Saving Seafood

Cooke buys another Latin American shrimp farmer

March 18, 2019 — Canada-based diversified seafood group Cooke has bought another Latin American shrimp farmer, having closed a deal for Seajoy Group earlier in the year.

On Saturday, Cooke confirmed to Undercurrent News the acquisition of Farallon Aquaculture de Nicaragua, a vertically integrated farmer and a supplier of branded fresh-frozen shrimp to major markets in Asia, Europe, and the US.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Farallon Nicaragua is headquartered in Leon, Nicaragua, employs 384 people, and operates a hatchery, three farms and an onsite processing plant from four locations.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Taking the sea out of seafood

March 15, 2019 — Land-based aquaculture can sound like a mirage — shrimp farms in the desert, salmon swimming “upstream” in an alpine village tank, tilapia swishing over the plains. And for a long time, ample production of sea delicacies in recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) has been more dream than reality. Yet the technology and its innovators steadily have gained momentum and finally may be hitting their tipping point.

The allure of fish grown on land is easy to understand: Like all aquaculture, it reduces demand for wild fish, but unlike with sea-based pens, closed-loop RAS farms (PDF) run no risk of fish escaping to dilute the native gene pool, spread diseases or discharge waste and antibiotics into the wild. RAS farmers have near-full control over growing conditions, so they can optimize for growth and quality. And with its amenability to unlikely locations, RAS can sit near major consumer markets, providing fresh local seafood even when the shore is hundreds of miles away.

So why aren’t we eating it already? RAS entrepreneurs face three big challenges: energy; contamination risks; and money. Mimicking a natural system within strictly regulated parameters is an energy-intensive endeavor, and sustainability (not to mention costs) demands locating RAS facilities next to cheap, abundant energy sources. A pathogen let loose in a closed system can be a disaster, so RAS farmers have to be extra scrupulous about avoiding contamination.

Money may be the biggest hurdle: RAS operations need high volumes and relatively long ramp-ups to reach profitability, and the pile of patient capital needed to build and grow large, high-tech facilities can be as elusive as Moby Dick.

Read the full op-ed at GreenBiz

Shrimpers hope industry lost to warm seas won’t be forgotten

February 19, 2019 — Glen Libby looks back fondly on his days as a Maine shrimp trawler, but he’s concerned about what seafood lovers will think if the shuttered fishery ever reopens.

“Shrimp? What are those?” he said. “There will be a market. But it depends how big of a market you’re talking about.”

Maine’s historic shrimp industry has been closed since 2013 due to a loss in population of shrimp off of New England that is tied in large part to warming oceans. And with a reopening likely several years away — if it ever happens at all — Libby and others who formerly worked in the business are grappling with how much of the industry they’ll be able to salvage if the time ever comes.

The state’s shrimp fishery was traditionally a winter industry, but it’s in the midst of its sixth straight season with no participation because of a government-imposed moratorium. Fishermen, wholesalers, distributors and others in the seafood business lament the industry wouldn’t be in a good position to return right away even if fishing for the little, sweet pink shrimp was allowed.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Idaho Statesman

Gulf Shrimp Landings Fall Below 2017 Average for Second Month in a Row

February 7, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Gulf shrimp landings have fallen below both the 2017 figure and the prior eight-year average for the second month in a row. According to seafood market reporter Jim Kenny, the drop below the eight-year average has actually occurred 8 out of 11 months this year.

Due to the government shutdown, the National Marine Fisheries Service just released numbers for November 2018 and landings for all species, headless came in at 8.207 million lbs. To compare, landings in November 2017 hit 8.898 million lbs. The cumulative total now stands at 89.971 million lbs.; 3.7 million pounds or four percent below the January – November 2017 total of 93.681 million lbs. Compared to the prior eight-year average, November 2018 landings are 10 percent lower.

