Saving Seafood

Maine fishing crew hauls in a whale of a lobster

June 13, 2015 — Ricky Louis Felice Jr. had never seen such a monster of the deep before, so he posted a photograph of himself holding the 3-foot-long, 20-pound lobster on his Facebook page Monday.

Since then, Felice, a 24-year-old criminal justice major from Cushing, said he has been bombarded with requests for interviews from news media outlets across Maine and New England.

Felice was working as a deckhand on the Big Dipper, a lobster boat based in Friendship, in late May when the crew hauled up a trap with the behemoth cowering inside.

Though the hardshell lobster was caught more than a month ago, Felice said he decided to post its photograph Monday on Facebook after his friends urged him to.

“He was huddled over in the corner (of the trap), all balled up. Lobsters are very territorial and I don’t think he liked the fact that there were five lobsters inside the trap with him,” Felice said Monday evening. “His whole body was inside the trap. He was the biggest lobster I’ve ever seen in my life.”

The three-man crew of the Big Dipper, which is captained by Isaac Lash of Friendship, each posed for a photograph with the big crustacean before tossing it back into the Gulf of Maine.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

New NYC Health Department Rule Mandates Raw Fish Make Pit Stop In Freezer First

July 11, 2015 — Beginning in August, most raw fish served in any New York City restaurant will have to be frozen first.

As WCBS 880’s Jim Smith reported, the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s rule is going into effect next month, requiring fish being served raw or under cooked to first be frozen to kill off bacteria.

But James Versocki, counsel for the New York State Restaurant Association, said there are exemptions — meaning you’ll likely not notice any difference the next time your order a tuna roll.

Read the full story at CBS New York

 

Dogfish is fair game for anglers, but diners aren’t catching on

July 8, 2015 — There was a time when dogfish was all the rage and local fishermen couldn’t reel them in fast enough for connoisseurs as far as away as England, Italy and Germany.

The smooth and spiny sharks were a delicacy in England, where they was called chipfish – the “fish” in fish and chips.

Then came the 1990s, when the dogfish supply in the Eastern Atlantic got frightfully low.

“We needed to be regulated because we were catching 20,000 pounds a boat per day, and lots of people were doing it,” said Spot MacDonald of Spots Fish Co., on Lynnhaven Inlet. “They shut it down overnight.”

That shutdown came from the National Marine Fisheries Service out of fear of a population collapse.

Now the fish is back. The Fisheries Service is allowing limited commercial and full-scale recreational fishing. But this time around, the industry isn’t that interested.

“They’re getting 14 cents a pound for them, and I’m getting 28 cents by the processors up in New England,” MacDonald said. “Who’s going to put much of an effort into that?”

Read the full story at the Virginian-Pilot

 

How NYC’s Leading Chefs Plan to Turn Overlooked Local Fish Into Seafood Delicacies

July 8, 2015 — “I can’t think of a chef who would say, ‘I want to rape and pillage the ocean’,” says Blue Hill‘s Dan Barber. “And, along the same lines, I can’t think of a chef who isn’t actively thinking about fish in different ways.” Barber has a point: A number of big-name New York chefs are breaking down the complicated issue and trying to serve seafood with a big focus on responsibility. Tom Colicchio has pledged not to serve striped bass. Michael Chernow based his new restaurant on undervalued species like porgy and monkfish. April Bloomfield is championing bluefish and other underappreciated species. In the same way that local, seasonal vegetables and grass-fed beef first entered the consciousness of chefs — and then, eventually, the American public — the issue of local, sustainable fish is gaining traction in New York.

At the center of this seafood renaissance is Dock to Dish, a three-year-old initiative that gives a small group of 14 New York chefs direct access to fresh, wild seafood from Montauk. Members includes Mario Batali, Michael Anthony, Andrew Carmellini, Google’s Michael Wurster, and Barber himself. At the moment, it’s not as easy as simply signing up. The program has become so popular that there are now 45 restaurants on the waiting list and joining the group means a chef needs to be recommended by a peer, and then invited by founder Sean Barrett, a former fisherman. “I call it the ‘Barber Effect,'” Barrett says, referring to the chef’s uncanny ability to make other chefs care about the issues he thinks are important. “But the chefs are all about it — there’s a huge demand for transparency.”

