April 8, 2025 — Ft. Pierce, Florida, U.S.A.-based Burnsed Trucking, which specializes in less-than-truckload (LTL) and full-truckload (FTL) seafood logistics, has issued a strategic response to the U.S. tariffs.
According to CEO Fred Baedorf, a major shift in global seafood sourcing and distribution has been taking place in the U.S. since before the Trump administration’s tariff program was announced.
April 7, 2025 — Florida’s Governor says the federal government may come through in expanding the red snapper season in the Atlantic.
“I think the administration is supportive of it,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said.
“I have mentioned it to the President, but I definitely mentioned it also to the Secretary of the Commerce. And I know they’re still filling out NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and they’re doing, still, all that. And there’s a lot of irons in the fire, but returning this to state management would be a home run.”
Recreational anglers got just one day in 2024, though commercial operations had from July until the end of the year.
March 31, 2025 — Florida’s coastline is about to get mapped, and it’s all thanks to two unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) launched in St. Petersburg.
The USVs, managed by the company Saildrone, are helping the Sunshine State on its multiyear mission to survey coastal waters within the continental shelf.
“At 2,170 kilometers long, Florida’s coastline is second only to Alaska among U.S. states,” the company says. “Many parts of the Florida coast remain unsurveyed, with existing nautical charts relying on outdated and low-resolution data.”
The Florida Seafloor Mapping Initiative may be the solution. Saildrone explains in news releases that the “Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) is managing the project, using $100 million in state funds to collect the data and create a public portal for the new imagery and information.”
February 21, 2025 — When it comes to seafood, people want the real deal – not some fishy bait-and-switch.
But in the billion-dollar shrimp industry, it turns out diners might not be getting what they paid for: Eateries offering imported shrimp disguised as locally caught delicacies.
David Williams, founder of Houston-based food safety tech company SeaD Consulting, has spent years diving into the murky waters of seafood sourcing. His team’s research kept surfacing the same troubling question:
Do consumers really know where their shrimp come from?
“Why would you want to be lied to?” Williams said. After all, no one orders a plate of shrimp expecting a side of deception.
Here’s why it matters: The seafood industry is swimming with imported shrimp, often from farms abroad that may use antibiotics and questionable practices banned here in the states. But restaurants aren’t always upfront about what they’re serving (sometimes even they don’t know), leaving diners in the dark about what’s really on their plates. And it takes business away from U.S. shrimpers.
So in 2022, Williams took his concerns to Florida State University assistant professor Prashant Singh, hoping to crack the case of the sneaky shrimp swap.
January 31, 2025 — A new report said shrimp consumers in the Tampa Bay area are being misled as most of the restaurants evaluated say they serve local shrimp but don’t.
The Southern Shrimp Alliance, which is an organization of shrimp fisherman, processors and other members of the industry, said only two of the 44 restaurants sampled in Tampa and St. Petersburg are selling Gulf Shrimp as implied.
A food safety tech company called SeaD Consulting collected the shellfish from the restaurants for testing. The company uses genetic testing to monitor fraud in the seafood industry.
The only two restaurants found to be serving locally caught shrimp were Tampa’s Salt Shack on the Bay and St. Pete’s Stillwaters Tavern, according to a news release.
The other food establishments use farm-raised shrimp from countries like India, Vietnam and Ecuador, according to SeaD’s research.
“When diners think of Tampa and St. Pete, they think of seafood fresh from the Gulf,” said David Williams, Commercial Fishery Scientist and Founder of SEAD Consulting, who led the sampling effort. “To discover that the majority of restaurants are serving shrimp sourced from overseas is a wake-up call for the area’s food scene.”
January 28, 2025 — Tampa and St. Petersburg are facing a startling revelation with only two out of 44 sampled restaurants serve authentic, wild-caught Gulf shrimp.
A recent investigation, led by SeaD Consulting, exposes a 96% fraud rate, with most establishments relying on imported, farm-raised shrimp from countries like India, Vietnam and Ecuador.
