Scott MacAllister has mixed feelings about heading out to sea these days. This time of year, the 27-year-old dayboat fisherman primarily catches skate and monkfish from his home port of Chatham, Massachusetts. And while he certainly needs the income, MacAllister worries about exposing himself and his crew to coronavirus on his 40-foot boat, the Carol Marie.
It’s a pretty small space [for] three or four people. If one of us gets it, we’re all going to get it, he told Civil Eats. Still, MacAllister (pictured above) is grateful that the regional wholesaler who buys his catch, Red’s Best, still wants to buy his product.
Other fishermen in New England’s billion-dollar industry, which employs some 34,000 people, aren’t as lucky. Markets for lobster, oysters, and shellfish have collapsed along with restaurant closures and a sharp downturn in trade, leaving many fishermen struggling to make ends meet.
There are certain things there are no markets for, said Jared Auerbach, founder and CEO of Red’s Best, which buys solely from small, dayboat fishermen. While Red’s Best usually sells seafood fresh, the company is freezing fish in the hopes that international trade will eventually pick back upor that the product will find new, domestic uses.
The crisis that’s gripping New England’s fishing communities is playing out in coastal areas from Alaska to California and the Gulf of Mexico as the coronavirus pandemic disrupts domestic and international supply chains and seafood consumption plummets. At least 90 percent of the seafood eaten in the U.S. is importedand much of what we catch is sent overseas. The domestic market in the U.S. relies heavily on the hospitality industry; before the pandemic, two-thirds of seafood in the U.S. was eaten in restaurants and hotels.
Wholesalers, fishermen’s associations, and fishermen themselves are struggling to find new avenues and methods to sell U.S.-caught fishwhich tends to retail for considerably more than its imported counterpartand keep boats in the water, fearful that the pandemic might forever alter how people eat fish. They’re finding new retail markets, keeping a toe in what’s left of wholesale markets, and accepting short-term losses in the hopes they can ride out the pandemic. Assistance from the stimulus packagesome $300 million in relief is earmarked for fisheriesmay also help carry them through. And an alliance of companies with a stake in seafood have urged the Trump administration to direct up to $500 million in additional federal funds to purchase surplus seafood from struggling fishermen.