Economic Impact

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — October 22, 2012 — New Bedford seafood processor Foley Fish has joined forces with Massachusetts supermarket chain Roche Bros. to offer consumers a unique seafood traceability program, known as Sea Trace.

Launched earlier this month, the new program allows the customer to scan a bar code that displays where the fish was caught, along with a picture of the fishing boat, a description of the fishing gear used and an assurance that the product was naturally processed.

"It's exciting for us to promote fish that is locally landed by captains working to bring fresh fish to market," said Laura Foley Ramsden, co-owner of Foley Fish. "And Roche Brothers is one of the few supermarkets where you can still buy locally landed seafood."

While various conservation groups offer consumers guides to sustainable seafood, none of them consider how seafood is handled after it comes across the dock, according to Foley. "With Sea Trace the unique feature is that, in addition to knowing the method of harvest, the customer knows that the fish wasn't gaffed, wasn't injected or treated in any way," Ramsden said.

The seafood Foley Fish shipped to Roche Bros. one recent Tuesday included scallops from the F/V Trident of New Bedford, oysters from Bourne and groundfish from the F/V Barbara L. Peters of Scituate, Ramsden said.

"We've been looking forward to launching this program," said Roche Bros. seafood director Arthur Ackles. "Most of our seafood comes from local waters and there's a lot of effort to protect the fish stocks." There is increasing interest in sustainability among Roche Bros. customers, he said. "This program will allow them to support local fishermen and to see where their fish is coming from."

Roche Bros. operates 16 stores in Eastern Massachusetts. The nearest outlets to the SouthCoast area are in Easton, Marshfield and Mashpee.

 

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times

 

 

MILBRIDGE, Maine — October 21, 2012 — Putting identification tags on animals is nothing new. Usually, such tags are used to help owners find lost pets or livestock. One local fishing family, however, has started using specialized tags to help people find out more about their dinner.

This summer, Dorr Lobster Co., located on Bar Island off Pigeon Hill Road, started placing specialized tags on every whole lobster that is shipped out of its waterfront packing warehouse. The tag, which has the company logo on it, identifies the lobster as being caught in Maine “using sustainable practices.”

It includes the company’s phone number, website address, and a tracking number that diners can look up online to find out which fisherman caught their lobster and when it was caught. The tags are safe to boil and can be left on the cooked crustaceans as they are served to restaurant customers, according to the company.

Chad Dorr, business manager for the family-owned business, said Sunday that they started placing the tags on lobsters this past July. Lobsters that are shipped for resale at eastern Maine supermarkets and those that are sold direct to consumers over the company’s website all get the tags, which are in the shape of Maine. Lobsters that are shipped out for processing do not get the tags, he said.

Dorr, who has a business management degree from Husson College, grew up in the lobster business. Dorr Lobster Co. was founded in 1977 and over the past 10 years or so it has expanded into online sales direct to consumers and into processing. Between two outdoor pounds and an indoor storage tank, he said, Dorr Lobster has storage capacity for 130,000 pounds of lobster.

With the new tags, Dorr said the idea is not just to better market their product, but Maine lobster in general. He said the business also opened up a retail shop on the Harborside Hotel pier in Bar Harbor this summer, where it has been marketing its lobster to tourists in hopes that they will order some online when they get home.

Customers can track their lobster by looking up on the Dorr Lobster website which one of the six fishermen who sell to Dorr caught that lobster. A photo and brief bio of each of the six lobstermen is posted on the website.

Dorr said he can envision a scenario in which someone orders a lobster at a restaurant outside of New England and then, when the cooked lobster arrives at the table, finds Dorr’s tag hanging off it and then uses a cellphone to look up where it came from.

“I’m trying to give them an enhanced experience,” Dorr said.

That experience, if it reassures customers that their meal was harvested sustainably and allows them to directly trace their dinner to its source, could end up fetching a higher price — not just for the restaurant, but every step of the supply chain along the way, he said.

Dorr’s tags are one of the latest examples of how Maine lobster is being marketed by smaller businesses directly to consumers.

Simply selling generic or unlabeled lobster to seasonal tourists, large distributors and restaurant chains who ship it long distances was for a long time the only strategy needed for Maine’s lobster industry. But declining prices in recent years — and especially the sharp decline this past summer — has generated a keen interest within the industry in finding better ways to market lobster specifically from Maine and for increasing the amount of processing in the state.

 

Read the full story in the Bangor Daily News 

 

 

Intrafish, Jeanine Stewart — October 19, 2012 — 167,000 metric tons menhaden business is at stake in this year's quota amendment proposal.

Omega Protein’s east coast operations could shut down  if the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) decides to adopt the 50 percent drop in quota now on the table.

