Almost exactly a year ago, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the North American seafood industry to confront an ultimatum: adapt or risk perishing. By and large, seafood suppliers on the continent chose the former, opting to transform their businesses to succeed in a drastically changed market, according to a panel of industry insiders, speaking at this week’s Seafood Expo North America Reconnect.
Ocean Wise Conservation Association Fisheries and Seafood Director Sophika Kostyniuk, who moderated the panel session “Prioritizing Responsible Seafood in Uncertain Times,” said the industry had to act reflexively as COVID-19 and its new social order riddled supply chains with “challenges, uncertainties, and unknowns.”
“Practically overnight, the entire industry was turned upside down. Everyone was scrambling to figure out how to adapt and literally how to survive in this new environment,” Kostyniuk said. “No one was prepared for the scale of disruption, and no one really knew what the path forward looked like.”
For Vaughan, Ontario, Canada-headquartered Seacore Seafood Inc., such disruption was acutely observed in the realm of logistics, according to the company’s product director, Joseph Chiaravalloti.
“Seacore is in a market where we’re 12 hours away from the closest ocean, so we’re heavily reliant on a near seamless logistic path, and that didn’t seem to prove possible during these times,” Chiaravalloti said. “Our customers are used to air-delivered fresh product coming out of the water and being in their hands within 36 to 48 hours. We’ve been able, over the years, to create a chain that allowed for that, but we saw much disruption during this time, especially with air shipments.”
Chiaravalloti recalled being confronted by limited flight availability to and from certain areas, as well as increased delays as the pandemic wore on. He said the rising costs associated with overseas container deliveries, and less access to the containers themselves, also proved nettlesome. Even locally, he said, new difficulties began cropping up.
“Local deliveries weren’t even exempt from this; They were just as impacted. It took more time and essentially more dollars to get product to our customers, even when we take our local deliveries into account,” Chiaravalloti said, adding that “tons of new regulations, drivers needing to follow brand new protocols, customers implementing these protocols and not even understanding them fully” served to complicate matters at home.
The emphasis on staying local, however, eventually became a boon for Seacore, Chiaravalloti said.
“I do feel that this chaos brought on a transition – stay as local as possible,” he said. “[The pandemic] gave everybody the opportunity to give your heads a good shake and see that maybe we should be changing the ideas of where we’re getting our product. With everything that happened with this global pandemic, locality is key for certain people.”
Chiaravalloti believes local sourcing will have sustainable staying power for Seacore moving forward.
“People need to find as much as they can locally because that’s is the product that we can keep our eyes on. We can know what’s happening, if you look at it in a sustainability scope – it’s a little closer to home, with a little more control to it. I think that will stick around as time goes on,” he said.
Seacore observed an uptick in demand for lake fish, including its lake-raised trout, and freshwater fish as more customers looked local during the pandemic, Chiaravalloti said.
“In those species, we saw a huge amount of people wanting something from as close to home as possible,” he said.
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based company Stavis Seafoods also reported increased demand for its local catch in the last 12 months.
“Our local fisheries, whether it be striped bass, whether it be black bass, or tuna, they all saw a dramatic increase in terms of desirability for the marketplace,” Stavis Seafoods President David Lancaster said.
Further down the East Coast, Atlanta, Georgia’s Inland Seafood found its local connections strengthening and expanding, too, Mary Smith, director of sustainability for the firm, said.
“Local connections were really key, and an important part of the process for us. Helping out local fishermen and farmers move product quickly, especially during those first uncertain weeks of the pandemic. As the summer wore on, and it stabilized a little bit, helping them find new opportunities in retail was important not just for us, but all of our suppliers,” Smith said. “It was those deep relationships with retailers across the country that allowed us to move that product successfully.”
Kostyniuk, Chiaravalloti, and Lancaster agreed that along with increased sales, consumers are asking more questions about the sustainable credentials of the seafood they’re buying.
“We have received an extraordinary amount of questions around sustainability and sustainability rankings. One of the lasting pieces from COVID is that nobody can argue that we are not inextricably linked from the environment around us, we are all interconnected with the health of the planet,” Kostyniuk said.
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