Future of Seafood Industry Includes
Both Wild and Farmed Species

Continued from Homepage

U.S. seafood consumption is just 15 pounds per person per year, he said.

The discussions coincide with other issues the industry faces, including climate change and trade tariffs, he noted.

The aquaculture industry is already expanding, he noted. In southern Florida, for example, a recirculating aquaculture operation this spring expects to produce 10,000 tons of salmon and has raised enough money to grow 200,000 tons of salmon, he said.

“Collectively we’ve spent a lot of the past 10 to 15 years doing stock assessments,” he said. “We have the best-managed fisheries in the world,” including depleted stocks that are in rebuilding programs.

“And yet the amount of seafood the U.S. produces hasn’t changed much, whether it’s wild or farmed,” he continued.

Rubino said his charge was to look into how to increase both production and consumption in the U.S.

On the wild fisheries side, he said, it’s a question of increasing yield and value.

“There’s room for more production, but it’s not going to be huge amounts,” he said.

With regard to supply increases, the U.S. aquaculture industry has tremendous potential, he said.

But demand in the U.S. for seafood seems to have stalled, he noted. It’s unclear why: perhaps price, the possibility that people aren’t comfortable cooking seafood, sustainability questions, or perhaps even generational shifts in consumption.

“These are the questions I went around asking,” he said.

Making full use of the wild-caught fisheries is a multi-faceted issue, he said. On the East Coast, he said, only a certain percentage of certain species, such as haddock and scup, is caught. On the West Coast, groundfish stocks are rebuilt but the industry lost its markets. In Alaska, the pollock fleet of catcher/processors throws the trimmings overboard rather than using them.

“So there’s room within the wild fisheries to make better use of what we’ve got out there,” he said.

Unfolding issues pertaining to supply include vertical integration and consolidation of operations, as opposed to a historic industry structure of individual boat owner/operators.

With regard to aquaculture, he said, the federal agency has the beginnings of a blueprint for topics such as improved regulatory efficiency, permitting, animal health management, and animal movement. The agency also has research and development activities underway to support aquaculture.

Overall, he said, the development of the aquaculture industry is not about wild versus farms.

It’s about a range of technologies to produce seafood, rather than distinctions between farming and wild capture, he said.

Most aquaculture operations in the U.S. are run by fishing families, he noted. And most processing and distribution companies work with both aquaculture and wild catch.

But until things change, the nation will continue to import large amounts of seafood grown by farms outside of the U.S.; and will continue to export seafood for processing and then import the processed product, he said.

It’s imperative to examine key species, trade and price questions, market movements, and the role of management in order to effect change, he said.

Increased production won’t be effective unless the market grows, he said. Today’s cachet for local food could be key to growing the market, he said.

“Local sells,” he said.

Public relations around the sustainability of U.S. seafood could also stand some improvement, he said.

“We haven’t done a good job at telling the story of sustainability of U.S. seafood,” he said, adding, “The industry has to do the bulk of this work.”

That task is complicated, though, by the diversity of the nation’s seafood industry.

“We’ve got all these different sectors, species, and regions,” he said. “We don’t have ‘Pork, the other white meat.’”

Also on the industry’s mind, he said, is how to educate the next generation of the seafood workforce and entrepreneurs, including mentorships, internship, and community college and high school programs.

“This is very much on the minds of seafood companies around the country,” he said. “There’s a generational change coming, particularly in wild-capture fisheries. What can we as an agency do to work with you on that?”

He added, “Many in the seafood industry would like to find a way to strategically work together to help solve some of these challenges, to take advantage of the opportunities and grow the market.”