Top Story: Harvesters blame falling Red King crab prices on Russian IUU fishing 

News Summary:  With dockside red king crab prices down by about a dollar this year, harvesters are pressing their case that IUU Russian crab is still impacting US markets. Red king crab prices have been declining steadily since peaking in the fall of 2012. That year, a shortage of crab pushed up Japanese buying. Since then, US buyers have seen lackluster sales, and inventories have been high. Some legal Russian crab being sold now is from harvests in 2012. However Alaskan harvesters argue that no matter what the market dynamics, they would be better off with IUU crab suppressed. It is just not clear how much that is impacting domestic markets, as opposed to buyers in China, Korea and Japan, over which there are few controls. If Red king crab were treated like toothfish, would that make a difference in the market other than just adding costs for importers? The answer is not clear. 

In other news Chinese shrimp farmers had a much better year in 2014 than 2013, while Chinese imports of shrimp increased also. 

Northern Dynasty, the foreign company pushing the Pebble Mine, won a preliminary procedural injunction against the EPA’s expedited 404c review, as an Anchorage court said it wanted the complaint to go to trial before EPA took additional steps to finalize its rejection. EPA is confident it will prevail in the end. 

Bigeye tuna is becoming a poster child for the failure of tuna fishery management in the Western and Central Pacific. The ISSF and WWF warned the managers that unless they take further action, environmentalists will see all Western Tuna fisheries at risk of failure, and will abandon support for the management process in favor of market disruptions and other actions. Given that tuna is already slipping as a category, a generalized negative campaign could further tarnish the species for retailers, pushing them into higher priced, lower volume tuna products. 

The anti-corruption crackdown is proving to have legs in China. Now it appears to be impacting spending of overseas Chinese tourists. Businesses that cater to this group have seen a falloff, and China is actively pursuing officials who have relatives overseas where they can hide money or create offshore accounts. 

Finally, the delay in the Nova Scotia Lobster season at this point will not impact the availability of lobsters for processing, but if it goes beyond Friday, it could begin to cut into fishing time before the holidays, when the live market takes over.

We will be closed on Thursday and Friday, for the US Thanksgiving holiday. Have a great holiday weekend.

John Sackton, Editor And Publisher , Lexington, Massachusetts 

Seafood.com News 1-781-861-1441 

Email comments to jsackton@seafood.com

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