The investigation identified just two restaurants as serving genuine Gulf shrimp, putting into question the region’s seafood reputation.
“When diners think of Tampa and St. Pete, they think of seafood fresh from the Gulf,” said David Williams, a commercial fishery scientist and founder of SeaD Consulting, in a news release. “To discover that the majority of restaurants are serving shrimp sourced from overseas is a wake-up call for the area’s food scene.”
January 24, 2025 — President Donald Trump’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico has left residents along the Gulf Coast sharply divided. Some say it awakens their pride in the U.S. while others suggest it’s a silly distraction.
The order, which Trump signed Monday night, his first day in office, directs the Secretary of the Interior Department to take all the needed steps to change the name to “Gulf of America” within 30 days.
The order says in part that the Gulf plays “a pivotal role in shaping America’s future and the global economy, and in recognition of this flourishing economic resource and its critical importance to our Nation’s economy and its people, I am directing that it officially be renamed the Gulf of America.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis has already embraced the change. He cited the new name in an executive order earlier this week attributing inclement Winter weather to a “low pressure moving across the Gulf of America.”
Cedar Key, a quaint fishing town in Levy County, is a cluster of islands that extend about three miles into the Gulf of Mexico from Florida’s mainland. One resident for more than a decade, 78-year-old Air Force retiree Thomas McKee, said he sees no reason for changing the name.
January 21, 2025 — Federal lawmakers from the U.S. state of Florida have introduced legislation to block NOAA Fisheries from closing the recreational South Atlantic red snapper fishery for three months of the year.
“Florida’s fishing industry is a multi-billion dollar economic driver in our state, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs and attracting visitors to communities along our coast,” U.S. Senator Rick Scott (R-Florida) said in a statement. “We’ve made great strides in Florida to ensure our natural resources are preserved and protected for years to come, including rebuilding the Red Snapper population. I’m proud to work with [U.S. Representative John Rutherford (R-Florida)] on the Red Snapper Act to support our state’s commercial and recreational fishing industry and ensure their success isn’t limited by federal government’s outdated data and regulations.”
December 16, 2024 — We all remember the images of shrimp boats stacked on top of each other after Hurricane Ian made landfall in Southwest Florida. It wasn’t just the shrimp boats, but also fish houses and much of the rest of the fishing industry was severely damaged as well. Over two years later, federal aid has yet come.
A bill recently passed by voice vote in the House of Representatives could throw a lifeline post-disaster to American fisheries.
House Bill 5103 (Fishery Improvement to Streamline Untimely Regulatory Hurdles post Emergency Situations) FISHES Act passed in House in early December to help streamline the process for fisheries to receive aid.
“As we saw in Southwest Florida, time of the essence once a disaster hits,” said Florida Congressman Byron Donalds (R).
But in the past, federal aid to fisheries only came after a long grueling review process that took years. Something that Congressman Donalds is looking to change with the FISHES Act.
“What the FISHES Act does, it makes two review processes happen concurrently and requires a response to the property owner happens within 90 days,” said Rep. Donalds.
December 2, 2024 — U.S. Rep. Garret Graves intends to sprint toward the finish line for the 118th Congress, which convenes Monday and disbands in a month, by pushing an issue he has been working since he was a Capitol Hill staffer 20 years ago.
“This has been an ongoing effort for me, for many years, to give Louisiana parity,” Graves said.
Graves, a Baton Rouge Republican who steps down when the 119th Congress assumes office on Jan. 3, teamed with Rep. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, on a bill that would give Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama the same offshore sovereignty as Texas and Florida — moving the boundary line from three nautical miles to nine — thereby allowing Louisiana control of more energy exploration and fishing rights.
Graves said last week in announcing the Offshore Parity Act of 2024, “I’m not sure who was negotiating for us generations ago, but that is just ridiculous.”
History, rather than bonehead negotiators, played a greater role in setting state sovereignty over offshore waters.
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