Trouble for newly merged company comprised of two of Alaska’s oldest and largest seafood producers, Ocean Beauty Seafoods and Icicle Seafoods.

KDLG reports that OBI Seafoods confirmed on Tuesday that 12 positive cases of COVID-19 in Dillingham, Alaska, are workers at its Wood River canned salmon products processing plant. The facility was formerly operated solely by Cooke-owned Icicle Seafoods.

A merger in late May put ten Ocean Beauty Seafoods and Icicle Seafoods processing plants throughout Alaska under OBI Seafoods’ ownership. 

Source: SalmonBusiness | Read the full article here

A recent social media campaign by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) yielded an impressive 55 million impressions on the leading Chinese social media platform Weibo.

The campaign was part of a social media promotion this winter by ASMI, where 50 Weibo influencers posted about Alaska seafood and fans of the posts were entered to a lucky draw for Alaskan seafood prizes.

ASMI’s long-time marketing contractor in Shanghai, SMH International, manages Alaska seafood WeChat and Weibo accounts, while also selecting social media influencers, also known as key opinion leaders (KOLs). 

Author: Mark Godfrey / SeafoodSource | Read the full article here

The world’s first fully electric net pen salmon farm was today officially opened in Norway by the country’s prime minister, Erna Solberg.

The pilot site at Loddetå in the Sveio municipality south of Bergen is a collaboration between salmon farmer Bremnes Seashore, power, robotics, and automation giant ABB, and environmental non-governmental organisation Bellona.

Several fish farmers in Norway have already provided shore power for feed barges, but Bremnes is first to provide shore power all the way to the cage edge so that work operations on the cages can also be electrically driven.

Source: fishfarmingexpert | Read the full article here

GRIEG Seafood has appointed Mowi Norwegian sales director Erik Holvik to drive up the development and execution of the company’s downstream efforts and global commercial strategy.

He joins the company, which has a major salmon farming operation on Shetland where it produces mainly for the UK market, as Chief Commercial Officer, taking up his new post on October 1st.

Holvik has a long track record in the seafood industry, and has until now held the position as Sales Director of Mowi Markets Norway.

Author: Vince McDonagh / Fish Farmer | Read the full article here

The World Health Organisation, UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and food safety agencies are seeking to reassure consumers that seafood is safe and is in no way related to the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Following an outbreak last week linked to Beijing’s largest food market, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention has ruled that salmon is not the source of infection.

In looking for the source of the new infection, imported goods have been mentioned in the media prompting experts at the Chinese National Health Commission to state of imported seafood that ‘there is no evidence so far showing salmon are the origin or intermediate hosts of the coronavirus’.

Source: Industrias Pesqueras | Read the full article here

According to the May sales statistics (preliminary report) released by the Japan Chain Stores Association (56 member companies) on the 23rd, the sales amount of food products (composition ratio 70.5%) increased by 9.1% year-on-year (based on existing stores). was. Seafood products (composition ratio 6.4%) increased 10% to 9.8% from the same month of the previous year. Agricultural products (up 17.5%), livestock products (up 15.9%), and other food products (up 8.8%) remained strong. Side dishes (down 5.1%) were below the same month last year.

The Government of China has announced an unprecedented plan on its part to close for a few months its squid fishing in the Southwest Atlantic and the East Pacific with the aim of improving the recovery rate of this species of high value for the Chinese fleet. The news is spread by China Dialogue, an organization dedicated to analyzing and providing solutions to China's impact on the world's oceans. The areas to be closed to extraction by the Chinese fleet cover what are believed to be the main spawning areas for squid: in waters west of the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador, from July to September, and for squid Argentine, against Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, from September to November.

Source: Industrias Pesqueras | Read the full article here

Robert Labeyrie has died at 96 years old.

Sud Ouest reports that Labeyrie founder Robert Labeyrie who popularised smoked salmon and foie gras passed away on Monday.

He set up the business after WW2 when he was 23 in the Landes region, southwestern France with an aim to bring his regions’ specialities to “every table in France”.

He was notably one of the first entrepreneurs in France to offer products in his name on the shelves of the mass distribution.

He was inspired and impressed by how his Nordic neighbours smoked fish, he could not find anyone to do so in France.

Author: Owen Evans / SalmonBusiness | Read the full article here

In the first installment of a new monthly column for The Fish Site, Professor Greg Lutz looks at how Louisiana’s crawfish farmers are faring in an extraordinary year for the sector.

This time of year, farmed crawfish season is winding down and mature animals that weren’t harvested before season’s end are already down in their burrows – hovering above tiny pools of water in sealed chambers and dreaming of eventual re-emergence in the fall, when producers re-flood their ponds to kick off the next season. For the crawfish, it’s a pretty straightforward, uncomplicated plan. One that Mother Nature has perfected over the past 200 million years.

Author: Prof C Greg Lutz / The Fish Site | Read the full article here

According to the MMO, more than 1900 UK under-10-metre fishing vessel owners have registered on the system, representing 77% of the fleet. Over 27,000 individual catch records have been recorded and submitted so far.

The catch recording application was introduced by the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) at the end of 2019, intended to enable better management of fisheries and provide evidence of sustainable fisheries practice across the under-10-metre fishing fleet.

‘The number of catches being recorded on the catch app by fishers across the under-10-metre English fleet continues to rise, with the average number of catches recorded up to over 930 every week. 

Author: Quentin Bates / FiskerForum | Read the full article here