Saving Seafood

VIRGINIA: VA’s Second Blue Catfish Grant Awarded to Hampton Seafood Company

November 6, 2024 — Virginia is continuing its fight against invasive blue catfish by boosting the fishery and making it easier to put blue cat into markets and restaurants.

The state has awarded a second $247,000 grant in an effort to control the Chesapeake Bay’s blue catfish population.

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin recently announced that L. D. Amory Company Inc. (Amory Seafood) of Hampton, Virginia, has been awarded the grant through the governor’s Blue Catfish Processing, Flash Freezing, and Infrastructure Grant Program.

“This reimbursable grant will support the implementation of a modern quick freezer and essential packing equipment that will allow Amory Seafood to increase processing capacity in its Hampton facility,” the governor’s office said.

“Once the expansion and modernization project is complete, Amory Seafood will purchase more blue catfish from local watermen, which supports economic growth and helps to remove the invasive species from Virginia waters,” it stated.

“I congratulate Amory Seafood on this expansion, as this project helps to increase processing capacity of the invasive blue catfish, provide additional market opportunities for Virginia watermen, and boost the Commonwealth’s seafood industry’s economic impact which was over $1.1 billion in 2019,” said Governor Youngkin.

Read the full article at Chesapeake Bay Magazine

Why wild Chesapeake catfish should be the new salmon

July 30, 2024 — Restaurants. Stadiums. Prisons. There’s a big new push to get invasive blue catfish out of the Chesapeake Bay and onto a variety of menus.

Why it matters: The Bay’s blue catfish population is booming, which is bad for the native species they outcompete for food and habitat, and those they prey on — especially our dwindling juvenile crab population.

The big picture: Blue catfish get a bad rap. “When I hear ‘invasive,’ it’s like aliens coming down. It’s not sexy, it’s not appetizing,” says Matthew Scales, seafood marketing director for Maryland’s Department of Agriculture.

  • The agency is working with grocers and chefs to show consumers that blue catfish are sustainable and delicious.

Catch up quick: Blue catfish arrived in the Chesapeake Bay only a few decades ago — originally introduced in the ’70s for sports fishing in Virginia — but they’re already in the bay’s top three invasive species.

  • Blue cats can balloon to the size of small kids, over 5 feet long and 100-plus lbs, reproduce like crazy, and travel great distances without food. But when they eat — crabs, menhaden, eels — they’re voracious.

By the numbers: The blue catfish commercial harvest in Maryland and the Potomac River skyrocketed from over 609,000 pounds in 2013 to 4.2 million pounds in 2023 — an increase of more than 500%. But that’s hardly enough to curb the population.

What they’re saying: Part of the problem is branding. “We’re battling the mindset that catfish are these dirty fish, bottom feeders,” Branson Williams, DNR’s invasive species manager, tells Axios. That’s not true, at least with blue cats.

Read the full article at AXIOS

MARYLAND: Maryland seeks to reduce supply of tasty, invasive blue catfish

April 14, 2024 — Blue catfish grow to large sizes, are tasty to eat and can be easily caught in the majority of Maryland’s rivers — the problem is they’re considered invasive and are a threat to other native fish and aquatic life.

Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources is urging people fishing in the area to target blue catfish.

“Catch and keep as many as you want, any sizes,” said Branson Williams, the department’s invasive fishes program manager. “They’re really a tasty fish, and we’re encouraging people to eat them.”

Blue catfish are native to midwestern river basins, including the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Rio Grande rivers, Williams said.

The freshwater fish were introduced in Virginia during the 1970s to create a new sport fishery, according to the MDNR’s website.

Read the full article at WTOP

MARYLAND: Maryland embarks on marketing campaign for invasive blue catfish

January 10, 2024 — For decades, the rivers and shores surrounding the Chesapeake Bay have slowly been taken over by an invasive species – the blue catfish, otherwise known as Ictalurus furcatus.

The U.S. states of Maryland and Virginia, which border the bay, have had to deal with the species ever since anglers introduced it to Virginia’s waters in the hopes of establishing it as a fun and challenging fish to catch. Unfortunately, for all the other animals living in the bay – including important commercial species like blue crab, oysters, and rockfish – bay turned out to be the perfect habitat for the invasive blue catfish, which began to multiply exponentially in the decades following the initial release.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MARYLAND: Maryland loses bid for federal fishery disaster aid

January 8, 2024 — Blue catfish and other nonnative species may be gobbling up blue crabs and wreaking havoc on other Chesapeake Bay fisheries, but that doesn’t qualify for federal disaster assistance.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service has rejected Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s petition asking the agency to declare a federal fishery disaster because of the “explosion” of blue catfish, flathead catfish and northern snakeheads in the Bay.

