Mid-summer is a time for rest and relaxation — a time to reflect on the first half of the year and gear up for the second half. It’s also the time of year that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration publishes the report on which U.S. per-capita seafood consumption figures are based.
Now autumn is less than a month away, and the annual report, titled “Fisheries of the United States,” is about a month overdue. In the previous three years, the report was released in mid- to late July.
So what’s the holdup? Personnel turnover at NOAA’s Fisheries Statistics Division, which assembles the report, and the Gulf of Mexico oil catastrophe have slowed the process of collecting and processing domestic landings statistics and import and export data this year, a NOAA spokesperson told SeafoodSource on Wednesday. Elizabeth Pritchard, the report’s editor since 2002, has retired, and the agency has been forced to shift resources toward cleaning up the Gulf and testing fish for evidence of oil and hydrocarbons, she said.
It’s certainly understandable that ensuring the safety of Gulf seafood — and restoring consumers’ confidence in it — trumps the release of the 100-page report. And, as useful as the report is, it’s not like seafood professionals are sitting on their hands waiting for the report to appear on NOAA’s website.
This isn’t the first time the report has been delayed. The 2005 report, for example, wasn’t released until February 2007, as the devastation hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused in the Gulf threw a wrench in the statistics-gathering process.
For seafood buyers, the report’s most valuable piece of information is U.S. per-capita seafood consumption and the National Fisheries Institute’s subsequent list of America’s top 10 seafood species.
But it’s safe to assume that the figure won’t sway far from the 16 pounds of seafood consumed in 2008. The figure is contingent upon supplies of the top four species — shrimp, canned tuna, salmon and pollock (shrimp alone represents roughly one-quarter of the total). Since shrimp and salmon imports and Alaska’s pollock quota were off last year, don’t be alarmed if consumption is down in 2009.
Soon we’ll know for sure. According to the NOAA spokesperson, a draft of Fisheries of the United States is currently making the rounds and awaiting final approval. The report is due to be released in September. So hold tight.
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