The commission is considering a draft version of Amendment 2, which proposes placing varying degrees of limits on the fishery, ranging from zero change to 50 percent. The public has until Nov.16 to give input, as Omega’s fate hangs in the balance.

“It is really an opportunity for them to act very conservatively in terms of fisheries management,” Ben Landry, director of public affairs for Omega Protein, the United States’ largest producer of fishmeal and fish oil, told IntraFish.

The outcome is very much unknown, but in a worst case scenario, “ASMFC could choose to impose harvest limits that are so strict we would have to close our facility,” Landry said. Omega Protein employs 300 people and has a $90 million economic impact on the surrounding area through its menhaden fishery operations in Virginia. From that location, it sources fish from the waters up and down the east coast, harvesting 167,000 metric tons a year, which is 30 percent of its total menhaden catch. It also fishes in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Amendment 2 draft proposal do not stop at the overall quota reduction. Perhaps even more worrying for Omega is the possibility that its share of the overall quota could be cut as well.

According to the ASMFC, the fishery currently has just 8 percent of the maximum spawning potential and is being overfished. But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides two conflicting statements on the issue – it says that while some overfishing is occurring, the species is not being overfished based on the current reference point to evaluate stock condition.

Landry concedes some reduction may be necessary but said it would not be reasonable to go much beyond 10 percent.

Menhaden is the only forage species in the Chesapeake Bay that is also a major commercial fishery—the species is the largest fishery, by volume, in the Chesapeake Bay. More pounds of menhaden are landed each year than of any other fish in the United States, other than pollock.

 

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MARSHFIELD, Mass. — October 18, 2012 — Paul Krzyzewski of Marshfield makes all of his income from fishing, and next year, he doesn’t know how he is going to survive. For the fishing year that begins May 1, federal catch limits for major species such as cod and flounder are projected to be significantly reduced — Georges Bank cod by 70 percent.

So even as South Shore fishermen welcomed the prospect of aid from a preemptive federal disaster declaration announced in September, they criticized fishery management practices.

Not only are the potential cuts daunting, they said, but unprecedented competition from large boats in near-shore waters has hurt the mostly smaller boats that populate harbors in Marshfield, Plymouth, and Scituate, particularly over the past year.

Northeast commercial fishermen — small and large boats alike — could receive a total of up to $100 million in aid as a result of the disaster declaration. The decision allows, but does not require, Congress to appropriate money. The congressional delegations of affected states are seeking the funds.

Aid or not, the lower catch limits will hurt, Krzyzewski said. “That’s going to kill everybody.”

He owns the 27-foot vessel Desperado, docked in Green Harbor in Marshfield, and fishes for striped bass, bluefish, tuna, cod, and lobster, but only in good weather, because his boat is small.

Other South Shore fishermen said large boats are fishing closer to shore, sweeping through Stellwagen Bank, north of Provincetown, and quickly catching fish that smaller operators might have spent a whole season catching.

Marshfield charter fisherman Steven James, president of the Stellwagen Bank Charter Boat Association, said that last winter, large boats, which normally fish Georges Bank, farther from shore, “hammered” Stellwagen Bank for the first time.

“They crushed Stellwagen,” he said. “What’s happening is they’re fishing where the fishing is best.”

Regulators point out that several key fish stocks are not rebuilding their numbers as expected, and without healthy populations of fish, there will be nothing left to catch. Fishermen, too, support healthy stocks, but some doubt the accuracy of stock assessments.

Meanwhile, in the case of cod, environmental factors — not overfishing — have been the problem recently, according to Johanna Thomas, New England director for the Environmental Defense Fund’s Oceans Program. A complex array of factors, some of them climate related, have contributed to the decline, including warmer waters and movement of prey away from the area, she said.

“It’s akin to the drought that’s affecting farmers,” she said.

The disaster declaration applies to groundfish species, which live near the ocean floor. It does not include shellfish.

People who make their living from groundfish charter fishing — taking recreational passengers out to fish — could see disaster aid even though the declaration targets mainly commercial fishermen, according to Monica Allen, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  

If Congress appropriates money, individual states will work to craft disbursement plans, and those plans could include charters, she said. Charters represent a significant part of the fishing business on the South Shore, according to James.  

Pembroke resident Jeremy Figueiredo, who runs about six charters a year from Marshfield as a sideline to his work in medical device sales, said business is down. “It’s one of the slower years, for sure, between the regulations, the economy, and the price of fuel,” he said.

He fishes with the 35-foot vessel Go Figueire, primarily on Stellwagen Bank, for cod, haddock, pollock, tuna, and shark, depending on the time of year. This year, he expects to make fewer trips.