In the petition submitted in March, Moore said scientists have been seeing “disturbing trends” of declines in crabs, striped bass and five other commercial fish since 2012, when blue catfish began to move into Maryland.

Read the full article at the Bay Journal 

 

Researchers: Blue Catfish Stomach Contents Suggest Large Impact On Crab, Menhaden

November 29, 2023 — In terms of appetite and willingness to gorge on just about anything, blue catfish have few peers in the Chesapeake Bay, experts say.

“They’re eating everything, anything they can get their mouths around,” said Noah Bressman, a fish biologist at Salisbury University in Maryland.

Now, a clearer picture is emerging of their ecological toll. Two new studies based in tidal rivers on opposite sides of the Bay show that the invasive species is gobbling up prized native aquatic life, such as menhaden and blue crabs, at high rates.

Read the full article at Chesapeake Bay Magazine

VIRGINIA: Virginia looks to expand blue catfish fishery and processing

September 17, 2023 — The Virginia General Assembly approved USD 250,000 (EUR 232,000) on 6 September to support and encourage blue catfish processing, flash freezing, harvesting and infrastructure projects in an effort to enhance the growth of a blue catfish fishery in the U.S. state.

It voted down a proposal to invest USD 2 million (EUR 1.9 million) grant program to establish the Catfish Industries Development Program, but instead voted to start off with a smaller initiative funded with state seed money. Before it becomes law, however, Virginia Governor George Youngkin must sign off on the budget, which he is expected to do.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

 

VIRGINIA: Virginia looks to expand blue catfish fishery and processing

September 10, 2o23 — The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Customer Services (VDACS) – International Marketing Division sponsored a seafood promotional event bringing in international chefs, food critics and writers to visit a blue catfish processing plant on Aug. 30 in Hampton, Va.

The group toured the processing plant of L. D. Amory Company Inc. one of only three blue catfish processing plants in the state.  Meade Amory of Armory Seafood explained to the group that during the 1970s and ‘80s blue catfish were introduced to the James, Rappahannock and York river basins as a new recreational fish by the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. Blue cats are native to Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri rivers.

The catfish quickly spread throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed into nearly every major tributary and are now being seen in North Carolina waters too, says Amory.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

MARYLAND: Maryland congressional delegation announces USD 3.8 million for meat and blue catfish processors

July 5, 2023 — U.S. federal lawmakers from the state of Maryland have revealed that USD 3.8 million (EUR 3.5 million) in loan funding has been made available to local meat and catfish processors.

Although Chesapeake Bay fishermen harvest more than 5 million pounds of invasive blue catfish annually, there are only 18 USDA-approved inspection facilities, resulting in a processing bottleneck. The funding announced last week will help local producers expand or establish operations to help cut those processing times.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

US distributor plans to hike invasive catfish sales

October 4, 2018 — Congressional Seafood Company, which already sells invasive blue catfish to Whole Foods Market and other major buyers, is aiming to significantly grow sales of the fish in the state of Maryland.

Around four years ago, Jessup, Maryland-based Congressional began selling blue catfish, an invasive species in the Chesapeake Bay, the Potomac River, and other waterways. Blue catfish feeds on many native species, including blue crabs, rockfish, and mussels.

“I started reading about this environmental crisis because of the explosion of the fish in the tributaries, and knew we had to try to sell it,” Congressional founder and executive vice president Tim Sughrue, told SeafoodSource. “However, one of the hardest thing I’ve had to do … is create a market for a fish that has never been sold before.”

Blue catfish has a great flavor and it tastes similar to snapper to rockfish, Sughrue said. However, its meat yield is 25 percent on average, versus around 65 percent for mahi and 70 percent for tuna.

After contacting several restaurant and retailer chains, Congressional got its “first big break” in 2014, when Clyde’s Restaurant Group, based in Washington D.C., agreed to menu blue catfish regularly, according to Sughrue.

In 2015, Congressional got another break when Whole Foods Market’s mid-Atlantic region came on board.

“I had been meeting with Whole Foods for a while, but it wasn’t until blue catfish was rated ‘green’ by Monterey Bay Aquarium’s SeafoodWatch program, that they said they could sell it,” Sughrue said. “That allowed us to gain a market for it.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source