EMEA editor Neil Ramsden brings you a roundup of some of the biggest stories of 2024 based on our most-read statistics.
In April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared new disaster designations for three commercial salmon fisheries in the US states of Alaska and Washington, following poor or restricted fishing and significant declines in the value of harvests during the years 2021 and 2022. Set-netters on the east side of Alaska’s Cook Inlet have seen the value of the commercial sockeye fishery shrink due to restrictions implemented to protect dwindling late runs of Chinook, or king salmon, that have significantly curtailed harvests or closed the fishery altogether.
In September, the US National Marine Fisheries Service closed the pollock trawl fishery in the central Gulf of Alaska after two fishing vessels caught an “unprecedented” amount of Chinook (or king) salmon as bycatch. The closure left just over 50,000 metric tons in the water, uncaught.
US giant Trident Seafoods decided it would not reopen its St. Paul, Alaska, processing plant for the winter snow crab season in October, leading to scrambling among Bering Sea communities as harvesters and processors had to reallocate snow crab quota shares on a tight deadline. After two successive closures due to collapsing crab stocks, US fisheries regulators announced they would reopen the snow crab fishery to a limited harvest. However, Trident’s decision meant there was no processor in the northern region where dedicated quota shares are based.
US seafood chain Red Lobster — at the time owned by Thai Union Group — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with hundreds of millions of dollars in outstanding debt in May. Fortress Investment Group acquired the world’s largest seafood restaurant group in September and named Damola Adamolekun as CEO.
Back in Alaska, Northline Seafoods and Circle Seafoods made waves in the US state this summer. The two Washington state-based companies anticipated fishermen would be able to unload their catch at their floating freezer barges during the salmon season in a first for the state’s salmon fisheries, which have traditionally depended on shoreside plants for processing.
Tensions built in Canada’s largest lobster fishery this year, with Colin Sproul, president of the Unified Fisheries Conservation Alliance, warning something terrible could happen should fisheries minister Diane Lebouthillier not act. “There’s going to be an explosion of violence in southwest Nova Scotia,” he told Undercurrent News. Nova Scotia fisheries minister Kent Smith said the fishery had a problem not just with First Nation groups harvesting during closed seasons but also with organized crime.
Only days ago, on Dec. 19, shipping giant Maersk confirmed it would halt its trans-Pacific freight service from Alaska’s largest US seafood ports by volume in February 2025, taking US seafood producers by surprise. The last shipment scheduled is for Feb. 11, 2025 — in the middle of the pollock “A” season, which opens Jan. 20, 2025, and typically runs into April.
In October, Undercurrent‘s readers were interested to hear that Israeli researchers had successfully bred the world’s first gene-edited giant freshwater prawn using CRISPR technology, a tool that allows scientists to precisely modify specific genes to enhance traits like growth and disease resistance. The development could change shrimp farming significantly by helping prawns grow faster and resist diseases, making the industry more efficient and sustainable.
And in February, they were dismayed to read that Trident, High Liner Foods and Sysco Corp. had all suspended business with a large processing firm in China, Dalian Haiqing Food Co., over a bombshell report by the Outlaw Ocean Project over the use of North Korean labor. Having created a storm in the seafood sector in 2023 with revelations of Uyghur labor in Chinese processing plants, Outlaw Ocean director Ian Urbina turned his team’s focus to North Korean workers.
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