Monday, November 26, 2007PENSIVE
Business Toolbox: The market
Halibut prices high? Blame restaurant patronsXPENSIVE
KODIAK, Alaska – Consumer demand at the restaurant level is one factor behind higher halibut prices, fish buyer Dana Besecker from Washington state said.
His company, Dana F. Besecker Inc., buys halibut and other fish all over Alaska including Kodiak, Dutch Harbor, Homer, Seward, Yakutat, Juneau and Sitka and also Bellingham. Wash.
Commercial fishermen reaped the benefit of some of the highest ever ex-vessel prices during the 2007 halibut season, but buyers lost some of their regular customers.
“Our customer base has changed. As the price (of halibut) has gone up, we’ve lost a lot of the supermarket business because it doesn’t sell,” Besecker said. “As buyers, we saw some real reluctance from our customers to continue paying the higher prices. As the price kept going higher and higher, the amount of people buying began to shrink.
“We’re pricing ourselves off the grocery shelves. It’s gotten to the point where (halibut) is so expensive (customers) can’t afford it any more,” he said.
Buyers such as Besecker used to sell a lot of halibut for supermarket distribution. But now, most of their business is to distributors who sell to restaurants.
Restaurant servers tell him halibut sales are sizzling.
“But as the price goes up, I think we’re losing some customers. The resource is shrinking a little bit, too,” he said, referring to the reduced halibut quota in 2007.
“When there is less fish to buy, we buy less fish,” he said.
In the past, most halibut was frozen. Now much of it is flown or trucked fresh to the Lower 48, adding value to the catch.
Besecker is confidant halibut prices will remain high. Higher prices cut back demand, but a reduction in product keeps the price higher, he said. – Kodiak Daily Mirror
Business Toolbox: Farmed competition
Scotland prepares for onslaught of jellyfish
A call has gone out to beachcombers, fish farmers, boatmen and anyone else on Scotland's coast to prepare for the invasion of the jellyfish.
Last week huge numbers of the stinging baby jellyfish choked Northern Ireland's only fish farm off County Antrim, killing 100,000 fish and causing £1m of damage.
The invaders are swarming in Scottish waters and yesterday the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) launched a recruitment drive for volunteer sentries on our beaches to maintain a lookout.
They are to report any sighting of the creatures as part of a national surveillance operation, the MCS Jellyfish Survey.
This month MCS has received reports of millions of baby mauve stinger and compass jellyfish off Skye, the Isle of Eigg, as well as off Ullapool and Durness in Sutherland.
"It is quite unusual for this number of juvenile jellyfish to be occurring in UK waters at this time of year," said Anne Saunders, MCS Scottish projects officer. "But these blooms are phenomenal and consist of millions of individuals, being washed here by strong Atlantic currents."
While compass jellyfish are common throughout UK waters in the summer, mauve stingers are uncommon and are usually only occasionally recorded in the southwest.
More than 4500 jellyfish encounters have been reported since the MCS Jellyfish Survey was launched in 2003.– The Herald, Scotland
Business Toolbox: Staying legal
How you and your customers are cheated
BOGALUSA, La. -- Two Bogalusa men were recently cited for alleged illegal fish and game purchases, misdemeanors that could land them behind bars.
The charges illustrate an area of state law that is widely violated, sometimes by exporting fish by the ton to northern cities, where residents happily eat the illicit bounty. Those who don't frequently fish sometimes poorly understand the laws governing fish sales.
Victor Brumfield, 60, was cited on three charges on Nov. 3 -- three counts of purchasing game fish, six counts purchasing commercial fish from an unlicensed source and one count of purchasing game.
Benny McGehee, 61, was cited for three counts of purchasing game fish and one count of purchasing commercial fish from an unlicensed source. The offenses are punishable by up to a $500 fine and one month in jail.
Officials from the state wildlife and fisheries department cited the two men after an undercover agent posing as a recreational fisherman offered to sell them illegal fish and game, Lt. Col. Keith LaCaze, spokesman for the department, said.
Illegal fish sales have been a problem for years, LaCaze said, and the offense is prevalent throughout the state, especially in northeastern Louisiana, where officials have caught vendors selling tons of fish to clients in northern cities like Chicago, he said. "It's not very different from narcotics," he said. "It's nearly impossible to eradicate." -- Bogalusa Daily News, Louisiana
Business Toolbox: Holiday marketing
Caviar: Too expensive? Environmentally sane?
Wild Catch magazine’s Sustainable Snob examines caviar in our latest issue, with is in the mail now. Read it!
LONDON – Fresh, salty, creamy, unctuous: how do you describe adequately one of the most lusted-after of all foods, the glamorously glistening eggs of that primeval fish, the sturgeon?
The most expensive food in the world is reckoned to be Almas caviar. Just 50 grams will set you back almost £1,000, assuming you can get to the top of the waiting list. At Caviar House & Prunier’s St James’s Street restaurant, where they get just two shipments a year, two women famously indulged in just under a full 1.8kg tin over lunch, clocking up a bill of £21,000 – or $43,400 for 3.96 pounds.
