March 2, 2015 — If you want mussels this weekend, you're probably out of luck. The cold temperatures have frozen over East Coast waters that supply much of region's shellfish.
John Rorapaugh, the Sustainable Director for one of the area's biggest seafood suppliers Profish, can't recall anything like what he's seen over the last few weeks because of the sustained cold weather and low salinity. "It's an anomaly because of the ice," he says. "All shellfish, we've had the worst two or three weeks that I've seen in a long time… It's affected the whole Eastern seaboard."
While sometimes Profish may have trouble getting one type of shellfish, he can't recall a time when the scarcity has been so widespread. "Never have I seen where lobsters, clams, mussels, and oysters are all affected in the same three week period," he says. "It's happened. It's happened right now."
Read the full story from the Washington City Paper