The idea behind Dock to Dish’s strategy isn’t only about giving big-name chefs access to high-quality seafood. What Barrett’s doing is reversing the traditional order of supply and demand: Instead of chefs placing orders for sea bass or tuna or cod, small-scale fisherman catch whatever they think is best for the environment (and in the best condition to serve at restaurants). Then, each Wednesday, Barrett delivers a grab bag of fish (just like a CSA) to the chefs — less than 24 hours after the boats dock. For the service, he charges restaurants $3,000 per month for a minimum of 300 pounds of fish. Chefs don’t know what they’re getting until the day before the fish arrives, but Barrett’s system manages to cut out middlemen and get seafood that’s as fresh as possible. “In America, there’s an industrialized method of the chefs telling the fishermen what they want, which is backwards, in my humble opinion,” he says.

Read the full story at New York Magazine

 

SEA PACT LOOKING TO FUND FISHERY PROJECTS THAT WILL HELP WORLD’S MOST CONSUMED SPECIES

SEAFOODNEWS.COM — July 1, 2015 — Sea Pact has opened its fourth Request for Grant Proposals (RFP) where the group will award financial support to projects dealing with bycatch reduction, innovation in aquaculture, or social responsibility within the seafood supply chain.

During this application period, Sea Pact said it has specific interest to fund projects that will impact the most world’s most consumed seafood species.

“We’ve learned a lot from our previous grant proposal requests,” said Guy Dean, Vice President/CSO of Albion Fisheries Ltd, and newly selected Chair of the Sea Pact Advisory Committee. “[Sea Pact has] begun to recognize where our contributions can make the greatest impact on creating positive change within our industry. We are excited about a more focused RFP process relevant to current issues affecting the seafood industry and look forward to the submissions we receive.”

Responses are due by July 31st, 2015. Sea Pact will announce the grant recipients in late 2015.

Sea Pact is a coalition of seafood distributors that share a common interest in developing environmentally sustainable fisheries and aquaculture practices. Albion Fisheries Ltd, Fortune Fish & Gourmet, Ipswich Shellfish Group, Santa Monica Seafood, Seacore Seafood and Seattle Fish Co. are the founding members of Sea Pact. The group has also added Stavis Seafood, JJ McDonnell, and A.C. Covert to its membership.

Former Chicken of the Sea owners are latest foreign investors in US fishing

June 29, 2015 — Indonesian business family the Soetantyos are set to become the latest foreign investors in US fishing and seafood, with the acquisition of Icicle Seafoods.

The Soetantyos, whose former holding company PT Management Trust (Mantrust) owned US shelf stable seafood brand Chicken of the Sea until 1993, were reportedly also involved in the recent sales process of Bumble Bee Foods, sources told Undercurrent News.

Icicle’s impending sale to Indonesian investors the Soetantyos, in a deal expected to complete in August 2015, comes amid a high level of interest in the US fishing sector from foreigners. In April, Swiss-owned fund Bregal Partners’ closed a deal Virginia-based scallop fishing company Peabody Corp., after Undercurrent reported the talks in February.

On May 11, Undercurrent broke Oceana Group’s interest in a deal for Daybrook Fisheries, a US menhaden catching firm. On May 19, Oceana confirmed the $382.3 million deal.

Then, Canada’s Cooke family, who control Cooke Aquaculture, closed a deal for US-based scallop catcher Wanchese Fish Company on June 5. Undercurrent first reported Cooke’s interest in Wanchese, which also controls vessels in Argentina, in November 2014.

Also, Kjell Inge Rokke, the Norwegian billionaire, is also being linked to an investment return to the highly leveraged American Seafoods Group, which he created.

Then, in a revelation that surprised some, Undercurrent reported on June 17 that the Soetantyos were the frontrunner in the sale process of Icicle, after interest from other foreign seafood companies and investors, such as Thai Union Frozen Products, Cooke, Mitsubishi and Marine Harvest.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Spike in Northeast Lobster Price Stings LA Distributor

June 23, 2015 — The days of cheap lobster are over. From Maine to Monterey Park, consumers are shelling out more for the delicacy.