Almas caviar comes either from an albino sturgeon, whose eggs taste extremely light and delicate, or an oscietre sturgeon more than 80 years old, whose eggs have faded from deep gold to light amber, and whose subtle flavour has been described as like “walnuts and cream.”
By comparison, beluga caviar, which most people consider to be the ultimate in costly luxury, can start at just £350 for 50g, though its increasing rarity (only around 100 beluga sturgeon are caught each year) can send prices spiralling.
The beluga is the biggest species of sturgeon, which has been known to reach 6m and weigh more than a tonne, so it gives the biggest eggs, prized for their large grain and fine skin, which can range from virtually black to the most coveted pale grey.
Oscietre sturgeon vary the most in terms of size, taste and colour of their eggs. Sevruga is the smallest sturgeon, which gives small, grey-black eggs which, because they are the strongest and perhaps most distinctive tasting of all caviar, have a dedicated fanbase.
Much of the mystique of caviar is that every fish’s eggs are subtly different, and every caviar house has its own salting and maturation techniques and special selections.
How ethical is it?
Even if you can square your conscience with the cost, there is the future of the wild sturgeon to consider. A combination of overfishing and poaching around the Caspian Sea has brought them to the verge of extinction, so now exports from the region are subject to strict quotas decided in accordance with each country’s commitment to conservation. There is a ban on exports of beluga from all countries except Iran, and to curb illegal trade, each tin of caviar has to be labelled with the date of catch, batch number, etc.
The future is probably in sustainable farmed caviar from a species of sturgeon similar to oscietre. Some is being farmed in California, but it is to France that the caviar world is mainly looking, which is why in 2004 Caviar House joined forces with Maison Prunier, who have been producing caviar from fish farms in Bordeaux for more than 100 years.
The sturgeon are moved through tanks at different temperatures to mimic the Caspian climate, and while some connoisseurs insist that you cannot compare farmed with wild, most people won’t notice any difference, except in price – about £75 for 50g.
Any cheaper alternatives? Affordable fun alternatives for canapés include the bright-orange salmon roe known as keta and lumpfish roe. A man-made alternative is Onuga (around £3.95 a jar), little black balls constructed from herring and seaweed. It may be perfectly acceptable on the flavour front, but a big part of caviar’s appeal is the sensuous popping of the eggs in the mouth, which Onuga’s more chewy texture can never emulate. – Times of London
Business Toolbox: Supply
Today's read: Imports, condos hurt U.S. shrimp fleet
GRAND ISLE, La. -- At the end of a gravel road off Louisiana's oldest highway, where Caminada Bay meets the Gulf of Mexico, an armada of shrimp boats is moored to a maze of rickety wooden fishing docks.
As the closest spit of dry land to the open Gulf, this remote barrier island has been a critical hub for the state's shrimping industry for generations. With each passing hurricane, the docks, which at one time numbered eight, have been ripped to shreds and then rebuilt so fishers can unload the millions of pounds of shrimp brought to the island every year.
But in recent months, the shrimp industry's problems have come to roost in this town of about 1,500 residents.
After Hurricane Katrina tore through, two docks remained in operation, but still accounted for nearly 15 percent of the shrimp brought into the state. One closed last month, with the land set to be sold to a developer in January. The lone remaining dock could soon shut down, too, as the owner struggles with a dispute over tariff money and a $3 million offer from a condo developer.
It's a symbolic step in the decade-long decline of a signature Louisiana industry, as an onslaught of cheaper imports and record-high diesel prices have pushed the state's shrimpers and dealers to the brink.
Since 2001, the number of active Louisiana shrimpers has been cut nearly in half.
Wholesale seafood dealers such as the docks on Grand Isle are also dwindling, meaning shrimpers have to travel farther to sell their catch and buy ice. And community leaders worry that a centuries-old tradition on the island may be lost.
"I never thought I could deal with this in America, especially in my hometown," said Grand Isle Mayor David Camardelle, also a licensed commercial fisher. "We've got the best seafood in the world in our back yard . . . that's all they know how to do, get on the boats and make a living."
On a recent weekday, an eerie silence hung over the grounds of the Wayne Estay Shrimp Co., which closed Oct. 31 after nearly three decades. A crew from Dulac was taking apart the walk-in freezer piece by piece.
After Katrina, owner Wayne Estay completely rebuilt the ice-making plant and storage facilities that were reduced to a concrete slab. But he'd seen the impending downfall of his industry years before.
When he first took over the business in 1981, 90 boats a day jockeyed for dock space to unload their product. During one week in the 1990s, he unloaded 1 million pounds of shrimp. (By contrast, South Carolina brought in 3.5 million pounds of shrimp total in 2006.)
But starting in 2001, the price at which Estay could sell shrimp to processors kept sinking due to an influx of cheaper imported seafood. From 1995 until last year, the domestic shrimp industry's share of the U.S. market was cut in half; it now is responsible for less than 10 percent of the total value of shrimp brought into the United States.
Making less profit, Estay took more risks, such as cutting back on insurance for his buildings and equipment.
Those cutbacks proved fatal when Katrina wiped away everything he owned. Still, he spent $800,000 rebuilding from the ground up, prodded by his wife and encouraged by initially higher shrimp production in the months after the storm.
