 2020, according to Zhong Shang Chan Ye Research Agency, which also trades as China Commerce and Industry Research and Ask CI Consulting.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Researchers aim to turn seafood byproducts into source of nutrition

November 30, 2021 –A research project led by Oregon State University has the potential to reduce food waste by utilizing seafood byproducts as a cheap, high-quality source of protein.

Oregon State has received a $333,777 grant from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research to study whether protein from byproducts such as fish heads, bones and skin left over after processing can be recovered and used as an ingredient in food or dietary supplements.

The seafood industry uses just 30% to 40% of what it harvests for human consumption, while the rest is either made into fishmeal or discarded in landfills.

“This research exemplifies a ‘no stone unturned’ approach to increasing global food and nutritional security through limiting food waste,” said Lucyna Kurtyka, the senior scientific program director with the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research.

Read the full story at the Daily Astorian

 

Higher seafood prices could impact Thanksgiving spending

November 23, 2021 — A new survey shows that inflation that is sending seafood prices higher may discourage Americans from indulging during the Thanksgiving holiday.

The price of meats, poultry, fish, and eggs increased 11.9 percent in October, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index. As a result, 78 percent of consumers say rising prices will impact their Thanksgiving grocery shopping, and 37 percent expect higher costs to have a significant impact on their food spending, according to new survey data from Numerator. Fourteen percent of shoppers said they will not purchase turkey for Thanksgiving this year, while 16 percent said they will omit meat and seafood. And 21 percent said they will reduce the size of their Thanksgiving gathering this year due to rising prices.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

Shrimp, finfish aquaculture recovering from COVID-19 impacts

November 23, 2021 — Both shrimp and finfish aquaculture continued to grow globally in 2021, but might experience flattening or slower growth in 2022, according to production surveys conducted by the Global Seafood Alliance.

In a presentation at the final day of the organization’s Global Outlook for Aquaculture Leadership (GOAL) conference on 17 November, Rabobank Senior Analyst Gorjan Nikolik said globally, the aquaculture sector’s production is slowly normalizing after disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource