Gulf yellowfin: Producers foresee a good season ahead as sushi buyers come back
Published onA series of strong storms roiling the Gulf of Mexico this winter and early spring coupled with a slow reopening from covid-19-related restrictions has dampened yellowfin tuna production in the southeast, with boat prices hovering at about the same levels as this time last year. David Maginnis, who runs Jensen Tuna in Houma, La. the gulfs largest yellowfin producer says boat prices for the premium quality No. 1 tuna average $6.50 per pound while the No. 2 fish are about $3.50. According to the latest landings data provided by NMFS, fishermen have harvested 30.7 metric tons (67,584 pounds) between Jan. 1 and Feb. 28 way down from the same period in 2020 when 76.7 metric tons (169,137 pounds) were harvested. Lately, in the Gulf of Mexico, its been rough, rough, rough, Maginnis said. Weve been fighting a lot of bad weather. Does ...
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Maine shop seems to have a winner in 25-footer; magic has its place on the lobster boat racing circuit
Published onLast year, Jeff Eaton at Eatons Boat Shop Fiberglassing in Deer Isle, Maine, finished off an Eaton Boat Shop 25 for a local lobsterman, and immediately it showed signs of being very popular. The 25-footer came out of a mold Eaton purchased six years ago that is about 20 years old and has gone through some name changes, from the Northern Edge 25 to the Northern Bay 25 when John Hutchins of Down East Boats and Composites had it, and now the Eaton Boat Shop 25. This winter Eaton started building three 25s. Two are kit boats for tuna fishermen, one in New York and the other in Massachusetts. Each of those 25s will be powered by a 300-hp Yamaha outboard. The third 25 will be a pleasure boat with a head, V-berths and a settee. The Eaton Boat Shop 25 with a 200-hp outboard does ...
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Alaska salmon: With pandemic experience, fleet gears up for expected 2021 harvest
Published onAlaskas salmon industry stood poised to fill hungry markets as the season began. On tap for Bristol Bay, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has projected a harvest of 37.4 million sockeyes. If that pans out, the bay harvest will account for 80 percent of the statewide projection of 46.6 million sockeyes. At a potential harvest of 124.2 million fish, the pink salmon season should be no slouch either. Thats double last years 60.7 million pinks and will push this years total harvest of all species to more than 190 million fish. Last years canned salmon markets were already starving for product in the preamble of the pandemic, and demand for canned salmon surged even higher as the world went into shutdown and stock-up mode. With limited canning capacity among processors and skeleton crews prepping salmon for fillets to be distributed fresh or frozen ...
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Editor’s Log: Spring a trap
Published onOne year ago, when interviews via Zoom were new (and a little exciting, even), I sat down in my East Coast kitchen to talk with a fishing family in the San Francisco Bay Area. Adam Sewall, 38, and Eleza Jaeger, 33, had spent the first part of the year tracking production on their line of blackcod pots, while running their commercial and charter fishing businesses, and managing schedules for their three young children. The fishing family had an early warning of what was to come for 2020 when their Asia-based blackcod pot manufacturer shuttered in January as the virus caused shutdowns in nations on the other side of the Pacific. They watched the spread of covid-19 disrupt commerce and lives around the globe until it reached the shores of the U.S. West Coast. This time last year, Sewall and Jaegers most remarkable real-time innovation was shifting ...
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Northern Lights: Alaska Seafood’s time is now
Published onAmid the past years unstable foodservice and retail landscape, seafood has become one of grocerys strongest players, catalyzing strong overall category growth by offering solutions to some of shoppers top priorities, such as health and wellness, ease of preparation, and quality. This interest is translating into seafood sales, according to the 2021 Food Marketing Institute Power of Seafood Report, which includes year-over-year seafood sales by department sourced by NielsenIQ. Frozen seafood sales grew an astounding 36 percent, fresh seafood sales grew 25 percent, and grocery seafood grew 21 percent! According to the report, the seafood department was a leader in the growth of grocery sales with an overall increase of nearly 30 percent, much stronger than meat (18 percent), produce (11 percent), deli (0.3 percent) and bakery (-2 percent). One of the hallmarks of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institutes retail and foodservice marketing program is our focus ...