But prices remained flat. Continuing to operate in the slow winter months this year didn't make sense. Even before he was approached by a developer earlier this year, he'd circled Oct. 31 on the calendar.
"That didn't cause me to close the place down; the shrimping industry did," said Estay, 58, who sold his Grand Isle home after Katrina and now lives in Larose, about 50 miles up Bayou Lafourche on Louisiana 1. "It just wasn't profitable, and I didn't have it in my heart to do this work after Katrina."
Estay is under a purchase agreement for more than $2.5 million with the developer, whom he would not identify given the pending real estate deal. The 30 to 35 shrimp boats at his docks have until Jan. 15 to clear out.
A stone's throw away to the east, dock owner Dean Blanchard is facing troubles of his own.
He also rebuilt from the ground up after the storm, tapping into savings and borrowing from family members to resume business less than two months after Katrina, at a cost of more than $1 million. Blanchard also received a payment of $1.2 million from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, which distributes tariff money paid by the shrimp industry's foreign competitors.
Processors and fishers who signed an anti-dumping petition with the International Trade Commission in 2003 are eligible to receive payouts from foreign seafood companies based on their expenses. Blanchard did so, but was recently told to return the money after Customs determined he was a dock owner, not a processor.
He's appealing the decision, but said he'll have to sell his business if he fails, leaving one of the most fertile shrimping grounds in the country devoid of a buyer. He'd already spent the money to repay his debts and purchase new equipment, he said.
"If I close, you talk about a mess, because there's no infrastructure that can handle our production," said Blanchard, who unloaded nearly 12 million pounds of shrimp last year, more than 10 percent of the product brought into the state. "We buy as much shrimp as a lot of states buy."
Dock owners such as Blanchard and Estay occupy a curious niche in the industry. Though they don't like the term, they are essentially the middlemen between the shrimpers who supply fresh product and the processors who peel and package the product to be shipped to stores across the country.
Blanchard said that he is registered as a processor with the state Department of Health and Hospitals. He also points to a machine at his dock that he reconfigured to partially remove the shrimp's heads and loosen the shells -- an innovation he says definitely counts as "processing."
He, Camardelle and a slew of lawyers were in Indianapolis last week to appeal the decision, bringing a professionally made video showing footage of Blanchard's operations. They are still awaiting an answer.
The combined closure of Estay's and Blanchard's operations could affect nearly half of the island's residents, Camardelle said, and indirectly impact 400 families.
"I've got people begging me not to close. It'd be a tough, tough decision -- very, very tough," Blanchard said. "But it's the principle of the thing. Why are they picking on me? I don't know." – The Times-Picayune
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Business Toolbox: Your customers' health
Kids eat fish, have fewer allergies
STOCKHOLM – A new Swedish study has shown that eating fish reduces children's risk of developing allergies, reversing earlier studies which indicated that fish consumption increased the likelihood of allergies.
Children who eat fish more than once a week are less likely to have allergies, the study claims. The study shows that young children who eat fish are less likely to develop allergic responses and hay fever throughout their childhood.
The study analysed consumption habits among 4,100 children over 8 years. At the age of one, 90 percent of these children ate fish regularly. About 96 percent of all kids in the study continued to eat fish on a regular basis after they turned eight.
Earlier, fish was believed to be a risk factor in developing allergies, but this report appears to contradict earlier studies. The study also reveals that regular fish consumption from young ages decreases the risk of children developing hay fever at the age of 8.
”Fish is good food. There is nothing that we need to be worried about when it comes to allergies,” said Inger Kull, a Stockholm nurse who took part in the study.
For the 8-year-olds, the more they ate fish, the better the impact on their health. Those who ate it more than once a week had a decreased risk of developing eczema.
The study also showed that children who ate fish two or three times a month when they were one year old, continued to eat fish regularly when they became older.
“We don’t have specific information on what kind of fish the children ate. The hypothesis is that fatty fishes are most beneficial,” according to Kull, adding that she “can not tell what is it about fish that minimizes allergy risks.” She is planning to do a follow up study on children between 11 and 14. -- TT/Rami Abdelrahman
Business Toolbox: The law and your resource
Editorial: Magnuson-Stevens wrong on overfishing
This also appeared in our Fish Wrap service.
Daniel T. Furlong, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and a proponent of inserting flexibility into the Magnuson Act as soon as possible, reminded us of Joaquin Setanti's quote of over 500 years ago: "Be wary of the man who urges action in which he himself incurs no risk."
The Pew Charitable Trusts' Environmental Group favors stringent cutbacks next year and claims that fishermen have been overfishing since 1982.
Let's think about that for a moment. Overfishing as defined in an arbitrary time line acceptable to environmentalists and biologists or overfishing as a term logically understood by others.
The unbiased arbitrator in this mess — someone who knows nothing about summer flounders — might make the observation that it stands to reason that overfishing is the harvest of too many summer flounders resulting in a reduction in the biomass, i.e., the stock has been getting smaller every year since 1982.
The problem with Pew's assertion is that this is not happening. There was not one year in the next 10 after the management plan went into effect that the biomass did not expand.
Even with the low minimum sizes, the long seasons and more angling pressure than today, the biomass grew.
