Saving Seafood

RHODE ISLAND: Virus puts freeze on demand for shellfish

April 3, 2020 — Jody King’s hands usually dry out from salt water after a day of work on Narragansett Bay, where he rakes quahogs for a living from the sandy bottom around Prudence Island.

Now, King’s hands dry out from using too much Purell.

His last day of steady quahogging was more than a week ago, when his dealer called to say he couldn’t buy any more clams. These days, King sits at home, waiting for a call to return to work.

With restaurants shuttered and fish markets in Boston, New York and other East Coast cities closed because of the spread of coronavirus, quahoggers like King have been left with no demand for their product.

“The bay is open, and I can’t go to work,” said King. “This is an absolute first.”

Andrade’s Catch in Bristol usually buys 4,000 to 6,000 clams a day from quahoggers, but after the wholesale business collapsed the shop could only move 1,000 pieces a day selling retail to locals.

“We could make it another month, a month and a half like this, but the fishermen are really at risk,” said Davy Andrade, a part-time owner of the shop. “It takes about $200 a day to run a boat and pay the bills and feed their family, and these guys are pulling in $100 a day if they’re lucky.”

Read the full story at the Warwick Beacon

Federal stimulus not too soon for Massachusetts fish, shellfish industry

March 30, 2020 — Stimulus funds made possible by the signing of the phase three coronavirus bill can’t come fast enough for finfish and shellfish harvesters and dealers in the US state of Massachusetts, the Cape Cod Times reports.

The newspaper on Friday, the day the bill was passed by the House of Representatives by voice vote and signed by president Donald Trump, recounted how multiple seafood sectors were being affected by the virus. COVID-19 has now infected over 143,000 and killed over 2,500 in the US and caused the closing or partial closing of foodservice establishments all over the country.

Industry leaders had informed Daniel McKiernan, acting director of the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF), in a March 20 conference call that 70% of all seafood sold in Massachusetts is consumed in restaurants. Especially hard-hit are “luxury” seafood species, such as lobster, scallops, swordfish and tuna, the newspaper noted.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

The best places to buy fresh seafood online in 2020

March 25, 2020 — With much of the country practicing some form of social distancing and attempting to keeping indoors whenever possible, delivery services have become all that more useful. From booze to groceries, butcher meats and even fully-prepared meals , these services are providing a level of safety the public, especially for those at high risk of becoming sick. The following is our pre-COVID-19 list of the best seafood delivery services in 2020 to keep a steady flow of healthy fish coming, even in these unnerving times. Be sure to check that the services listed are accepting new customers and deliver to your area.

There are lots of reasons to buy more seafood. Generally speaking, fish and seafood (wild caught in particular) are healthier both for our bodies and the planet than beef, chicken, pork and other meats (all now largely factory-farmed, often using growth hormones and other dubious practices). But for every reason to eat more fish and seafood, there seems to be an obstacle in the way — cost and access to name a few.

It might sound counterintuitive to order seafood online but a bevy of new members of the online seafood industry are proving that fish and seafood delivery might just be the best way to get fresh and affordable seafood into your home, especially when living far from fished waters. “Fresh seafood delivery” is not an oxymoron. A reliable seafood market (or seafood restaurant) with a consistently fresh bounty of salmon, halibut, crab and other shellfish is a treasure, to be certain, but not every town or neighborhood has one, and if you live far from the ocean things get even dicier.

This score of online ordering seafood delivery companies offer everything from high-quality salmon, jumbo shrimp, gulf shrimp, clams (and clam chowder), oysters, cape porpoise lobster and crab legs to harder-to-find fish species like monkfish and grouper, all flash-frozen, expertly packaged and delivered right to your door as a one-time order or recurring subscription. The new players are finding innovative ways to ensure maximum freshness and accountability and supporting sustainable seafood, with many now providing detailed records about exactly where the fish and seafood came from, when it was caught, how far it traveled and what sorts of fishing practices have been employed.

Read the full story at CNET

Alaska shellfish farmers and divers object to paying for federally required lab tests

March 18, 2020 — Alaska shellfish farmers and divers fear they won’t be “open for business” much longer if they’re forced to pick up the tab for federally required lab tests as outlined in Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s budget.

The Department of Environmental Conservation has proposed shifting the cost to the harvesters, which last year totaled almost a half million dollars.

Geoduck clam divers in Southeast Alaska, for example, pay about $150,000 each year to collect samples that are sent to the single federally approved laboratory in Anchorage and tested for paralytic shellfish poison and other toxins. Divers also pay $20,000 for water quality samples twice a year, and $8,000 to test for inorganic arsenic.

“And then we pay the Alaska Department of Fish and Game about $25,000 a year for them to do the management and assessment of the geoduck resource,” said Phil Doherty, co-director of the Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Association.