November’s low Gulf shrimp landings come after the lowest reported commercial shrimp harvest in the Gulf of Mexico for any October. The Southern Shrimp Alliance reported that only 10.4 million pounds were harvested in October 2018, a 30% drop from the 16-year historical average for October landings. In October low volumes were being blamed on a lack of reporting of any shrimp landings from the West Coast of Florida, as well as the reporting of only 3.6 million pounds of shrimp from Louisiana. For comparison, the 16-year-historical average for Louisiana landings in October is 7.7 million pounds.

This story was originally published by SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission. 

Cooke Inc. branches into shrimp production with Seajoy acquisition

February 4, 2019 — Cooke Inc. announced on 1 February it has finalized its acquisition of Seajoy Seafood Corporation, one of Latin America’s largest producers of farmed shrimp, with operations in Honduras and Nicaragua.

SeafoodSource previously reported on the acquisition, which was completed in November 2018, but the formal announcement came after the companies finalized the details of the transaction.

“The acquisition of Seajoy is an important element in our focus on product diversification to meet our customers’ needs,” Cooke CEO Glenn Cooke said in a press release. “Seajoy is a world-leading shrimp producer utilizing the highest quality and food safety standards and newest available technology. This aligns perfectly with our existing aquaculture and wild seafood fishery divisions. We feel Seajoy’s entrepreneurial drive, industry knowledge and care for their communities has made them successful and a big reason why we feel this is an incredible cultural fit.”

The purchase gives Cooke Inc., the parent company of Black Harbour, New Brunswick, Canada-based Cooke Aquaculture, an avenue to expand its product repertoire to include shrimp. Seajoy is one of the largest vertically integrated, premium shrimp farms in Latin America, with a focus on producing value-added and organic Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) and selling to customers in Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

India is top exporter of shrimp to US for fourth straight year

February 1, 2019 — India is once again the top country of origin for shrimp entering the United States.

India outpaced Indonesia, Thailand, and Ecuador to take the title for most shrimp exports to the U.S. for the fourth straight year.

Thirty-two percent of all shrimp imported into the U.S. came from India, and India continues to build market share, as it realized a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.2 percent between 2014 and 2017, outpacing total U.S. shrimp demand CAGR growth of 7.1 percent, according to India’s Business Standard.

Shrimp exports to the U.S. were up 16 percent in 2018 over 2017 through November, despite lower prices due to a high supply volume, according to ShrimpTails magazine. The anomaly may be due to the expansion of the U.S. Seafood Import Monitoring Program to cover shrimp in 2019.

“As all markets that export shrimp to the U.S. will have to adhere to the requirements set out by SIMP, it seems inevitable that importers and their suppliers are trying to move as much product into the country as they can before it takes effect,” analysts Willem van der Pijl and Ken Salzinger wrote. “Especially for a country like India, which deals with tens of thousands of small-scale farmers, exporters are struggling to trace shrimp all the way back to the original farm, which is part of the requirements under SIMP.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Global shrimp supply will remain high for foreseeable future

January 18, 2019 — The glut in the global supply of shrimp that persisted throughout 2018 will remain in 2019, as cold storage facilities in the United States continue to have supplies lasting months in storage.

A panel of experts at the Global Seafood Market Conference in Coronado, California on 17 January said cold storage facilities in the U.S. had, at times, 30 percent more shrimp in storage in 2018 than they did in 2017.

In addition, the panel predicted that the reserves will not be drawn down significantly in 2019. The primary reason for that is production of shrimp in India, which panelists said will remain close to its record high of 740,000 metric tons (MT), with production in other countries starting to increase as well.

“It all comes back to, ‘What are we going to do with all this shrimp?’” said Jeff Goldberg, president of Fortune Imports.

Estimates indicate that there’s 290 million pounds of shrimp currently in cold storage facilities in the U.S., representing a supply that, with no further production or imports, could last more than three months.

That high amount of supply in storage is coupled with increasing supply coming from countries like Ecuador. Between 2013 and 2018, production of shrimp in Ecuador more than doubled, going from 219,412 MT to 471,026 MT.