The retrospective analysis that is being increasingly used by enviros and biologists to claim regulations were not tight enough during those years is pure bunk.
Fishing was occurring, not overfishing. The harvest never threatened rebuilding. There were always more fluke the following year.
Fishermen, recreational and commercial, harvested the quota suggested by biologists and set by fisheries management, and sometimes exceeded it, but the biomass continued to grow.
The rub, however, for some environmentalists, was the rate of growth of the biomass. They want to attain an arbitrary target as soon as possible and just having more fish every year is not acceptable.
Tony Bogan, former member of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, often asked: "What's the rush? If the biomass is growing, isn't that enough? Why hurt people to do it faster?"
There is no reasonable environmental answer. The best reply Tony could get was, "Because . . . "
Because why? If there are an estimated 104 million pounds of fluke in the mid-Atlantic today — a record number and there are more every year — why hurt people to get 214 million pounds by Jan. 1, 2013?
The Pew Group admits that there are four times as many summer flounders now as there were in 1992, but claims that biologists say this is still an unhealthy fishery.
The National Marine Fisheries Service said the summer flounder fishery is overfished and overfishing is occurring. In the formerly accepted definition of overfishing, the stocks would have been going backward; instead they are growing, soaring to record heights.
Anglers accepted the regulations in the 1990s that accelerated the conservation process. They supported the idea of having more fluke — more opportunity, more food. They cannot, however, accept the proposition that a spawning stock biomass that in 2006 was three times as large as it was in 1993 and an overall biomass that was twice as large in 2006, and there are four times as many fluke in 2007 as there were in 1992 is now "overfished" and the summer flounder stock must be doubled in size.
They cannot understand how a natural resource that they have been sacrificing to rebuild could have grown to such proportions without any benefit to the fishermen.
Still the antis' campaign continues. Tackle shops will close, party and charter boatmen will lose their boats, anglers will be denied food and recreation, commercial fishermen will be deprived of their livelihoods, the seafood-eating public's diet will be affected, boat builders, and boat dealers and marina owners will see their incomes cut, if nothing changes.
Hopefully, Congress will step in before it is too late. -- Asbury Park Press, N.J.
Business Toolbox: Building the resource
Martha's Vineyard leading in bay scallop fishery
MARTHA’S VINEYARD, Mass. – If the bay scallop fishery can be restored to places like Cape Cod and Long Island, the Vineyard may be able to take credit for it.
The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) is in the midst of a multi-year scientific experiment in Menemsha Pond that could have a wide-ranging impact on the future of bay scallops in the region.
The tribe is trying to find reasonable and attainable ways by which small communities can promote the raising of the bay scallop, a critically important local fishery. The Wampanoags are doing it with the help of a three-year $240,500 grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Recently Bret Stearns, director of the tribe’s natural resource department, was out on the pond with Jessie Kanozak, coordinator of the bay scallop enhancement project. The two, who are overseeing the project, on this cold morning were dressed for underwater diving.
Their mission was to do a bottom survey of bay scallops in a closed area, a one-acre underwater garden. From April through October, Ms. Kanozak went below at least once a week to see how well the bivalves were doing.
Menemsha Pond is a perfect place to raise bay scallops. It is enclosed, has a good exchange of clean water from the ocean and plenty of food available in the water for shellfish. The history of the bay scallop fishery goes back centuries.
But in the last twenty years, the bay scallop fishery at Menemsha hasn’t been consistent. There have been years when the commercial fishermen did well and there were years when they didn’t bother to put their drags in the water.
Baby bay scallops have been spawned in the tribe’s hatchery and at the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group.
The bay scallops, the size of a grain of sand, eventually are released into the pond.
“Last year we released over 150,000 baby bay scallops on the Aquinnah side of Menemsha Pond,” Mr. Stearns said.
“The smallest we’ve received have measured from 2 millimeters. And the largest we’ve released have been 30 millimeters in size,” Mr. Stearns said.
The bottom, an underwater meadow of bay scallop habitat, is protected from fishing and it is partly covered by large, vibrant eelgrass. The underwater grass offers the shellfish protection and a place to grow. On the surface are floating buoys that identify the area as closed to shellfishing.
Over the course of the past year, Ms. Kanozak has watched the scallops and monitored how well they survive and how well they cope with the changing seasons. She said she is just as interested in the health of the eelgrass bed. Next spring, she and Mr. Stearns plan to experiment on ways to transplant eelgrass from successful to not-so- productive areas.
Eelgrass is crucial to the survival of bay scallops. In their formative weeks of a bay scallop’s life, it needs a place to cling to just above the bottom.
On this sunny morning, both Ms. Kanozak and Mr. Stearns are underwater with clipboards. Wax pencils allow them to take notes below the surface. They count the frequency of animals in a given space. In the overall project, they are looking for changes in the population, survival rates for the different sizes, the impact of predators and other indicators of health.
At present, more New England bay scallops are raised successfully in China than in New England. Shellfish constables and fishermen on Cape Cod and Long Island are stymied on what needs to be done to jump-start their troubled bay scallop fisheries. -- Martha's Vineyard Gazette, Massachusetts
Business Toolbox: Fraud
Chef says fake shark fins endangering public
IPEI -- A chef specializing in shark fin soup warned consumers that many shark fins bought in Taiwan are fake and might pose a hazard to their health.
