DWINDLING MARKET: A crash in seafood demand from restaurants has forced the Barnegat Light fleet to cut back time at sea. (Photo by Ryan Morrill)
The pulse of Viking Village’s commercial fishing industry this year will greatly depend on how long the coronavirus extends into the coming spring and summer season, local leaders say. But boats are already tied up at the docks.
Viking Village Inc. Commercial Seafood Producers in Barnegat Light sells a large chunk of its catch right now to wholesalers, who last week were still buying product and freezing it, but with restaurants closed down to all but takeout and delivery, the chain is tightened.
“There’s no place to sell them in the restaurants,” said scallop fleet owner Kirk Larson, whose family co-owns Viking Village with the Puskas family. Larson was speaking about metropolitan markets beyond New Jersey as well. Prices paid had also dropped. “We’re selling a few in New York markets, but not as many as we’re catching.
“If it doesn’t get sold at a seafood market, it doesn’t go anywhere, because restaurants are closed. They can sell takeout, but that’s not like when restaurants are full-bore. In summer, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Larson said last week. “There are plenty of stocks to catch; it’s whether we will have a place to sell them.”
Saving Seafood, a national coalition of seafood harvesters that includes New Jersey members, pointed out the restaurant closure impact on the fishing industry nationwide.
“More than two thirds (68 percent) of the $102.2 billion that consumers spent on fishery products in 2017 is spent at food service establishments, with less than one third sold in retail outlets for home consumption,” Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities said. The figures come from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report.
Said Ernie Panacek, Viking Village general manager, “The fishing industry is taking a hit on prices, and demand is way down, because of the loss of most of the restaurants. We sell to wholesalers, and the wholesalers sell to restaurants industry-wide.”
Wholesale customers who were buying last week were more the ones who freeze the product. Some retail grocery stores were buying seafood, but not all were. Asked about ShopRite, for instance, Panacek told The SandPaper, “We haven’t been able to sell ShopRite anything in the past few weeks; he didn’t ask for anything. We’ve had beautiful golden tile and scallops.”
Rick Mears, a third-generation boat owner and a member of a co-owning family of the Lighthouse Marina in Barnegat Light, sells catch to Viking Village. He said that having boats tied up due to tightening on the fishing industry can leave local work “at a standstill.” Normally this time of year, boats would be returning with 15,000-pound hauls, one boat every two weeks. “Right now, the boats are tied up, And that’s going on two weeks,” he said on March 27.
“Right now we would be at the peak of our tilefish season. With the fresh fish market, Easter would normally be one of the two best weeks of the year, but we’re not going to be fishing by then,” Mears predicted. “We would have to be leaving now for that.”
The first two weeks of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s mandated restaurant closure had coincided with an off-time for schedules of when other types of fish are allowed to be caught, under regulations, Panacek said.
He added, “This is the worst time of the year for us as far as production is concerned. We’ve had so much weather and wind; that has kept the boats in, also.”
“It’s long-term, and it’s going to take a long time to recover from such a hit on the economy,” Panacek concluded. “But we look forward to a good summer season here on Long Beach Island. We’re hoping that we’ll get a lot of people down here by then.”
Meanwhile, customers wanting to support the local industry and have a fresh seafood meal can check the Facebook page of Viking Fresh Off the Hook, where takeout meals of fresh seafood from the dock next door have been sold during limited hours.
Prospects for federal economic aid to the industry as a whole have been changing by the week. The U.S. fishing industry was granted $300 million in assistance in the March 27 COVID-19 stimulus package. But that would be limited help, a Cape May industry leader said in published reports.
“Three hundred million (dollars) is a great start, but it’s hard to imagine it will go very far,” said Jeffrey Reichle, president of Lund’s Fisheries of Cape May.
The economic aid package to the fisheries was contained in the $2.2 trillion coronavirus economic stimulus bill signed March 27 by President Donald Trump after a battle through Congress.
— Maria Scandale
