Top Story: John Garner leaving Trident to become COO of North Pacific Seafoods
News Summary: Masayuki Yano, President of North Pacific Seafoods, announced that John Garner, a founding partner of Norquest and a top executive at Trident, will become Chief Operating Officer in charge of all sales and production for the five North Pacific Seafoods plants in Alaska.
In other news, GenoMar, which is funded from Norway and is one of the largest tilapia seed producers in China has shut down. It is unclear if it is reorganizing or will restart production. The company has pioneered the use of genetically improved farmed tilapias (GIFT) which has been widely adopted in the Chinese industry. A permanent shut down could impact seedling production this fall.
Guyana is closing its shrimp fishery from Sept. 8 to Oct. 26th, as a conservation measure. Industry reports are that catch rates were poor prior to the closure. The fishery is about to be brought into the MSC certification system, and establishing a harvest control rule is part of the requirement.
The New England Council groundfish committee has selected two recommendations to forward to the full council at their October meeting. The first option will re-introduce many of the area closures for cod that had been suspended or exempted for IFQ holders. The second recommendation is to ban all recreational cod fishing in the area west of 70 degrees W. With recreational fishermen taking 34% of the quota, the committee felt the closures would not work unless applied to all fisheries.
The US dollar hit a six year high against the Japanese Yen this week, and this prompted us to take a brief look at how currency changes are impacting the seafood trade. A stronger US dollar against all major currencies, including the Euro, Yen and Canadian Dollar, is helping US seafood imports as evidenced by the surge in US shrimp imports coupled with the decline in Japanese shrimp imports. The currency situation is also giving a boost to Norwegian salmon exports to the US, but is a negative factor for sales of pollock and surimi to Japan and Europe.
Finally, the EPA says they have settled another complaint with Unisea which arose out of a 2010 violation of risk management plan for storage of ammonia on site. In this case, the fine at $142,175 was far less than a previous clean water issue where a Unisea employee pled guilty to a criminal violation for discharge into the harbor.
John Sackton, Editor And Publisher , Lexington, Massachusetts
Seafood.com News 1-781-861-1441
Email comments to jsackton@seafood.com
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