Wang Chia-chuan, who works for a restaurant in Taichung, noted that the supply of shark fins has dwindled in recent years because of worldwide attempts to conserve sharks.
(Wild News editor’s note: The lack of fins might be laid to the effectiveness of the fishery; fins could be in short supply because unscrupulous fishermen have killed too many sharks.)
He said that many of the shark fins sold are actually made from a mixture of mung bean starch gel, fish skin and gelatin -- a substance extracted from the boiled bones, skins and tendons of animals.
Wang said the manufacturers of these fake shark fins then use hydrogen peroxide solution to bleach their products to make them look genuine, and that those who unknowingly consume the look-alike shark fins could be endangering their health.
Even real shark fins are not always safe to consume, because some restaurants soak dried fins in chemical solutions to speed up the process of softening them for cooking, he said.
The chef suggested that before buying such products, consumers should learn how to distinguish genuine shark fins from fake ones. He said that involves judging from the look, smell and taste of the fins, as well as using the fingers to stretch or break up the cartilage.—Taipei Times, Taiwan
Business Toolbox: Your Supply
Today's read: Blue crabs fading from the Chesapeake
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Chesapeake Bay's famous blue crabs — feisty crustaceans that are both a regional symbol and a multimillion-dollar catch — are hovering at historically low population levels, scientists say, as pollution, climate change and overfishing threaten the bay's ultimate survivor.
This fall, a committee of federal and state scientists found that the crab's population was at its second-lowest level in the past 17 years, having fallen to about one-third the population of 1993. They forecast that the current crabbing season, which ends Dec. 15 in Maryland, will produce one of the lowest harvests since 1945.
This year's numbers are particularly distressing, scientists say, because they signal that a baywide effort to save the crab begun in 2001 is falling short.
Governments promised to clean the Chesapeake's waters by 2010. But that effort is far off track, leaving “dead zones” where crabs can't breathe.
Maryland and Virginia have changed their laws to cut back the bay's crab harvest. But watermen have repeatedly been allowed to take too many of the valuable shellfish, scientists say. The watermen, meanwhile, say they're being unfairly blamed.
“Now it appears that even the hardy blue crab is approaching its breaking point,” said Howard Ernst, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and a critic of government efforts to protect the Chesapeake. If the crab's population drops further, Ernst said, “What we ultimately lose is not only a resource, but a unique and irreplaceable cultural heritage.”
The Chesapeake has a long roster of collapsed species, including many of its best-loved icons.
First, the sturgeon was mercilessly fished for meat and roe. Shad went next, netted and blocked off by dams. Oysters have been nearly wiped out by harvests and disease. Rockfish dropped off but then came back, the bay's best, but just about only, success story.
Through it all, the number of blue crabs held relatively steady, helped by their relatively high tolerance for dirty water and their astonishing fertility. A female crab can produce more than 6 million eggs a year, allowing the population to rebuild quickly.
In the 1990s, the crab's population began to fall off rapidly. Since 2000, it has been at a historically low ebb.
There were about 852 million crabs in the bay in 1993, but there are now about 273 million, according to the committee of federal and state scientists, which issued a report in September. Over the past 17 years, only 2001 — an earlier point in the current slump — had a lower figure.
The Chesapeake crab harvest, which exceeded 100 million pounds at its peak in the 1960s, fell to 48.9 million pounds last year.
“We've gone where we've never been before,” said Douglas Lipton, a University of Maryland professor who has studied the Chesapeake fishing industry. “Nobody can prove ... that the resource can come back from that abundance.”
And the immediate future doesn't look much better. The number of crabs less than a year old, a crucial indicator of how the population will look in the next year or two, fell to its lowest level in 15 years last winter.
The drop in young crabs — the animals usually live up to three years — has been obvious to Virginia researchers this summer, as they do a kind of aquatic population survey called Big Suck III.
One recent day, a group of them puttered into the Little Annemessex River, off the Eastern Shore seafood capital of Crisfield, Md., and used a kind of superpowered vacuum to suck tiny creatures off the bottom. Then they picked out dime- and nickel-size baby crabs.
So far this year, researcher Rom Lipcius said, they have found one-tenth or less the number of baby crabs they found in Big Suck I, in 1994 and 1995.
“This is really the first signal: If the entire population were to collapse, we would see it here,” because these crabs will be the next generation of adults, said Lipcius, of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “And, in fact, we're not finding that many.”
The reasons for the decline probably include climate change, because the water now is often too warm for a grass species the crabs use as shelter.
But the causes also include two problems that governments have promised — and failed — to fix.
One is the water. Rain washes down manure, treated sewage and suburban fertilizer, which cause algae blooms that remove oxygen from the bay's water. Low-oxygen “dead zones” can kill crabs or push them out of their preferred habitat.
State and federal governments promised to clean up the pollution by 2010. Now officials admit that the effort — led by the Environmental Protection Agency — is far behind schedule.