In Scituate, charter fisherman Tom King said rules limit customers to nine cod each. If that number goes down, they will not want to charter if they can’t get their money’s worth, he said.

 

Read the full story in the Boston Globe 

 

 

October 15, 2012 – U.S. supermarket seafood sales and volume rose this summer, according to new data from fresh food consulting firm Perishables Group. 

Sales of all fresh seafood items rose 7.8 percent while volume jumped 8.9 percent for the 13 weeks ending 28 August, compared to the same three months last year.

The average retail price of all seafood items fell 1 percent to USD 6.06 per pound, which may have helped spur the sales increase, according to Steve Lutz, Perishables Group executive VP. “I am sure it did help. There has been fairly significant price inflation across the proteins, particularly for beef. They have been hit with the drought and cost of feed input,” Lutz said.

Price drops for the major species were particularly significant. The average retail price for salmon, which makes up around 8 percent of total grocery seafood department sales, fell 7.9 percent. The average retail price for tilapia dropped 8.2 percent during the 13 weeks, while the average lobster retail price plummeted 15.1 percent and prices on all crabs dropped 10.5 percent.

There was a glut of New England lobsters this summer, which sent wholesale and retail prices plummeting. As a result, lobsters realized the highest volume increase in the quarter with a 35.2 percent spike, while dollar sales grew by 14.8 percent.

All of the top-selling seafood categories had strong volume and sales increases for the quarter. For example, salmon volume spiked 23.4 percent while salmon dollar sales rose 13.7 percent. Tilapia volume rose by 21.1 percent and dollar sales grew 11.2 percent. Shrimp volume rose 9.1 percent and dollar sales increased 11.1 percent.

 

Read the full story on Seafood Source 

 

 

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — October 14, 2012 — They say bad news comes in threes, and that seems to be the case in the New Bedford fishing industry these days. On top of a recent declaration from the secretary of commerce that the groundifsh industry in New England is a national disaster, the scallop fleet is looking at catch reductions of 30 percent for the next two years. And groudfishermen are resigned to more drastic cuts to their quota for the next fishing year, which begins on May 1.

The latest estimates project that the catch for key stocks like cod and yellowtail flounder will be reduced by 70 and 51 percent respectively on Georges Bank where local boats harvest most of their catch.

The seafood industry has kept New Bedford as the top-grossing fishing port in the nation for 12 consecutive years but the cuts will be felt far beyond the tight-knit fishing community. For those who live and work in the city the loss of fishing revenue means a loss for everyone, from car dealerships to supermarkets to waitresses and everything in between.

Annual groundfish revenue in New Bedford is $20 million while the scallop catch is worth $400 million. The combined value of the fishing industry accounts for $1.3 billion in economic activity in the New Bedford area, Mayor Jon Mitchell calculated last month when he wrote to the New England Fishery Management Council, imploring them to avoid cutting the groundfish catch for at least another year until the surveys could be updated. The proposed cuts to next year's catch would deal "a devastating economic blow" to the city by permanently eliminating hundreds of jobs, Mitchell wrote.

Along the waterfront, businesses that depend on a healthy fishery are bracing for the fallout that these cuts will undoubtedly bring.

"We are committed to offering New England groundfish, but this will definitely have an impact for processors," said Laura Foley Ramsden of Foley Fish, who is also a member of the New England Fishery Management Council.

Prices will increase with the lack of a steady supply, making New England groundfish less competitive with farmed or imported species, she said, while the U.S. already imports 91 percent of its seafood. "The cuts to groundfish are not enough of our business to put us at risk," Foley Ramsden said. "But our concern is with the fishermen and what NOAA can do to give them better access to healthier stocks."

Around the corner from the Foley Fish plant, Marc Bergeron, owner of Bergie's Seafood on Hassey Street said he feared for the future of the groundfish industry. "It's just going to be the same ol', same ol,'" he said of the looming cuts "Every time they make a cut somebody gets left behind. Now there's just a handful of people fighting for a piece of the pie that keeps getting smaller and smaller."

Other waterfront business owners are also dealing with the changes. John Liarikos, owner of Sea Fuels said he has already cut the hours for some of his employees with fewer boats fishing now, and has had to pick up the slack himself. "It's just more bad news," he said. "More cuts to groundfish affects everyone," he said. But he is more concerned about the scallop fleet which represents most of his business, he said. "That's 90 percent of it," he said. A scallop boat will burn from 6,000 to 11,000 gallons of fuel on a trip, industry figures say.

