Fish News…  

February 6, 2012

This week in Fish…  

January 10, 2012

BIG SHRIMPIN'

Congressional Seafood has for years sold an excellent brand of domestic shrimp called Dominick's. These are shell-on shrimp caught in the Gulf of Mexico off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana and Alabama. We carry all sizes from U/10's through 41/50's. As it turns out, our very own Dominick Ficarino is the star of the new hit series on the History Channel called Big Shrimpin'. It chronicles the life and difficulties of trying to make it as a "shrimper" in the Gulf of Mexico. It is fascinating and provides a new perspective of just how those shrimp got in that 5 lb box when they arrive at your back door. If you would like to feature "Dominick's" brand shrimp in a promotion, contact your sales representative.

This week in Fish…  

September 26, 2011

This week in Fish…  

August 1, 2011

This week in Fish…  

June 27, 2010 

This week in Fish…  

May 2, 2011 

The ospreys are back on the Chesapeake. The geese have gone north for the summer and the first soft crabs from Florida will show this week. Spring is finally here, except that it snowed today. The fishermen in Virginia and Maryland are busy taking the nets off their boats and getting their pots ready for the first run of crabs. Millions of huge wild rockfish are way up every tributary of the Bay participating in their annual spawn. The height of the spawn will occur over the next two weeks.

BOSTON SEAFOOD SHOW

I made my annual pilgrimage to the Boston Seafood Show last weekend as I have for the last 25 years or so. I was in search of fish or items to replace or offer as an alternative to the exceedingly high priced traditional white fish (snapper grouper etc) we handle on a daily basis. I felt we, in the fish business, are pricing ourselves off the menus by virtue of these outrageous commodity prices. Or is this the "new normal"? I didn't find any new fish. I mean God didn't make any new fish last week. I found myself staring at this prehistoric Amazon fish called a "Paiche" wondering is this what my business is coming to? This fish had lungs and a rib cage similar to a bird and gulped air when it swam. Yikes!! 
I met some scientists who have perfected the technology of growing salmon in a closed system on land. This is the future of our industry. The biggest problem with open cage aquaculture (of salmon and other species) is its negative effect on the environment. Millions of fish grown in a Bay, eating and excreting cause "eutrophication" or excess nutrient enrichment. The excess nutrients cause algal blooms which die off creating dead zones and a host of other environmental problems. In closed system aquaculture there are no antibiotics. There are no outbreaks of infectious salmon anemia. No sea lice infestations. No escapees co-mingling with wild populations of fish.  In short, it is the perfect, farmed protein. With closed system aquaculture the waste is caught with bio-filters. On one project, the scientist burns the fish waste producing a "fuel grade methane" that actually helps power the project. With closed system aquaculture, you can grow the fish near the market area. No need to spend $2 per pound on airfreight just to get the fish to market.
We have been asked to test market the "Blue Circle Salmon" over the next month. These fish are grown totally on land with zero negative environmental effects. We value everyone's opinion on this. I have seen and tasted these fish. They are incredibly fresh and taste terrific. Please try some this week.
The harvest of our wild species have been curtailed so much, the "markets" are always starved for fish. That is why snapper, grouper halibut prices seem to be always around $12-15!! The breakthroughs in the seafood industry will come from this new technology. We can grow many different species (salmon, bronzino, dorade, cobia and more) here in the US and close to their markets! This can all be done without degrading our oceans or land. Please do your part and help shape the aquaculture industry for years to come in the US.

Rockfish

Wild rockfish out of Virginia waters has dropped to a trickle. The fish are way up the rivers spawning right now and most of those rivers closed to fishing last week. Prices will shoot up dramatically over the next two weeks. Delaware fishermen will tag a few fish once we promise them enough money. By the last week of April through the end of May it will be very tough to find a wild rockfish anywhere in the US. Maryland pound net season starts June 1 and there will be plenty of rockfish from then on.

Crabmeat

It is as bad as I have ever seen it in many years on the crabmeat scene. Fresh Venezuelan production has basically collapsed. That fishery is in real trouble. They have basically fished that crab into "economic extinction". There is nothing coming out of Mexico at this time. There were a few crabs in the Gulf but when the females "sponged up", the male crabs disappeared. A late March cold front on the east coast stopped the crabs in their tracks. We will have crabs in the US this year, tons of them. The Chesapeake Bay is loaded. It has more crabs in it than Kelloggs has corn flakes. We just need the water to hit 60 degrees. The Gulf crab population is very healthy also. We will rely heavily on crabmeat picked in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi this summer. In addition to Gulf meat, we have 4 picking houses in Maryland, 3 in Virginia and about 8 picking houses in NC that sell fresh crabmeat to us daily.
When you have lots of hard crabs, that means you also have lots of soft crabs (can't have one without the other). Soft crabs are going to be cheap this summer too. Why? Because many suppliers are hung with big inventories from last year. The frozen market on soft crabs is the traditional "backstop" on prices during the first run. The soft crab buyers will not be anxious to step in and buy (to put up more frozen inventory) on the first run until prices are dirt cheap. Plan on soft crab promotions from around the 10th of May through the first week in June. We will have our first soft crabs of the year this week. They are not for the faint of heart. $5.25 each ! Pre-orders only.
The situation on pasteurized in southeast Asia continues to worsen. Supplies of raw material are short and the major players  (Phillips, Boss, Bluestar, Handy) are in a bidding war for the small amount of meat being exported to the US. We will crest the $20 mark on pasteurized jumbo soon with no relief in sight. This is exactly why we will concentrate heavily on domestically produced crabmeat this summer and fall. I believe we will spend the majority of the summer between $17 and $19 per pound on fresh jumbo lump. That will be a value compared to the Asian meat.

Halibut

The long awaited collapse of the Alaskan halibut market has not occurred. Boat prices have come down some, but not very much. One boat, early in the season, went out for four days, caught 100,000 lbs of halibut and got paid $6.50 a pound !!! So far, most of the demand has come from the retail sector. East coast halibut production has been steady and responsible for the downward pressure on the Alaskan price. Whole fish are in the mid $9 range and fillets this week will finally get just under $15. 

Golden Tile

We have some spectacular quality golden tile coming in this week. These are locally caught fish from Barnegut Light, NJ. The fish are beautifully colored (yellow & gold) and are caught in no less than 600 feet of water. These fish have very firm flesh and taste better than 99% of the fish on the market today. Do yourself a favor and try some.

Atlantic Salmon

The best news coming out of the Boston Seafood show last weekend came from the Chilean salmon producers. Most of their major farms will be on line by July. More farms will start up in the fall. 2012 Chilean salmon production will be back up to old levels and 2013 Chilean production will exceed all previous levels. This is bad news if you grow salmon for a living in Canada but good news if you are a consumer in the US. Our record Atlantic salmon prices will soften this week and look for that trend to continue. Many of our customers are enjoying our beautiful Norwegian salmon shipments each week. Prices on fillets are about $1 higher than traditional Atlantic salmon.

Cobia

This is probably the best "new" fish at the show. They are grown in open ocean pens in Panama and Columbia. They grow at a whopping 1 lb per month!!! The flesh is firm white and flaky, very similar to a grouper. Prices are high now but production is ramping up and prices will have to become more realistic over the next twelve months. We have this great fish in stock all the time now.

Fluke - Summer Flounder


Virginia continues to produce large amounts of summer flounder of all sizes. Prices on fillets are very inexpensive. It is the only real value in fish this week. The Virginia quota should last into mid-April. There have been fairly consistent landings of black sea bass on the flounder boats.

Shad & Shad Roe

North Carolina and South Carolina are still producing beautiful white shad. These fish are late in their runs, roe sets are very large. Availability should be good through Easter but we probably won't make it through Mother's Day.

Snapper -- Grouper

The Atlantic is closed to snapper and grouper fishing until July 1. Mexico has resumed grouper fishing after a month long break. The weather is finally starting to calm down in the Gulf and availability should get better. Right now we have five species of snapper in the house. Genuine American Reds, Bee-liners, Yellowtails, Lane Snappers and Hog Snappers.



As always, we appreciate your business and HAVE A GREAT WEEK!

Ash Wednesday (March 9th) last week signaled the start of the "Lenten" season where the demand for seafood goes up exponentially. That increase in demand combined with some of the worst storm systems of the year makes for wild price fluctuations in many of our basic seafood items.

January starts a new year and that means new quotas and seasons. Some species have increased quotas (Gulf Genuine American Red Snapper, for example), while other have decreased (like Alaskan halibut). There will be closures to allow fish to spawn and there will be emergency closures to prevent any harvest of a species whatsoever.

ROCKFISH

ATLANTIC SALMON

The Atlantic salmon market is short of product and prices are rising. There is  an extreme shortage of 8/10 and 10/12's because the water temperatures (on the east coast of Canada) stayed warm later in the fall and the fish grew into larger sizes (12/14's). The west coast of Canada is into a new generation of fish which are mostly 4/6 & 6/8's.  That combined with an uptick in business has strained the supplies of fresh salmon on the market. Prices on whole fish are up 20 to 30 cents which translates to 75 cent increase on fillets. Unless something changes, salmon prices will most likely climb each week until New Years. As the Canadians raise their salmon prices, the Norwegians do the same.