The remaining tasks are massive: stopping runoff at tens of thousands of farms, replacing hundreds of thousands of septic tanks, overhauling numerous sewage plants. The work will cost billions, officials estimate, and much of the money is not available.
“We know what to do” to clean it up, said Ann Pesiri Swanson, the executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, an advisory group of state officials from around the watershed. “We just bloody don't have the money to do it.”
The crab's other problem is the harvest. Watermen using wire-mesh “pots,” “trotlines” baited with bull lips, and metal dredges catch millions of crabs every year.
Maryland and Virginia, which share the bay, sought to limit the catch in 2001, with rules about what days watermen could work and the minimum size of crabs they could keep.
But, though the harvest went down, crabbers were still able to catch what scientists say is an unhealthy number of crabs in 2001, 2002 and 2004. And they're on pace to do it again this year, according to a recent estimate. The reason: Crab catches have declined, but the total number of crabs has dropped even faster. – Washington Post
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Business Toolbox: Your customers' health
Shoppers confused about omega 3
Food labels are misleading and confusing shoppers about omega 3 content, according to a new report.
Laboratory tests showed levels of the fatty acids in some products ranged from 1,000 percent more to 98 percent less than the amount stated on-pack, said Which? magazine.
And the consumer group says the omega 3 content of some food and drinks may not be as beneficial to health as shoppers think.
Some firms are cashing in on the trend for eating omega 3-rich food by making confusing claims about the nutrient, Which? said.
An online poll of 2,405 Which? panel members found 45 percent of respondents were more likely to buy a product which claimed to be high in omega 3 than an equivalent product without it.
But product labels rarely say whether they contain plant-based or oily fish-derived omega 3 – nor explain the differences between the two, Which? found.
Omega 3 from plants is not as beneficial to consumer health as omega 3 from fish, Which? said. – Press release
Business Toolbox: Your supply
San Francisco oil spill test results delayed
This also appeared in our Fish Wrap service.
SAN FRANCISCO – Bay Area crab fishermen will have to wait until Friday to hear whether Dungeness crab is safe to eat, and they're not happy about the delay.
The California Department of Fish and Game had planned to release test results by today showing whether crab caught in the bay and along the shore were tainted by the Nov. 7 Cosco Busan oil spill. But officials said sensory testing which refers to the odor and taste of the crab have been delayed.
Crab fisherman are upset about the news. They had hoped to put their crab pots into the water before Saturday, when the northern crab fishery opens. The price of crab is expected to go down at that time, cutting even more into whatever revenues they can salvage from the season.
The Dungeness crab season was set to open Nov. 15, but local crabbers have remained in port and most fish processors have refused to buy any local catches until tests confirm the crab’s safety. -- KCBS
Business Toolbox: The environment
Blasting kills fish in Boston Harbor
BOSTON – More than 2,000 fish in Boston Harbor have been killed by underwater blasting since late October, drawing concern from environmentalists that far more serious fish kills could occur if a massive deepening project moves forward in the harbor's shipping channel.
While the number of dead fish is small, environmentalists said blasting techniques have improved so much in the past two decades that virtually no fish should have been killed if the dredging work had been done properly.
But in four separate incidents during a US Army Corps of Engineers maintenance dredging project, an independent observer counted more than 2,000 herring, cunner, rainbow smelt, and menhaden dead on the water surface after shock waves probably burst their air bladders, which help control their buoyancy. – Boston Globe
Business Toolbox: (Actually, there's no business angle, but we couldn't resist)
Fat, lazy fish spoiled with meals of Easy Cheese
MAUI – Until only recently, it was not uncommon for snorkelers or scuba divers to bring a can of Easy Cheese, pizza crust or peas with them on an underwater adventure.
The fish would come in swarms to eat out of the swimmers’ hands.
But after decades of hand-feeding fish, environmentalists and charter operators said something went wrong: The fish became habituated or addicted to getting the food.
Sometimes the fish were so well fed that they refused to graze off of the reefs’ natural algae and seaweed.
Sometimes, when a snorkeler or swimmer didn’t have something for them to eat, the fish became aggressive and nippy. Dozens of cases of minor fish bites have been documented in Honolua Bay alone, said Liz Foote, Hawaii field director for the Coral Reef Alliance and executive director of Project S.E.A.-Link, a Maui-based ocean preservation nonprofit.
To combat the aggressive fish problem and help restore natural order to the delicate reef ecosystems, Foote’s organizations have mounted a coordinated campaign on Maui and across Hawaii to end the practice of fish feeding.
The Take a Bite Out of Fish Feeding Campaign now lists more than 30 members in its Fish-Friendly Business Alliance. Some dive shops and charter boats have refused to allow their customers to feed fish for years, Foote said. – Maui News
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Business Toolbox: Demand
Shrimp, salmon said to be American's favorites
PORTLAND, Ore. – A national survey conducted by McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurants Inc. found that shrimp is the favorite shellfish.
The survey by Portland-based McCormick & Schmick's polled consumers who regularly eat seafood to determine what types they are buying and ordering, what they look for when choosing their fish, and other behaviors related to seafood.
Shrimp was the favorite shellfish, with 38 percent of respondents naming it their most preferred. Salmon was named the favorite finfish, with 21 percent of the vote.
