Here’s a taste of this week’s can’t-miss SeafoodSource news stories and commentaries:
• The situation in the Gulf of Mexico is finally improving — a Los Angeles Times report on Thursday claimed the “top kill” effort to plug the oil leak is working, though there’s no confirmation yet that the leak had been completely blocked. For Gulf Coast chefs and officials, the fight to spread the word that Gulf seafood is available and safe carries on — Tommy Cvitanovich, owner of Drago’s Seafood Restaurant, and Ralph Brennan, owner of the Ralph Brennan Restaurant Group, were among those on hand at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago this week touting the quality of Gulf seafood. On Monday, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke declared a fishery disaster in the Gulf, opening the door for federal aid to fishermen and processors. The area closed to fishing still constitutes less than one-quarter of federal Gulf waters.
• Open-ocean aquaculture is being swept up in the debate over the future of the Gulf of Mexico. On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana introduced a bill that would delay the implementation of a permitting framework for open-ocean fish farms in the Gulf by three-and-a-half years, arguing that the marine ecosystem “cannot handle any more stress.” In my “Fish farms don’t explode” commentary on Wednesday, I posed the questions, “Just how taxing would a few fish farms be on the Gulf’s marine ecosystem, especially when compared to the approximately 3,500 oil and gas platforms already dotting the Gulf, and what if a fish farm found itself in the path of an oil slick?
• In his “Farming for solutions” commentary on Monday, SeaFood Business Associate Editor James Wright wrote about aquaculture’s role, and importance, in the sustainable seafood movement. Wright attended last week’s Cooking for Solutions event at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where he heard from Howard Johnson, director of global programs for Seattle-based Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, and Roz Naylor, professor of environmental earth science at Stanford University, among others.
• In his “Carving a niche, one salmon at a time” commentary on Monday, SeafoodSource Contributing Editor Mike Urch wrote about a small independent salmon farmer on Scotland’s northwest coast that’s making a name for itself producing what it calls “hand-reared” salmon. Wester Ross specializes in selling salmon to smokers, particularly fillets, and whole salmon and fillets to caterers in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and the United States.
• At the other end of the seafood spectrum from hand-reared salmon are fish pastes and seafood sandwich spreads. Say what you will, but the category is making a big comeback in the United Kingdom, as consumers tighten their purse strings and taste buds go retro. New figures reveal an 18 percent and 5 percent increase in sales of fish paste and salmon paste, respectively, since 2008, and sales of sandwich spread brand Shippam’s have jumped an astounding 77 percent since 2008.
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