Saving Seafood

Economic Impact

Scallop prices took 30 percent price hit from COVID-19

June 9, 2020 — Back in late December, before the covid-19 pandemic struck, the New England Fishery Management Council presented regulations for the 2020 fishing year. At the time, around 50 million pounds of U.S. landings and an estimated ex-vessel value of around $487 million was projected for 2020.

It is yet to be determined how things will play out for Atlantic sea scallops, but so far anecdotal reports indicate scallop prices had been down 30 percent or more around New Bedford, Mass. In April, the council asked federal regulators to make changes because of the impact the coronavirus has had on the fishery.

The 2019 fishing year went as expected, says Travis Ford of NMFS. Estimates say average prices were $9.20 per pound.

“Preliminary landings data suggest the fleet landed 58.15 million pounds of scallops in 2019,” according to Ford. “The biggest surprise was the conditions in the Nantucket Lightship-West Access Area. Based on 2019 surveys there was around 50 million-pound decline in total biomass estimate from 2018-19. This made it difficult for vessels to finish their trips in the area later in the fishing year.” Regulators are investigating what is behind the decline.

Rusty Parmenter, a Maine scallop fisherman who works in both federal and Maine state waters, says things have changed as restaurant markets shuttered in response to covid-19. The bulk of larger scallops are usually sold to restaurants and receive a premium price at the dock. Now, many are being frozen instead and sold to supermarkets.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Markey and Warren Seek $500M in Additional Fisheries Aid

June 8, 2020 — U.S. Sens. Edward J. Markey and Elizabeth Warren on Friday called on U.S. Senate leadership to include $500 million in additional fisheries assistance in the next coronavirus recovery package.

In their June 5 letter, the senators said $28 million in fisheries assistance already allocated to Massachusetts should be supplemented as the pandemic continues to affect demand through the summer month’s peak harvests.

“Compared to the previous five-year average, in March and April of this year, Massachusetts bivalve shellfish landings lost 60 percent of their value, lobster landings lost 40 percent of their value, recreational head boats have been completely shut down, and seafood processors have lost their usual restaurant market,” the letter stated.

In Massachusetts, four sectors – commercial fishing, aquaculture, seafood processing, and for-hire recreational fishing – expect pandemic-related losses of 35 percent, leading to approximately $500 million in lost revenue over the year, the letter said.

“The $28 million in CARES Act fisheries assistance allocated to Massachusetts is not sufficient to help the four fisheries sectors survive revenue losses beyond April, and the pandemic is far from over,” the two wrote.

Read the full story at WBSM

Trump vows to escalate lobster trade war with EU, Canada, China

June 8, 2020 — At a fisheries roundtable discussion in Bangor, Maine, U.S.A., on 5 June, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a proclamation to allow commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The change falls short of eliminating the monument entirely, and does not lift a prohibition on gas and oil drilling in the area, but rather is “taking down a no-fishing sign,” according to Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, who was at the table for the discussion.

President Barack Obama created the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument in 2016. President George W. Bush was the first to apply the act to the seafloor, when he declared the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii in 2006.

Read the full story from National Fisherman at Seafood Source

US customer shift to online grocery shopping likely permanent, analysts say

June 3, 2020 — The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed a record number of U.S. consumers to shop online.

According to a new Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Survey, around 43 million customers shopped online for groceries in the United States in May, or 33 percent of U.S. households. That number is an all-time high, and represents an increase from the previous record of 31 percent set in April.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US restaurant sector receives some help, but trade group says more is needed

June 2, 2020 — Representatives of the Independent Restaurant Coalition (IRC) recently met with U.S. President Donald Trump and key administration officials to make their case for a proposed USD 120 billion (EUR 107 billion) stabilization fund for the U.S. restaurant industry.

More government relief is needed for the sector, which has struggled through lockdowns over the past two months that have effectively closed most U.S. restaurants to dine-in customers, the trade group told the president, according to a press release.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New report indicates US marine economy worth USD 373 billion

June 2, 2020 — A new joint report put together by NOAA and the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has found that the country’s marine economy contributed USD 373 billion (EUR 334 billion) to the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018.

The new report covers a wide range of the ocean economy, from “living resources” in the seafood industry to transportation and warehousing, offshore mining, scientific research, and more. All told, from 2017 to 2018, the marine economy – including economic activity sourced to the nation’s oceans, coasts, and the Great Lakes – grew by 5.8 percent, faster than the 5.4 percent growth of the total U.S. GDP.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Marine economy in 2018 grew faster than U.S. overall

June 2, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA:

America’s marine economy, including goods and services, contributed about $373 billion to the nation’s gross domestic product in 2018 and grew faster than the nation’s economy as a whole, according to the marine economy statistics released today by two Department of Commerce agencies.

“These statistics are the first-of-its-kind estimate of the U.S. marine economy, a primary driver of jobs, innovation and economic growth,” said retired Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, Ph.D., assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and deputy NOAA administrator. “Data such as these provide a critical baseline to inform, track progress and accelerate America’s economic recovery.”