The survey also discovered that freshness rules over price as 39 percent of consumers ranked it as the most important factor when selecting fish. Price came in next with 26 percent of the vote and flavor followed closely with 25 percent.
Other notable survey findings include:
- Forty-nine percent of respondents said they are more likely to eat seafood while dining out, while 14 percent said they would be more likely to eat it at home. Thirty-six percent said it makes no difference whether they are dining out or eating it at home.
- Survey results showed that 27 percent of those polled cook seafood at home at least once a week.
- Baking won out as the most common method respondents use to cook seafood at home (29 percent), with grilling following closely behind (26 percent).
- Of the respondents that have children, 66 percent said they began feeding them seafood before they turned 5.
While more than 50 percent of the respondents are aware of the American Heart Association and the USDA dietary guidelines that recommend eating at least two servings of seafood each week to promote a healthy lifestyle, only 15 percent of consumers have changed their diet to include more seafood as a result of these recommendations. – Portland Business Journal
Business Toolbox: Organic?
Today's read: National board deliberates "organic" seafood
This article also appeared in our Fish Wrap service.
WASHINGTON — The National Organics Standards Board opened a week of meetings Tuesday on the question of whether farmed fish should qualify for the federal government's official organic label.
Opponents say that would violate the Agriculture Department's own standards. They claim the fish meal and fish oil used in aquaculture concentrates pollutants such as PCBs and mercury that are hazardous to human health. They also say the most common method of fish farming, called open pen net farming, is inconsistent with the principles of organic agriculture.
The industry contends that a U.S. organic standard for farmed fish is needed to help producers improved their operations and compete against foreign producers whose own standards are suspect.
At stake for the farmers is a foothold in a U.S. organic food market estimated at $15.5 billion in 2006 and enjoying double-digit annual growth.
Already, consumers see plenty of fish in the stories labeled "organic," but none with the official USDA label. That's because foreign producers are allowed to sport labels awarded by their own countries — much to the alarm of domestic fish farmers.
In March, the Organic Standards Board voted to temporarily exclude all U.S.-farmed fish from the organic standard. It also asked for public comment on the two main issues to be debated this week:
— Fish meal and fish oil produced from wild animals. The board's proposed rule would allow no more than 24 percent of a farmed fish's feed to be made up of meal or oil from wild fishes. Even this percentage would have to be phased out after seven years.
— Open-net pens. The board proposed to allow them "where water depth, current velocities and direction, and other factors" keep waste solids from building up on the sea floor underneath.
"We want to make sure that everybody's heard," said Joan Schaffer, a board spokeswoman.
A leading opponent of aquaculture, the activist group Food and Water Watch, says in a new report that the industry is not sustainable, one of the principles of organic agriculture.
The group claims that it takes two to six pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of some types of farmed fish, and that the industry already consumes 80 percent of the world's fish oil and half the fish meal each year.
Those concerned about the impact of large pens anchored offshore cite several potential problems they say suggest such farms don't meet organic principles: pollution from the farms, impact on predator populations, risks from diseases and parasites, and threats to wild stocks from escaped fish.
On the other side of the debate, some farmed-fish experts emphasize the benefits of using fish meal and fish oil in feed.
Fish meal and fish oil have "high biological values," Brad Hicks of the Pacific Organic Seafood Association wrote in a report to be presented at the symposium. "Fish oil has very high concentrations of unsaturated long-chain fatty acids which have many health-promoting properties."
According to one study, two of the United States' four offshore aquaculture facilities reported that its fish contained no detectable levels of harmful contaminants.
In his report, Hicks pointed to the success of offshore aquaculture around the world as proof that the industry is sustainable.
Globally, aquaculture brings in $78 billion each year, with Asia producing four-fifths of the world's farmed fish.
Hicks also pointed out that half of the all the fish imported into the United States are produced in offshore aquaculture facilities. – Atlanta Journal Constitution
Business Toolbox: Blue crab
Delaware Bay crabs holding their own
The Chesapeake Bay is anticipating its lowest blue crab harvest in 62 years, but the outlook may not be so grim for the iconic crustaceans in the Delaware Bay.
After a low harvest in 2003 and 2004, the news appears to be better this year.
Harvests of blue crabs in the Delaware Bay peaked in 1995 when 12.7 million pounds were caught across the bay. Harvest numbers baywide include the catches of Delaware and New Jersey crabbers. The average yearly harvest from 1988 to 2002 was 8.8 million pounds, but there was a sharp decrease in 2003 and 2004, when only 4.3 million pounds were landed.
Those low harvest numbers came on the heels of years in which the juvenile populations declined markedly. However, last year, crabbers brought in 7.3 million pounds of crabs.
The 2006 juvenile class was large, so officials are expecting to see decreased mortality and increased abundance in the next two years. Wong said after this year’s encouraging number of young crabs, the department expects to see some recovery.
The blue crab industry is the top commercial fishery in the state, bringing in $3.3 million in 2006. -- Cape Gazette, Delaware
Business Toolbox: Shellfish
Nantucket scallop bonanza
It took Nantucket scalloper Fred Holdgate just a couple of hours Monday to catch his daily limit of five bushels of bay scallops.