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Power surge: With Vineyard Wind on approval track, 10 more reviews in the wings
Published onA building wave for offshore wind energy surged out of the Biden administration, with March 29 announcements that set a goal of building 30,000 megawatts of capacity and opening up to 800,000 more acres for leasing in the New York Bight. Two weeks later, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management moderated the plan, withdrawing potential leasing areas off New York acknowledging conflicts with commercial fishing, maritime traffic and tourism that will be rife in the East Coasts most crowded waters. But on a broad scale, it appears to be full speed ahead for BOEM. Even during the Trump administrations fitful approach to offshore wind, the agency itself worked consistently to make leasing possible for wind power developers. Today there are 17 active leases, comprising 1.7 million acres, says BOEM Director Amanda Lefton. Ten more environmental reviews could be started this year, and construction and operation plans for ...
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Keep your cool: Rethinking processing, supply, and cold chains in a post-pandemic world
Published onI was driving to Rhode Island on a February night in 1984 with a thousand pounds of Maine shrimp sliding around in the back of my Chevy van some of it having been picked in a friends kitchen. Id blown a fuse and without a spare, I had to choose between the heater and music. I zipped up my Carhartts and plugged in Howlin Wolf. No chance the snow I had shoveled onto the totes was going to melt. That would never happen today. Aside from the Maine shrimp season being on perpetual pause, the markets now demand HACCP processing and traceable supply chains. Ryan Speckman, who started Locals Seafood in Raleigh, N.C., in 2011, has both. He now sells around 4,000 pounds of seafood every week. While he and his partners had plans for expansion, the coronavirus changed everything. It kind of forced our hand, says Speckman ...
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Riding the wave: Boatbuilders, designers and fishermen take advantage of new technology and design for the times
Published onOne indicator of the health of a fishery is the number of new boats being built for it, and design trends of those boats add more to the story. North Pacific fisheries journalist and author Peter Marsh estimates that between West Coast and Alaska boatbuilders, somewhere close to 30 new gillnetters will enter the healthy Bristol Bay salmon fishery in 2021. And this is a slow year, due to the pandemic, he says. Tom Farrell, of Farrell and Norton Naval Architects in Maine, is busy designing scallopers for the lucrative Atlantic scallop fishery. A number of his and his partner Garrett Nortons boats have arrived in New Bedford in recent years, and more are coming. For decades, the lobster industry has sustained fishing communities on the coast of Maine, and Moses Ortiz, owner of Boricua Custom boats in Harrington, Maine, has fitted out numerous hulls for that fishery. But as ...
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Off the hook: Slinky pots revolutionize Alaska’s blackcod fishery
Published onWhen Shawn McManus, skipper of the F/V Vansee, left Seattle in the spring of 2020 to longline for blackcod in Alaska, the outlook was not good. The burgeoning pandemic had injected uncertainty into a fishery that was already struggling with flagging prices and crippling whale depredation. On the grounds, McManus and his colleagues estimated half their catch, sometimes more, was being snatched off hooks by orcas and sperm whales. Fishermen with bigger boats and more powerful hydraulics had long ago switched to whale-proof rigid pots, but they were not an option for smaller operations like the Vansee, a 107-year-old halibut schooner with limited deck space. Veteran fisherman Buck Laukitis was among those who had switched to rigid pots. He looked on in dismay as depredation threatened not just individual boats but the fishery at large. We needed 75 or 80 percent of the fishing done by ...
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Reliable and driven: ZF Marine provides long-lasting and wide-ranging commercial solutions
Published onOver the years, Florida-based ZF Marine has used its reliable transmission, control, and propeller product lines to spread across fisheries nationwide, from lobster fishermen in the Northeast to shrimpers in Gulf of Mexico and salmon fishermen in Alaska and just about everything in between. Drew Orvieto, the senior manager for ZF Marines commercial product line, said he has put transmissions in boats ranging from 16 up to 300 or 400 feet, and ZFs propellers go from the very small all the way up to 2 meters. The control systems come in all manner of sizes as well, with stations housing up to six joysticks with full class approval for larger boats. One thing that sets us apart from other suppliers in the marine market is our ability to cater to all different applications, whether thats a single screw lobster boat running down in Key West or big commercial tuna ...
