A future historian combing through the social-media records would have to conclude that Americans in the pandemic period subsisted on a diet of banana bread, whipped coffee and obsessively decorated sheets of focaccia. The only evidence that people ate seafood might be a few stray images of the more photogenic Portuguese sardine cans, all dating to the early days of the crisis, when you could still find them on store shelves.
But people are cooking seafood as never before, whether they’re documenting it or not. At supermarkets and other stores, seafood purchases have set records. Year-over-year sales of both canned and frozen seafood were around 37 percent higher for the four weeks that ended April 19, according to data from IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm.
Some large supermarket chains closed their seafood counters for a while so their regular workers could help stock shelves that were emptying nearly as quickly as new cans and boxes could be unpacked. Still, fresh seafood sales were up by about 13 percent in the same four weeks.
Workers in the United States fishery, a $5.6 billion industry in 2018, have not seen the mass outbreaks of Covid-19 that have swept through some meatpacking plants. But the routines of seafood trade have been knocked sideways by the pandemic.
Restaurants and other food-service establishments normally account for about two-thirds of the sales of fresh seafood in the country. When nearly all restaurants closed except for takeout or delivery, the entire seafood distribution network seized up. Along the Atlantic coast, some boats were dumping fish they couldn’t sell. The weather didn’t help the fishing crews make up for lost income.
Robert DeMasco, who reinvented his Brooklyn restaurant supply company, Pierless Fish, to make home deliveries to housebound civilians last month said that after a somewhat rocky transition, business had been brisk. His new customers, he said, are even buying things that many restaurants won’t, like fish collars.
I probably sold 30 pounds a day of collars, he said. I bought shad roe. I ran out in a day, and I had 60 pounds. I was like, really? You guys know what this is?
In addition to the dried anatomical scraps it markets as pet treats, Pierless has also been offering Spanish mackerel, skate, silver dory and blue catfish. All have sold out.
Cooks stuck in lockdown have also been eager for shelf-stable products like smoked salmon, finnan haddie, salt cod and even one product that none of Mr. DeMasco’s restaurant clients will touch: frozen fish.
Mr. Rozzo noted that the wholesale side of his business is down by 95 percent after a record year in 2019. Getting back to that level, he estimated, will take two or three years at least.
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