Christopher Seufert photo
By John Pappalardo
The gigantic seafood expo in Boston is an annual event, and the 43rd version in mid-March was another sprawling, multinational verification that the seafood industry remains a major global force.
From our small though famous corner, it’s hard to appreciate the vast, muscular economy around fish. But when you step onto the floor of the huge convention center in Boston’s Seaport District, the scale transforms, and I’m not talking about kilos and pounds. In and around more than 3,000 booths dozens of foreign languages are spoken by representatives from many of the world’s nations. Millions and millions of dollars and Euros change hands, millions and millions of pounds of finfish and shellfish are committed.
One interesting note:
Usually there is a solid presence of federal officials from the United States, regulators and policy makers rubbing elbows with industry leaders, sidebar conversations about management and habitat playing out over salmon samples. But this year there were no US government people in sight, no booths or conference attendees. The changing current and attitude in Washington clearly was the reason.
That didn’t stop the world from coming, however. One long stretch of booth boulevard was dedicated entirely to Canadian businesses, from Prince Edward Island mussels to wild and farmed salmon operations to processors and groundfish fleets. One Canadian cruised the floor in a bright red hat with big letters, making a distinction between product and nation. It read, “Canada is not for sale.”
Also present in large numbers were businesses from the other “C” county that profiles in tariff conversations. Chinese entrepreneurs were spread across the floor, representing anything and everything related to seafood, from fresh and frozen product to industrial machinery that sometimes looked like it belonged on a spacecraft.
From a Cape Cod perspective, one disconcerting fact is there is a strong emphasis on two products; shrimp, and salmon. That both are farm-raised in many places versus harvested wild in part accounts for the volume and emphasis, the ability to take big orders and deliver on a set schedule. Those farming operations in many ways are anathema to the ethics and practices that define our local fleet, in terms of environmental impact, workforce treatment, and the use of artificial feed and antibiotics. But this is where the industry has moved.
So too is a growing emphasis on finished products ready to serve, what they call “value-added,” not just fillets for sale. The goal here is to create a more sophisticated offering, justifying a higher price point, also offering a stable, processed product using improving technology — frozen, canned, Cryovac. The days when much of the deal-making was for tens of thousands of pounds of fresh or frozen fillets seem like long ago.
One animal that runs counter to that is tuna, especially bluefin, that seems to continue to attract a lot of attention in its natural state, though even this magnificent, global fish is being farmed in some areas.
Meanwhile, one important aspect is everything that happens on the fringes. While US officials were missing, Massachusetts leadership was not. For example, Dan McKiernan, director of the MA Division of Marine Fisheries, spent a chunk of Monday in meetings with people like GMRI, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, talking about ways to help make sure the market for Jonah crab (increasingly important around here) did not get undermined by ill-conceived “red-listing” because traps use vertical line. McKiernan believes real science will prove that whales are not endangered by these traps. GMRI, with credibility and strong science, would be an excellent place to research and verify one way or another.
Cape Cod had a presence, as did Massachusetts as a whole (the photo feature in this issue gives a sense of that). Even for us locals an expo like this can be a big financial commitment, though for people coming from overseas or across the continent the stakes get much higher; air fare, booth space, shipping product, hotel rooms, eating out every night. Spending $50,000 for a three-day presence is by no means out of the question, maybe a lot more.
Yet it must be worth it, because year after year, the hall is packed.
John Pappalardo is CEO of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance