Top Story: High Prices for Salmon will continue for 2-3 years says Rabo Bank 

News Summary:  A new salmon report released by Rabo Bank says that the surge of production in the first half of 2014 that drove down prices was temporary, and that the ‘high cycle’ of low production growth and high prices and profitability for salmon farmers will continue for at least another two years. Given legal and biological challenges in Norway and Chile, there is no obvious engine to resume the average 7% annual growth. Instead, growth will be in the 3-5% range, with strong demand, meaning prices will remain high. 

There has been a surge of Coast Guard activity around Illegal fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, mostly by small Mexican boats. A meeting in Galveston earlier this month looked at solutions. One problem is that the House of Representatives has not funded the Port state treaty, ratified by the Senate, which would help knock out the ability of IUU vessels to sell their fish. 

Nome and St. Lawrence Island have seen an influx of Hanasaki (Spiny) crabs showing up as bycatch in King crab pots. It appears this king crab, found in Japan and Russia, is migrating eastward to Alaska. This year the Board of Fish agreed to classify these crabs as king crabs, meaning they fall under Alaskan management. Currently the same size rules prevail while researchers scramble to get more information. 

We have a series of letters and opinion pieces today. First, a crab importer rightly takes us to task for comments about quality of imported crabmeat in our story yesterday, suggesting we were too quick to take a competitors viewpoint without checking. 

Secondly, Peter Baker, with Pew, is blasting a proposal to open up some currently closed areas to more groundfishing in New England, arguing that the region with the worst fisheries management record in the country should not remove habitat protections in response to short term pressure. 

Finally, the Juneau Empire has come out strongly for a boycott of Russian seafood, as a justified retaliation for the damage done to Alaska producers by the Russian import ban. We also have a video on this subject - taking the opposite side, that such a ban will not work and will hurt the US seafood industry, including in Alaska. 

For shrimp importers, the federal register notice of new shrimp duties for Thailand and India was published today, so these rates are now in place.

John Sackton, Editor And Publisher , Lexington, Massachusetts 

Seafood.com News 1-781-861-1441 

Email comments to jsackton@seafood.com

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