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Better speed reading: A next generation single axis doppler speed log from Furuno
Published onFuruno has released its DS85 Doppler Speed Log, which is designed to provide the most accurate speed measurement possible and cover regulatory requirements for larger vessels as the next generation single axis speedometer. Beyond natures variance of extreme chop and heavy seas, boats create their own noise that can throw off sounding devices. Furuno has devoted its extensive expertise to a new transducer design and coupled it with a higher operating frequency to cut through the noise. The DS85 also has more advanced processing algorithms to further clarify the signal. Vessel speed fore-aft is a significant factor in arriving in port, especially constricted navigation ways, and of course is supremely important when coming alongside the pier. The vessel master and mates need to know the speed of the vessel fore and aft to plan for all maneuvering, said Matt Wood, Furunos national sales manager. On the display side, Wood ...
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Oregon shrimper gets shafted — for the better; family tradition keeps going at California boatyard
Published onThe Prospector, a 63' x 25' shrimper and crabber built in 1973, was hauled out in March at the Port of Toledo Shipyard in Toledo, Ore., for a major overhaul. The 48-year-old Prospector had been sponsoned and lengthened in 2016, and then repowered with a 640-hp Cummins K-19 in October 2019. When the Prospector was repowered, its 3-inch shafting wasnt upgraded. Thus 4-inch shafting was being installed at the Port of Toledo Shipyard to allow for full use of the Cummins power. The Prospector is also getting larger cutlass bearings, larger Babbitt bearings and foundations, and new stuffing boxes at the stern tube and the engine room bulkhead. Plus the engine needed to be realigned, and at the end of that 4-inch shaft will be a new 58-inch, five-blade prop. The interesting thing about the shafting, says the Port of Toledo ...
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Omega trims Atlantic steamer fleet with conversion; pound-net skiff gets overhaul at Virginia railway
Published onWith the help of Ampro Shipyard in Weems, Va., Omega Protein in Reedville is busy getting its menhaden fishing fleet ready for Virginias 2021 menhaden fishing season. The season opened in May. Omega recently announced its cutting back on its Chesapeake Bay fishing fleet, as six boats will be fishing this season. Last year, the firm had seven menhaden steamers working Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The Tideland, one of the largest and oldest vessels in the fleet, will leave the fishing end of the business. It will remain in the fleet, however, as a carry-away boat. The 218-foot Tideland was launched in 1966. She has caught a jag of fish in her lifetime, said Omegas Reedville Vessels Manager Harvey Hamm. Tideland will require only a minor conversion to switch from fishing boat to carry-away boat. It will require installation of new pumps, modification of the ...
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Who we are: David Toriumi
Published onThe commercial fishing industry can be hard to break into, especially if youre not from a fishing family. Doing so requires a high tolerance for risk, a willingness to endure razor thin margins for a few years, and a whole lot of hustle. But for David Toriumi, 38, getting to be his own boss and fish for a living make the difficulties worthwhile. Its been a struggle even to this day, he says. It used to be the harder I worked the more I got paid. Now I cant get enough time on the water to put in the work needed to make money. Not to be deterred, Toriumi has slowly built his fishing business from the ground up. Toriumi owns the 33-foot F/V Grinder on which he fishes king salmon and Dungeness crab. He also has a 25-foot Boston Whaler, F/V Salt N Season, which ...
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Pacific swordfish: After big 2020 drop, fleet looks to restaurants and Asian markets
Published onRestaurant openings and Asian market conditions will determine the health of the West Coast swordfish industry in 2021. Last year, supply chains in the early season were disrupted with the onset of covid-19, but as the calendar turned toward July, some markets reopened. Though the drift gillnet fishery off California operates in the nearshore waters with time and area closures, the commercial fishing season for deep-set buoy gear doesnt have hard start and stop dates. As for the new deep-set fishery, there are currently no seasonal restrictions, says Chugey Sepulveda, a laboratory director at the Pfleger Institute of Environmental Research, in Oceanside, Calif. Because swordfish are highly migratory, and the bulk of fish reside off the West Coast from about July-January, this is when we see most of the fishing activity. According to data from PacFIN, the swordfish fleet wound up at 320 metric tons for ...
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National Fisherman — June Issue — 2021
Published onCover Story: Successful fisheries are driving new design trends and power packages. West Coast longliners are outsmarting hungry whales with collapsible and lightweight blackcod traps Market shifts from 2020 have seafood suppliers adjusting to new demands on processing and the cold chain As the Biden administration goes all-in on wind energy, NMFS and fishermen flash warning lights More seafood consumers brought fish home to cook for the first time during the pandemic...and more! Click below to read the current issue
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