Ecuador and India aren’t the only countries with increasing supply. Indonesia, Vietnam, and Mexico also saw growth. The most dramatic growth occurred in Guatemala, which has consistently increased between 30 to 40 percent year-over-year.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

NORTH CAROLINA: Trawlers catching “unheard of” amounts of shrimp off Corolla

January 14, 2019 — South of the Virginia border, the shores off Corolla have become an Outer Banks hot spot to catch winter shrimp.

Trawlers have clustered there within 3 miles of shore in recent weeks, each bringing in as much as 20,000 pounds of the delicacy per trip.

Last week, the “Capt. Ralph” hauled in 30,000 pounds, the most ever for the crew, said Ashley O’Neal, manager of O’Neal’s Sea Harvest.

In the past, 12,000 pounds was a good catch no matter where it came from, he said.

“This 30,000-pound stuff is unheard of,” O’Neal said. “We are seeing a lot of shrimp.”

In 2016, North Carolina shrimpers harvested a record 13.2 million pounds, worth $28.2 million. It was a 45 percent increase over the previous year, according to state statistics. The record fell again in 2017 with a harvest of 13.9 million pounds worth $29.6 million. The 10-year average is just short of 8 million pounds. Most of the catch comes from estuaries like the Pamlico Sound.

Shrimp consumption in the United States reached a new record in 2017 at 4.4 pounds a person per year, making it America’s favorite seafood, according to NOAA Fisheries. More than 90 percent of what’s eaten in the U.S. comes from foreign markets raised on farms.

Read the full story at the Daily Press

How Climate Change Is Affecting New England, And What’s Yet To Come

January 7, 2019 — Climate change is expected to hit the Northeast pretty hard, affecting crops, ski resorts and fisheries on the coast. Here are some of our latest New England reports on climate change — from inland floods in New Hampshire, to a Connecticut forest, to a salt marsh north of Boston where there’s an invasive plant that just won’t quit.

The federal government recently released a lengthy climate assessment with a chapter focused on the Northeast. Our friends at WBUR put together a few New England takeaways you should know.

First, climate change is affecting our health, bringing warmer temperatures that are actually rising faster in the Northeast than elsewhere in the continental U.S. That can mean more deaths from extreme heat, plus more troubles with ticks, asthma and allergies.

Warmer seasons will spell some trouble for some businesses — from fruit farmers to ski resorts. On the flip side, the changes could be a boon to some growers, and they’ll see a longer growing season.

And the report says fisheries will be affected by climate change, as Northeast ocean temperatures are rising 3 times faster than the global average. That means there will be fewer of some species, like northern shrimp, surf clams and Atlantic cod. Other species will increase, like black sea bass.

Read the full story at New England Public Radio

With prices low, US grocers push shrimp for the holidays

December 20, 2018 — Cheaper farmed shrimp prices are benefitting American retailers and consumers this holiday season.

Prices for imported farmed shrimp have dropped significantly since the summer, and fallen an additional USD 0.30 to 0.40 (EUR 0.26 to 0.35) per pound over the last month.

There are a variety of reasons for the steep drop in prices. Overproduction, heavy inventory in United States’ cold storage, rejections of imported shrimp by the U.S.A., and close competition for vannamei from other suppliers are all impacting shrimp pricing. Shrimp from India, which is the largest supplier to the United States, is especially impacted according to Haroon Chaudhri, director of sales for importer CleanWaterFish.

Delivered duty-paid New York prices on Indian shrimp are as low as USD 3.20 (EUR 2.80) per pound for 30/40s headless, shell-on, and USD 3.65 (EUR 3.19) per pound for 50/60s, Chaudhri said.

“These are much lower than a few months ago, and I see them falling further,” Chaudhri told SeafoodSource.

Shrimp imports to the U.S. rose 8.7 percent in October compared to the same month in 2017, according to National Marine Fisheries Service data, while Indian imports soared 17.2 percent in October compared to last year.

Read the full story at Seafood Source