Crystal Ice also needs a healthy industry to survive, said Rob Hicks, manager of the plant on the New Bedford waterfront. "Any cuts will hurt our business and all the businesses that depend on fishing. Probably there will be people getting laid off all over the place," he said.

 

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times

 

 

October 10, 2012 — Nestled on the North Shore of Massachusetts is the town of Gloucester. The town sits on Cape Ann and this popular summer destination is quintessential New England. It was originally founded in 1623 and is one of the earliest English settlements. In its earlier days it was an important shipbuilding center, and to this day due to its proximity to Georges Bank, it remains one of the most important fishing ports in the country. As you stroll along the waters edge you will find the iconic statue of Gorton's Fisherman leaning into the helm of his ship. The statue looks out to sea standing as a reminder of the over 10,000 men of Gloucester who gave their live to the Atlantic Ocean. Several of those men were depicted in the novel by Sebastian Junger, the Perfect Storm. Today as with many commercial fishing ports who's industry faces an unknown future, there is a movement to position the area for an influx of marine technology clusters. Marine Technology Reporter sat down with Carolyn Kirk the Mayor of Gloucester and the town's Director of Harbor Planning Sarah Garcia to see what is happening in the historical port.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about your focus in northern New England with regard to increasing the viability and accessibility for marine technology companies?

Ms. Kirk: I took office January 1, 2008. Gloucester has 62 miles of coastline and one mile of the designated port area, which is what we consider to be our working harbor. That is the area of concentration that we have focused on. We had a series of what I call listening posts throughout the city.


Q: Was this an effort to take the pulse of the area regarding a focus for the working harbor?

Ms. Kirk: Yes. We asked people what their vision was for the working port of the city of Gloucester. We had over 600 people attend these meetings, and the format was very simple. They got to go to a microphone and speak for up to three minutes. We had a panel or nine people that were regular citizens and that also represented a cross section of the community. With our Director of Harbor Planning, Sarah Garcia's help and support we took all the feedback and digested it and came up with a plan for the harbor area. Basically that drove everything we have one since that time. Several things came out of that including the municipal harbor plan. which captured that vision and articulated it. The second thing that came out was an economic development plan for the harbor area and downtown area. There are three legs for the harbor economy, which emerged from the economic development plan. Those include continued support of the commercial fishing industry, diversification into the maritime sector, and visitor based or tourism economy. We have a plan in place for visitor-based economy, and we also have a plan in place for commercial fishing based economy. Diversification in the maritime sector was much less defined. In our focus in the area of marine science and technology we know we have access in the city and a port with deep-water access. We also have expertise to support this sector so what we did in November of 2011 was to pull together the new maritime port economy summit. That report is on the city of Gloucester's website. More than one hundred people participated in the sector during a day and a half long session that really zeroed in on how Gloucester fits in to the marine tech sector. We took a look at the assets and strengths that we bring to it. Then from there it triggered a set of activities around the economic development plan for this sector.

Q: I have worked in the past with scientists who are working with commercial fishermen and it was a great collaboration. It is a great use of the commercial vessels during off-season as well.

Ms. Garcia: It is a great collaboration. The fishermen have the expertise, and they know where to go. They have a skill set that is needed and are a great value to the scientists who in a lot of cases are not Captains.


Ms. Kirk: The other thing is having boats tied up is economically unsustainable, and unless you can have those boats working the consequence is you start to loose your infra- structure. You start to loose your working port. You loose the dockage because it has to go to the higher bidder that can pay the rent. You loose the shore side services. There is a downward spiral once you begin to loose the specific infrastructure of a working port.

 

Read a PDF of the interview here 

Read the full story from Marine Technology Reporter here (interview starts on pg. 42)

 

 

October, 9, 2012 — They knew they wouldn’t be able to save all that’s wrong in the lobster industry during a three-hour meeting, but at the conclusion of their discussions industry stakeholders on the harvesting and buying sides resolved last week to work and communicate better with each other as the season approaches.

And that is saying a lot in an industry that is known for being disorganized on both the harvesting and the buying sides.

Members of the executives of the LFA 34 Management Board and the 1688 Professional Lobster Fishermens Association, along with some lobster buyers and a representative from the Nova Scotia Fishpackers Association, met in a boardroom of the Grand Hotel on Oct. 2 to discuss issues that are plaguing the industry.

Chief among the issues is the price being paid to fishermen. But problematic is the fact that many factors influence that price. Among the factors cited at the meeting were some of the following:

• Maine fishermen are fishing harder and extending their catches later into the year.

• The U.S. economy and the exchange rate.

• Buyers undercutting each other to get lobsters at the best price.

• Industry disorganization.