"It's a better-than-average year. I wouldn't say great," said Holdgate, a lifelong Nantucketer whose scalloping roots stretch back to his childhood.
Put that assessment down to Yankee constraint.
The scallop season opened Nov. 1 and in just 19 fishing days Nantucket scallopers have blown past the 3,800 bushels they harvested last year. With an estimated 7,300 bushels already caught, they may be on their way to a bonanza like three years ago, when the fleet landed 32,500 bushels.
Any other fishing town would kill to have one of Nantucket's so-called "average" years.
Just ask Dennis Shellfish Officer Alan Marcy, whose commercial bay scallop season has already closed with just 10 bushels landed. Or Edgartown Shellfish Constable Paul Bagnell whose fishermen are landing 100 bushels a day, with maybe another 100 spread out over the island.
"I would die for that over here," said Douglas Kalweit, director of the Barnstable Department of Natural Resources. His scallop fleet came up empty, he said.\
Nantucket's bounty doesn't necessarily translate into happy fishermen. With an estimated 3,000 pounds of scallop meat a day available to ship, the market is glutted and the prices being paid to fishermen have plummeted to $9 per pound in recent weeks compared to $14 to $16 per pound this time last year. Each bushel of scallops yields five to nine pounds of meat.
Last week, Nantucket fishermen called an emergency meeting of their shellfish advisory board to debate not working on Fridays to see if it would bring the prices up. They decided against it because there was no way to guarantee it would work.
While each scalloper can earn about $340 a day by catching the five-bushel limit, other expenses take their toll. Fuel costs about $40 per day, 20 percent of the catch goes to a subcontractor who opens and packs the scallops, and there are boat expenses such as $12,000 or more to replace an outboard motor.
Most scallopers are blue-collar workers supplementing their income on Nantucket which has a notoriously high cost of living, Holdgate and others said. – Cape Cod Times, Massachusetts
Friday, November 30, 2007
Business Toolbox: Feeding kids
School go sustainble
Pupils will be tucking into eco-friendly fish after two Welsh local education authorities became the first to serve meals certified by the Marine Stewardship Council.
The Vale of Glamorgan and Cardiff councils are leading the way in promoting the need to eat sustainable fish.
As well as offering lunches with MSC-labelled fish, schools will also be running education programmes about the problems of over-fishing. – icWales.co, United Kingdom
Business Toolbox: Snooty French chefs
French chef loves English "le fish and chips"
LONDON -- "Le fish and chips" in a top French restaurant? Pourquoi pas? At least that's the view of leading Gallic chef Alain Ducasse, who is embracing British cuisine with open arms, in the teeth of his homeland's traditionally snobbish attitude towards English food.
Ducasse, who has Michelin three star restaurants in Monaco, Paris and New York, is branching out in London with "Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester," offering his trademark gastronomy in one of the British capital's top hotels.
But the restaurant, the 27th in the Ducasse empire, is doing everything with an Anglo-Saxon twist, risking outrage among his countrymen, for many of whom "la cuisine anglaise" is a contradiction in terms.
Venison a la sauce grand veneur, pigeon roti, veloute de marrons au foie gras may be straight from the traditional Gallic cookbook.
The traditional French attitude towards English food can be summed up by former president Jacques Chirac's famed remark: "You can't trust people who cook as badly as that. After Finland, it's the country with the worst food."
"That was maybe true 15-20 years ago. But not today," says Ducasse. – AFP
Business Toolbox: Sustainability
Cod disappearing from European markets
BRUSSELS – Most of Europe's cod fishermen should face a 25 percent cut in their catches next year according to European Commission recommendations aimed at preserving the species after years of heavy exploitation.
The North Sea was the only area where numbers of young cod had improved slightly and so next year's catch could be raised by 11 percent, the Commission said in quota recommendations.
"Cod, other than in the North Sea, is still in an extremely low state of conservation," said Ernesto Penas Lado, head of the Commission's fisheries conservation unit.
Scientists have warned for years that cod is so seriously overfished in EU waters that it runs the risk of extinction due to stock collapse. In October, they called for the EU to set next year's catch at less than half of 2006 levels. – Reuters
Business Toolbox: Staying legal
Canadians warn of illegal, unsafe fish
Environmentalists say tuna stocks in the South Pacific are on the verge of collapse from overfishing. They say the multi-billion-dollar industry is operating far above sustainable levels.
The annual catch of albacore, bigeye, skipjack and yellowfin tuna in the region is about 2 million tons. Campaigners want to see that figure cut in half.
(Editor's note: Albacore found in the North Pacific is a sustainable resource, accoding to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program.)
Analysts estimate that there are 8,000 vessels involved in the region's tuna trade. They range from as far away as Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States.
The depletion of fish stocks worldwide has consequences for the marine ecosystem.
But Lagi Toribau of Greenpeace says large-scale commercial fishing is also endangering the economies of small island states that rely on tuna.
"We can comfortably say that for a lot of these fishing nations it's all about money and it's all about sustaining a global appetite for tuna, whereas on the other side," Toribau said, "there are the Pacific island countries who are trying to survive and trying to sustain a livelihood for them." - Voice of America
Business Toolbox: Resources
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