For these statistics, experts from NOAA and the Bureau of Economic Analysis considered 10 sectors representing businesses dependent on the nation’s oceans, coasts and Great Lakes between the years 2014 and 2018. Marine-related gross domestic product grew 5.8% from 2017 to 2018, faster than the 5.4% growth of the total U.S. gross domestic product as measured in current dollars. Businesses included in the report also supported 2.3 million jobs in 2018.

“The marine economy statistics clarify just how dependent America is on our waters,” said Nicole LeBoeuf, acting director of NOAA’s National Ocean Service. “It is nearly impossible for most Americans to go a single day without eating, wearing or using products that come from or through our coastal communities.”

“For the first time, the United States has ocean data that can be compared with our official statistics on other U.S. industries and with the ocean economies of other nations,” said Mary Bohman, BEA’s acting director. “These prototype statistics offer a baseline for understanding the importance of the ocean economy, including recreation, seafood, transportation and ship building. Businesses, policymakers, and coastal communities can use these economic data as a compass as they chart the way forward.”

The sectors making the largest contributions to the nation’s gross domestic product, not adjusted for inflation, are:

  • Tourism and recreation, including recreational fishing ($143 billion)
  • National defense and public administration ($124 billion)
  • Offshore minerals ($49 billion)
  • Transportation and warehousing ($25 billion)
  • Living resources, including commercial fishing and aquaculture ($13 billion)
  • Ship and boat building ($9 billion)
  • Power generation ($4 billion)
  • Research and education ($3 billion)
  • Construction ($2.5 billion)
  • Professional and technical services ($31 million)

These prototype statistics are the most comprehensive and accurate produced to date, thanks to the addition of newer, more inclusive data sets. The economic statistics validate previous estimates of the value of the marine economy. The data, report and other materials are available at https://www.bea.gov/data/special-topics/ocean-economy Send any comments or questions to OceanEconomy@noaa.gov.

Collapse in Myanmar Seafood Exports Puts 1 Million Jobs At Risk

June 1, 2020 — About 1 million people may lose their jobs in Myanmar’s fisheries industry, with almost all exports ceasing since February as the spread of Covid-19 prompted major buyers, led by China and the U.S., to halt orders.

Processing plants wouldn’t have been able to deliver anyway, as factory closures were part of the government’s measures to stall the pandemic. Before the outbreak, the Myanmar Fisheries Federation forecast record exports of $1 billion this year, up about 40% from 2019. That’s been slashed to $350 million.

The fisheries sector employs about 3.5 million people in Myanmar, roughly 6% of the Southeast Asian nation’s workforce. In some coastal regions, one in three workers earns a living from seafood and marine products, according to a World Bank report in June 2019.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

A new robot may help keep ships’ bottoms clean

June 1, 2020 — All ships suffer from fouling: the build-up below the waterline of shellfish, seaweeds and other organisms. This causes drag, which slows the affected craft and increases its fuel consumption. Regular hull cleaning thus makes a considerable difference to the profitability of shipping. It also results in a useful reduction in the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide emitted by the world’s merchant shipping—an industry that many environmentalists think is notoriously dirty and which could therefore do with burnishing its green credentials.

Roar Ådland, a shipping economist at the Norwegian School of Economics, in Bergen, says that a midsized oil tanker’s fuel consumption (and also, consequently, its emission of carbon dioxide) drops by around 9% after its hull is cleaned at sea—something that happens, on average, once every six or seven months. If the cleaning is done in a dry dock, which allows the process to be more thorough, that figure can be as much as 17%.

At the moment, cleaning at sea is done by teams of divers. In recent years, robots have sometimes been added to underwater cleaning crews, and have proved effective. Jotun, a Norwegian coatings company, and Semcon, a Swedish engineering firm, propose, however, to go one step further. They want to replace the divers completely with a machine. That machine, moreover, would not merely defoul a ship’s hull, but stop it fouling up in the first place.

HullSkater, as the consortium dub their invention, is a 200kg hull-crawling robot. It will reside permanently on-board ship, ready to be launched whenever the vessel is stationary—for example, when it is waiting in the roads outside a port for a berth to unload and load. To deploy the robot, it is first lowered overboard by a crane. Its four magnetic wheels, each of which is fitted with a motor, then clamp it to the hull and it can start trundling around. After this, the ship’s crew need do nothing. Wherever the vessel happens to be on the planet, the robot is piloted remotely by an operator on land, who may be half a world away, via a 4g phone connection.

Read the full story at The Economist

US considering revocation of Hong Kong’s special trade status

May 29, 2020 — United States Secretary of State Michael Pompeo announced on 27 May that the State Department is recommending the revocation of Hong Kong’s special status, which would eliminate special tariff exemptions to the region.

Hong Kong’s special status was created in 1997, five years before the United Kingdom handed control of Hong Kong over to China with special conditions. The status gives Hong Kong special trade and economic status benefits, and the region currently has a zero tariff rate on U.S. imports.

Read the full story at Seafood Source