Wholesale prices are up about 20% compared with last year’s, said Chol Pak, president of Los Angeles-based Pacific Fresh Fish Co., which has sold seafood to restaurants in the L.A. area for 33 years.

His company sells Maine American Lobster for $8.95 per pound. Sales are down, he said, because that’s more than most of his buyers want to pay.

William Cheng, manager at NBC Seafood Restaurant in Monterey Park, said that at $16.99 a pound, the restaurant is charging customers $1 more a pound than last year.

“We don’t want to raise the price a lot because then the customers would have to pay more and there is just too much competition,” he said.

One reason for the price increase: An unusually cold winter in the Northeast delayed the summer harvest in Maine. Fishermen must wait until lobsters shed their shells and reach legal harvesting size.

Read the full story at Los Angeles Times

 

Genetically Modified Salmon: Coming To A River Near You?

June 24, 2015 — While the debate over whether to label foods containing GMO ingredients plays out across the country, another engineered food has long been waiting to hit grocery stores: genetically modified salmon.

Produced by Massachusetts-based biotech firm AquaBounty Technologies, the fish is an Atlantic salmon engineered to grow twice as fast as its conventional, farm-raised counterpart. But AquaBounty’s fish has been languishing in the regulatory process: The company has been trying to get the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve its salmon for sale for nearly 20 years.

One concern repeatedly raised by critics who don’t want the FDA to give the transgenic fish the green light: What would happen if these fish got out of the land-based facilities where they’re grown and escaped into the wild? Would genetically modified salmon push out their wild counterparts or permanently alter habitat? In a review paper published this month in the journal BioScience, scientists tackle that very question.

Robert H. Devlin, a scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, led a team that reviewed more than 80 studies analyzing growth, behavior and other trait differences between genetically modified and unaltered fish. The scientists used this to predict what might happen if fish with modified traits were unleashed in nature.

Genetically modified salmon contain the growth hormone gene from one fish, combined with the promoter of an antifreeze gene from another. This combination both increases and speeds up growth, so the salmon reach a larger size faster.

Read the full story at New York Now

Reintroduction of McDonald’s lobster roll doesn’t rattle NH seafood restaurants

June 22, 2015 — MANCHESTER, N.H. — Local seafood joints say they won’t feel pinched when McDonald’s brings back its lobster roll Saturday.

“I’m not too worried” about losing customers, said Kaleb Brown, manager of Brown’s Lobster Pound in Seabrook. “Their taste buds will be able to tell the difference.”

McDonald’s announced Monday the return of its lobster roll after a 10-year hiatus.

The burger chain said its seafood offering will contain “100 percent real North Atlantic lobster and mayonnaise dressing layered on a bed of crisp leaf and shredded lettuce served on a homestyle toasted roll.”

Nicole Garvey, the McDonald’s Boston region spokesman, said “the previous recipe and amount of lobster included differ from what we are offering this summer.”

The lobster meat will get shipped frozen to restaurants “for optimal freshness,” she said. The lobster roll will contain 290 calories and sell for $7.99.

Read the full story at the New Hampshire Union-Leader

 

US scallop prices expected to increase through season on short imports

June 24, 2015 — US prices for Atlantic sea scallops are likely to rise throughout the rest of the season, on a lack of available imports as well as potentially smaller landings than had been anticipated.

Terry Molloy, general manager of Chesapeake Bay Packing, backed by two other sources, told Undercurrent News that with landings reasonably good at the mid-June point, this was likely to be the lowest prices the market will see.

“Prices are likely at their lowest now – the only thing likely to affect them now is quality,” said Molloy. “I don’t anticipate any softening in prices from this point; increases are likely, but as for when and by how much, it’s too early to say.”

One of the other sources agreed, adding he expects pricing to increase on a weekly basis for the remainder of the season.

Current pricing, steady for a few weeks now, puts 10/20 count averaging in the low to mid $10 per pound range, U12s at $14, and U10s at $15, said Molloy.

These prices were backed by a second source based, like Molloy’s Chesapeake Bay Packing, in Newport News, Virginia. These prices, to the boat, are typically $0.25 lower than those paid in New Bedford, Massachusetts, said this source.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News