The geoduck divers also tax themselves 7% to cover SARDFA’s $50,000 administrative costs. In all, Doherty said it adds up to $266,00 a year.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Washington shellfish suppliers forced to downsize due to coronavirus

March 10, 2020 — Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. and its surrounding areas have emerged as the epicenter of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak within the United States, with 136 of the country’s 545 reported cases reported there as of the morning of Sunday, 8 March, according to the Washington Department of Health.

The resulting public health crisis has led to a severe decline in seafood exports to China, where the virus originated late last year. Seattle Shellfish, which produces geoduck for export to China, has laid off more than 35 of 60 employees hired just two months ago in January.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Can kelp help protect shellfish from ocean acidification?

February 27, 2020 — Marine scientist Susie Arnold of the Island Institute will discuss research about kelp farming and ocean acidification Monday, March 9 at 5 p.m. at the MDI Biological Laboratory, as part of the laboratory’s Science Café series.

Maine’s scenic coastlines and long-established fisheries contribute to the state’s economy, making Maine vulnerable to the effects of ocean acidification from both an environmental and socio-economic perspective.

To address this vulnerability, Maine was the first East Coast state to convene a legislatively established commission, tasked with understanding increased ocean acidification and the potential impacts on commercially important species.

Arnold has been part of a joint research effort, undertaken by Island Institute, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and aquaculture industry collaborators, to better understand the role of growing and harvesting macroalgae in capturing carbon, and to determine potential benefits of co-cultivating kelp or other macrophytes alongside farmed shellfish.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Maine Implements Emergency Closures In Scallop Fishery

December 11, 2019 — Maine fishing regulators are implementing emergency closures in the state’s scallop harvesting industry for the first time this season.

Maine scallop fishing takes place every winter, and the state uses emergency closures to protect the valuable shellfish against overfishing.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources says it has closed Moosabec Reach, which is an area off Jonesport in Down East Maine.

Read the full story at Maine Public

MASSACHUSETTS: Scituate commercial shellfish harvesting proposal raises concerns among residents

November 20, 2019 — The idea of launching a commercial shellfish harvesting program in Scituate has generated discussions on the possible benefits the industry could bring. As the town’s boards and committees work to finalize the necessary policies and procedures, however, there is a strong current of opposition to the present plan site.

“It’s not that we are against shellfishing, we’re against the location they’ve chosen,” said Scituate resident Peter Marathas Jr. “We feel there is a better place they could put this.”

Marathas was one of a large group of residents from both Scituate and Cohasset who attended the Oct. 29 Scituate Board of Selectmen meeting, at which members of the Scituate Shellfish Advisory Committee presented an update on the proposed pilot program and on the rules and regulations that would go along with it.

Read the full story at Wicked Local

Microplastics in vast majority of Oregon shellfish, study finds

November 13, 2019 — A Portland State University study found tiny pieces of plastic in the vast majority of razor clams and oysters sampled along the Oregon coast and noted that the primary source of contamination was from fibers used in synthetic textiles.

Those microscopic fibers can be shed by yoga pants, fleeces and other active wear made of synthetic textiles during a wash — up to 700,000 per load of laundry, according to the study, which was reported on Tuesday in The Oregonian/OregonLive. These fibers are in the wastewater from laundry machines that eventually winds up in the ocean, although some of the tiny plastic fibers could also come from derelict fishing gear, the newspaper said.

The shellfish in question were plucked from 15 sites, from Clatsop in the north to Gold Beach near the California border, in both the spring and summer of 2017. Of the roughly 300 shellfish analyzed, all but two contained at least some microplastics, Elise Granek, a PSU professor of environmental science and management, said.

The study was published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography Letters.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at KOMO

Oyster growers agree to abandon quest to use controversial insecticide in Southwest Washington tidelands

October 22, 2019 — A Southwest Washington oyster growers association has abandoned a quest to use a controversial insecticide that combats burrowing shrimp, a creature that can make tidelands unfit for shellfish farming.

In a settlement reached last week, the Willapa Grays Harbor Growers Association agreed to accept a 2018 state Ecology Department denial of the proposed use of imidacloprid and drop an appeal to the state Pollution Control Hearings Board.

The growers wanted to use the insecticide to spray up to 500 annually of the more than 12,000 acres of tidelands used for shellfish cultivation in Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor. Without the spray, the growers say they lose productive tidelands to the shrimp, which churn up sediment and can cause oysters, as well as clams, to suffocate in the muck.

The proposed imidacloprid spraying was opposed by National Marine Fisheries Service because of risks to other marine life, and it triggered a public backlash led by some high-profile Seattle chefs.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times