Saving Seafood

Seafood industry hit hard by economic downturn of pandemic

May 19, 2020 — Seafood company managers like Jon Pearlman can see the impact of the coronavirus and economic downturn simply by looking at the trucks leaving the lot.

During a busy season, almost 30 of them are used to transport hundreds of orders every day. However, over the last two months, the amount of trucks has dwindled.

“Today, I’ve got seven,” Pearlman said. “The last two months have been devastating.”

As the president of the Congressional Seafood Company, Pearlman has witnessed the growing popularity of seafood around Maryland and surrounding areas since beginning operations in 1996.

But with the company mainly doing business with high-end restaurants, hotels, and caterers, the economic downturn this year has brought things to a crawl.

“It’s heartbreaking, it’s scary, I’m certainly nervous for the future,” Pearlman said. “Where a restaurant used to maybe spend $1,000 or $1,500 on seafood for their daily allowance, now they have two items that they’re offering carry-out on.”

Read the full story at WUSA

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