March 11, 2021 — Global Fishing Watch data has shown a significant drop in fishing effort last year, apparently correlated to global COVID-19 lockdowns.
Founded in 2015, Global Fishing Watch is a partnership between Google and the advocacy groups Oceana and SkyTruth that collects vessel location data from satellite images and tracking systems.
March 11, 2021 — U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday, 11 March, signed the USD 1.9 trillion (EUR 1.59 trillion) American Rescue Plan Act into law, opening the door for billions in aid to go to businesses – including nearly USD 29 billion (EUR 24.2 billion) for a restaurant industry that’s been battered by closures and other restrictions over the past year due to COVID-19.
On Thursday, the National Restaurant Association lauded the bill’s Restaurant Revitalization Fund, which association president and CEO Tom Bene said will help save jobs across the country.
March 11, 2021 — In spring 2020, the fishing community of Newport, Oregon, shuttered along with the rest of the country. A coronavirus outbreak at a local Pacific Seafood processing plant left fishermen sitting on docks with no buyers for their Dungeness crabs, while restaurants closed and families found themselves housebound.
That’s when Taunette Dixon and her organization, the Newport Fishermen’s Wives, stepped in. This group quickly mobilized to provide food, supplies, infant formula, pet food, fuel cards, masks, gloves and money for past-due utility payments to fishing families who had been hit by the pandemic.
For 50 years, groups like Dixon’s have formed the behind-the-scenes backbone of their communities, often lobbying on behalf of their husbands, who leave for months at a time to fish.
In fishing towns where fishermen’s spouses stay onshore, fishermen’s wives associations have served as mutual aid groups, social support networks and political agitators. Dixon and her colleagues mend nets, keep books, care for families, fight for or against environmental regulations, navigate byzantine quota systems and act as onshore brokers communicating information to husbands out at sea.
Data about these women is scarce, and there’s not much research quantifying exactly how much work they perform for the industry, but social scientists call their labor an “informal subsidy”. And yet, when policymakers talk about supporting fishermen, women like Dixon are often left out of the conversation. And at a local level, members of these groups say their individual efforts can go unnoticed or taken for granted.
March 11, 2021 — As the president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, Alaska’s largest labor organization, my responsibility is to fight for workers’ rights, whether they belong to a union or not.
Protecting workers’ health and safety has been at the forefront of our work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recent media reports have uncovered that Commissioner of Labor Tamika Ledbetter blocked nearly $450,000 in proposed fines against a seafood plant that willfully violated COVID-19 workplace safety standards and was hostile with public health officials from the State of Alaska and the Municipality of Anchorage.
The question is, why?
Were the violations mild and isolated, causing them to fall through the cracks of an overburdened department?
March 10, 2021 — The U.S. House of Representatives gave final approval on 10 March to a USD 1.9 trillion (EUR 1.6 trillion) COVID-relief spending plan that includes some opportunities for the seafood industry to benefit.
A spokesperson for U.S. President Joe Biden said during the vote that he is expected to sign the bill into law on Friday, 12 March, according to C-SPAN.
March 9, 2021 — Alaska’s Board of Fisheries has bumped its meeting cycle back a year after cost concerns and public outcry. Commercial fishing interests had raised concerns that a packed schedule wouldn’t give stakeholders a fair amount of time with the board.
Alaska’s Board of Fish is a seven-member board of citizens appointed by the governor. They make critical decisions about the whos, whats and whens of access to the state’s fisheries.
COVID-19 caused Board of Fish meetings to be postponed, including its regional meeting for Southeast. In January, the board voted to cram two years’ worth of meetings into the next meeting cycle. That would’ve effectively doubled the amount of meetings this year.
The vast majority of public and advisory committee comments received in recent months raised concerns about the doubled schedule.
On Monday, the Dunleavy administration also weighed in. Fish & Game commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang says his agency does not have the budget for twice the meeting load.
“Right now we do not have money to double up on in-person meetings next year,” Vincent-Lang said. “I can tell you it’s my intent not to rob Peter to pay Paul to double up on meetings. I’m not going to dig into the department budget at a half-million dollars to fund those meetings.”
March 9, 2021 — Legal Sea Foods is “considering its options” after a federal judge ruled against the seafood restaurant chain on its COVID-19 insurance case, the company’s attorney told SeafoodSource.
The Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based foodservice chain, which became embroiled in a separate controversy last month involving its creditors, sued Strathmore Insurance Company in May 2020 over failure to cover business losses Legal Sea Foods incurred from the COVID-19 pandemic.
March 9, 2021 — It’s likely that no other fishing regions of the world reach out for stakeholder input as much as Alaska does to gather policy-shaping ground truth by state and federal managers and organizations.
That’s demonstrated by two new surveys – one which aims to quantify how much Alaska fishermen and processors paid out over the past year to lessen COVID impacts and how much relief they got from government programs, the other to learn what technology needs are tops with harvesters.
The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute is collecting information not available elsewhere on the pandemic impacts.
Processors are being asked about financial losses due to COVID mitigation efforts, plant closures and employment changes, as well as their expectations for costs and employment levels in 2021, explained Jenna Dickinson, a consultant with the McKinley Research Group who is working with ASMI on the project. Processor costs include but are not limited to charter flights and hotel put-ups for worker quarantines, plant modifications, medical and testing supplies and related services.
Many fishermen also paid for similar coverages for their crews.
March 9, 2021 — The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute has been diving into the effects of COVID-19 on the seafood industry for a while now.
Mainly, it’s been using interviews, anecdotal evidence and market research to compile briefings about how fishermen and other industry stakeholders have fared.
Now, the association is looking for more quantitative data about the effects of the pandemic. It’s sending out two surveys — one for fishermen and one for processors.
“We wanted to conduct this survey to really, fully measure the scale and breadth of the pandemic impacts on Alaska’s commercial fishermen, as well as processors,” said communications director Ashley Heimbigner. “Which hasn’t really been done yet, on a broad scale.”
March 8, 2021 — With revenues up 3 percent in January and February of 2020, the industry was looking ahead to another strong year in the global marketplace.
In March, when restaurants across the country shuttered quickly under covid-19 outbreak restrictions, seafood supply chains ground to a halt in the early days of the pandemic. Fishermen who had been out harvesting to supply the once-solid market were stuck with their catch left unsold and their boats tied up.
In early March, New Jersey fisherman Gus Lovgren was headed to port after a Virginia summer flounder trip when his wife called him, “saying they’re shutting the country down, basically,” he recalled.
“We had been getting $1.75 to $2 (per pound). In the end we got, I think, 60 cents,” said Lovgren. “The market was flooded, and there was nothing we could do.”
Right out of the gates in April 2020, the Hawaii Longline Association worked with others in Hawaii’s fishing industry to donate 2,000 pounds of fresh seafood to Hawaii Foodbank, and planning larger deliveries.
The initial donation, coordinated with the with United Fishing Agency’s Honolulu auction, the Hawaii Seafood Council, Nico’s Pier 38, and Pacific Ocean Producers, “is the beginning of a new pilot program with the Hawaii Foodbank,” the association said.
“Through the partnership, Hawaii Foodbank plans to purchase $50,000 worth of seafood landed by Hawaii longline vessels,” according to a statement from the association. “The purchase will ensure that Hawaii Foodbank will be able to meet the needs of Hawaii residents facing hardship as a result of covid-19. It will also support Hawaii’s longline fishermen.”
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