Some of the new products posted on FishChoice.com recently include:   

     

• Trap-caught blue king crab from Alaska
• Diver-caught green sea urchin from Nova Scotia
• Trap-caught sablefish from California
• Farm-raised Pacific white shrimp from Michigan    

 

Please support FishChoice and mention us to the suppliers when you contact them regarding their product listings on the website.

Yellowfin Tuna  

Although, the massive earthquake and tsunami temporarily slowed sales of fresh and frozen tuna in Japan and diverted more yellowfin to the U.S., the market quickly returned to normal by late spring. Through the end of April, U.S. imports of fresh H&G yellowfin were running about 10% ahead of last year at about 5,300 metric tons.  Vietnam remained the largest supplier to the U.S. market with a 27% market share followed by the Philippines and Trinidad and Tobago, each of which had a 12% market share. Continued...   

• Conservation Notes 
• Sustainability Assessments   
• Buying Tips  

 

Bluefish      

Summer is a great time to feature bluefish, the rapacious predator that moves inshore at this time of year to feast on shoals of menhaden.  This year's commercial bluefish quota is about 4,500 metric tons, most of which will be landed by gillnetters fishing waters from North Carolina to New York. (A popular recreational fish, sports anglers have a bluefish quota this year of about 8,500 metric tons.) Continued... 

• Conservation Notes 
• Sustainability Assessments    
• Buying Tips 

 

Bob Fram is passionate about the sustainability of Hawaii's fishing industry. The owner of Garden & Valley Isle Seafood, one of the Aloha State's largest seafood distributors, Fram has seen the fishery change dramatically over the past 10 years. The adaptation of C-shaped hooks by all of the state's tuna longline fleet, for example, has dramatically reduced interactions with sea turtles, whose soft mouths can't easily get snagged on the new hooks. (According to the World Wildlife Fund, studies have shown that use of C-shaped hooks reduces interactions with leatherback turtles, the most common and widely distributed sea turtle species, by as much as 67 percent). 

"Our tuna fishery has become incredibly sustainable," contends Fram.  While C-shaped hooks are now mandatory, so is observer coverage and a cap has been placed on the number of boats. The Hawaiian tuna fleet, which target deepwater bigeye, also must adhere to a strict quota, unlike almost all the other tuna fisheries in the world. (Hawaii's bigeye quota has been about 3,700 metric tons for the past three years, less than 3 percent of the bigeye catch in the Pacific.) 

Like most other Hawaii distributors, Garden & Valley Isle buys most of its fish on the Honolulu Fish Auction , which has been in operation since 1952 and moved a few years ago to a new state-of-the-art facility on the Honolulu waterfront. In addition to tuna, which is by far the state's most valuable fishery, bycatch of the tuna fleet like opah and monchong are sold at the auction along with deep water snappers like the various Hawaiian snappers like opakapaka and onaga. Continued...