December marks the beginning of decent weather in the Atlantic as well as a fair amount of fish on the market and pricing decreases in several categories:

WILD ROCKFISH

Jumbo wild rockfish are now moving down the East Coast and into Virginia waters. The majority of the migrating schools can still be found from Delaware Bay to the Northern end of New Jersey. Fish are being landed in Chincoteague, Cape Charles and Virginia Beach. The Potomac River is producing a few fish around Colonial Beach and the Maryland pound net and the commercial hook & line seasons both end tomorrow. The Maryland drift gill net season begins December 1st and will continue through February 28th, 2011. For the month of December, the total gill net quota in Maryland is only 86,000 lbs. Unless something changes, the quota will be caught in a matter of weeks. This will leave only Virginia rockfish available through the holidays. Taking all of this into account, rockfish is a great choice for your menu this month. It will be available for both the Christmas and New Years Holidays; and it is reasonably priced now and should remain relatively stable for the next two weeks.

As we head into October, I would like to highlight some of the unique items we carry at Congressional Seafood. First up are our genuine whole Norwegian salmon. They are grown above the Arctic Circle, outside the town of Bodo, in the Nordland region of Norway. We fly them into Dulles airport direct non-stop twice a week. The fish are big, 6 to 7 and 7 to 8 kilo. The Norwegians were the pioneers of farmed Atlantic salmon business. Their feed has a lot of shrimp base in it producing a different, richer meat color. Their grow out techniques and harvest techniques reduce stress on the fish and produce the absolute best 
Atlantic salmon in the world hands down. If you are looking for the best quality Atlantic salmon money can buy, then try our genuine Norwegian salmon. It is available whole or filleted. And we carry it smoked un-sliced! Price is only about $1.00/lb more on fillets than our regular Canadian hand cut salmon. One final note on our salmon program here at Congressional. We buy no pre-cut salmon fillets at all. We hand cut, hand pin bone, all the salmon fillets we sell. We do this to give our customers the highest quality and longest shelf life possible. We have done this since the day we opened 14 years ago.

Mid September starts with a definite change in the weather pattern. Nighttime temperatures are dropping into the mid 50's and that will trigger a host of changes in the Chesapeake Bay. The shallow water in the Chesapeake has dropped 7 degrees last week (80-73). You will find many rockfish in only 2 to 3 feet of water all over the Bay as they chase their favorite prey, the menhaden (Brevoortia tryannus). As the fall winds blow, the water column cools and turns over, dramatically increasing the dissolved oxygen content of the Bay. The areas of zero dissolved oxygen ("dead zones") in the Bay, so prevalent in August with the hot stagnant weather, will now dissipate. That is why the fishing in August is so poor. The hot water and low dissolved oxygen makes the fish lethargic and they don't need to feed. The increased dissolved oxygen allows the fish to become more active. They spend much of their time feeding now, getting ready for winter. The cooler weather also sends the hard crabs into shallow water for the next three weeks. They may shed one more time before migrating down the Bay to bury in the mud for the winter. Yesterday, while fishing in mouth of the Chester River, I watched a trot-liner crabbing along side of me. He had so many big crabs coming up the line, he could not dip them all. His dip net would fill up quickly because there were crabs on every bait (6 feet apart). When he would go to dump his dip net in the "cull box", the crabs on the line would just fall back into the water. He was catching two bushel per run (3000 feet)!!! They were about half male and half female crabs. The crabs are starting to head out of the tributaries, knowing they must bury in the deep water (60 to 100 feet) by the middle of November.

The second week of June starts with both the Maryland pound-net and commercial hook & line season open. Pound-nets are a stationary "passive" method of harvest. Imagine a backyard fence out in the water, leading to a pen with a trap door. They catch well when the fish are in less than 25 feet of water. Pound nets catch a tremendous variety of fish. The primary target of most pound nets is menhaden (brevoortia tryannus), a baitfish commonly used for crab bait. Other species harvested include, rock, fluke, croakers, white perch, catfish, carp, shad, bluefish, red drum and black drum. Most of the rock will be small to medium size (3-7 lbs), as the jumbo rock have migrated up the coast to spend the summer off of New England. Commercial hook & line rock are known for their exceptional quality. Fish are caught alive and put in a chill tank (ice slurry) immediately. The "hook & liners" are effective at catching them after the shallow water gets too hot, the fish move into deep water, and the pound nets stop producing. Both seasons are open until December 1. The quota for both gear types combined is around 1.2 million pounds of wild rockfish.