Yet if he had to sum up the price problem, Spiros Tourkakis, executive vice-president of the AHI Group and East Coast Seafood of Lynn, Massachusetts said this: there are too many lobsters coming ashore all at the same time in December.

“If the conditions are the same as last year, prices will be the same,” he said. “If the conditions are all the same, why would the price be any different?”

Both the LFA 34 Management Board and 1688 have come up with proposals they think would help to slow the glut of lobsters coming ashore in December. Two weeks ago licence holders were asked to vote on a LFA 34 proposal that would have seen a trap reduction and a one-week delay to the season. However the majority of licence holders voted against both proposals. 1688 has suggested such measures as not going fishing for two days of the week until Jan. 4 or a split season, things its paid membership is voting on.

Aside from the glut of lobsters, another problem that was talked about was the quality of the landed product. Tourkakis said if you have 14.5 million pounds of the 40 million pounds of landed lobster going to the cannery that doesn’t bode well for the entire industry because there isn’t a price to compensate for the good lobsters. And, he said, cannery meat and tail prices impact what the shore price will be.

There was some discussion during the meeting about whether grading at sea is something that fishermen should be doing more of. There was also talk of whether the industry should look at not landing culls (lobsters with deformed claws) during the upcoming season. Leaving the culls in the water might decrease the catch by 10 per cent. However, said Robert Harris of the LFA 34 Management Board’s pricing committee, if fishermen are asked to do something, they’ll want to know that it’s worth their while and the buyers are going to do something back.

For now, no decisions have been made but the sides will get together again soon to continue to talk.

When it comes to the lobster season, something fishermen always want to know is what they will be paid for their lobsters.

Tourkakis said that’s a question buyers can’t answer at this point.

“Nobody knows the price because nobody knows how much lobster is going to be landed and how the market is going to react to that,” he said.

James Mood, 1688 president, suggested to the buyers in the room that their side of the industry should be showing more leadership when it comes to controlling the glut.

“You fellas have got to come up with a plan to slow the production down,” he said, suggesting, as one example, that the buyers could tell fishermen they won’t buy lobsters on a certain day of the week, so don’t bother bringing them in that day. “This is your responsibility,” he insisted.

 

Read the full story on NOVA News

 

 

October 9, 2012 — These ingredients have unrivaled backing in the form of scientific studies vouchsafing their benefits in cardiovascular health, in fighting inflammation and in infant nutrition. In addition, consumer awareness of omega-3s now has reached a level where it feeds upon itself word-of-mouth style. Even consumers who are only vaguely aware of the specific scientific data know that omega-3s are good for them and should be part of their supplementation plan.

Even as this awareness of omega-3s reaches something approaching critical mass, the overall market appears to reaching maturity. While sales remain robust, growth has backed off to the strong single-digit arena. Countering this trend is very strong growth in individual supply sectors, like krill. And adding more fuel to the fire are new omega-3s supply sources set to come on the market in the near future in the form of new photosynthetic algae technologies and a soy-based ingredient from Monsanto that has huge potential in the functional foods arena.

“The market globally is $1.67 billion to $1.86 billion in 2011,” said Christopher Shanahan, omega-3s analyst with Frost and Sullivan. “2012 is the year when the global market is going to pass $2 billion, so it’s a big achievement for the industry.”

Supported by strong science and by an effective and visible trade organization, these ingredients have now achieved an enviable position; awareness of omega-3s has advanced to the point that consumers are now choosing the ingredients based on a general good-for-you association without having to make health claims or associations on labels, in much the same way vitamin content can be mentioned.

And they are more studied than any other nutrient—or pharmaceutical. More than 20,000 scientific papers have been published on the benefits of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) omega-3s—including more than 2,000 randomized, controlled trials in humans—making them beloved among consumers and health-care professionals alike.

These facts are nothing but good news for omega-3 ingredient and end-product manufacturers, particularly in light of the yawning gap between the average person’s intake levels, and what those levels probably should be.

“For heart disease, the intake I recommend for the general population without known disease is about 500 mg of EPA and DHA a day combined in roughly equal proportions. If there is 40 percent EPA and 60 percent DHA or the reverse—as far as we know it doesn’t make any difference,” said omega-3s expert William S. Harris, PhD, of the Sanford School of Medicine at the University of South Dakota. Harris is also the inventor of the baseline measure called the Omega-3 Index, a test for which he offers through his firm OmegaQuant Analytics. “The Japanese eat about a gram a day. The typical American intake is like 150 mg a day. So going from 150 up to 500 is a big step. Going up to 1,000 is huge step, so I’m trying to be a little bit realistic. And there is good data that 500 mg a day reduces risk of cardiac events.”

 

Read the full story on New Hope 360