Industry News

The Chesapeake Bay blue crab is down 30 percent this year according to an annual survey. The 2021 Blue Crab Winter Dredge Survey, conducted by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Virginia Institute of Marine Science, estimates that there are 282 million blue crabs in the bay, down from 405 million in 2020.

Alaska’s seafood industry has a lot of moving parts. There are the fishermen, the processors and the market, plus all of the fish. By all accounts, the pandemic has hit the processors hard. A recent survey found that they spent about $70 million on COVID-19 mitigation measures and other pandemic-related costs in 2020. This year, that total is expected to be even more: Over $100 million.

When it comes to the pandemic, restaurants are among the businesses taking the biggest financial hit.

Federal officials announced Tuesday that they will make 22,000 more temporary worker visas available to meet the needs of seasonal employers, including those in Maryland's seafood industry.

The organizers of the giant Seafood Expo North America in Boston have cancelled the international seafood trade show for the second consecutive year due to COVID-19 pandemic concerns. "Diversified Communications has reluctantly determined it would be impossible to hold an event in Boston this July,” the Portland, Maine-based company said in announcing the cancellation.

The nonprofit financial think tank Planet Tracker has released a study asserting that Japanese companies highly exposed to seafood are beginning to suffer constraints from the country’s overfished resources and that their valuations over the last decade have declined as a result.

A Chesapeake blue crab was recently spotted on the shores of Ireland. Now Irish officials are trying to figure out how it got there.

With the Maryland blue crab harvest underway, workers, including those from other countries, are needed to support the state’s seafood industry and seasonal employers. Gov. Larry Hogan is urging federal officials to make more H-2B Nonimmigrant Temporary Worker Program visas available.

A Tyrrell County seafood processor, was prosecuted and sentenced to federal prison after selling millions of dollars in foreign crab meat that was labeled as local blue crab to major retailers.

Capacity for New York City restaurants will expand from 35 percent to 50 percent on Friday, the highest level it's been since the start of the pandemic. It comes several weeks after New York City eateries were allowed to welcome 25 percent, then 35 percent, of customers back inside in February for the first time since December, when an impending second wave of the virus prompted new lockdown measures.