Christopher Seufert photo
By John Pappalardo
Costs keep climbing, less rapidly in recent months but never to subside back to where they were just a few years ago. We are in the new normal.
When it comes to the fishing fleet, these cost hikes are close to catastrophic. Fuel, equipment, maintenance, repairs, insurance, even basics like gear and ice have shot the cost of doing business to another level.
What has not kept pace is what fishermen are paid for their hard work, for the great food they bring to port.
People call this the “ex-vessel” price, direct payment to the boat for fish that just a few hours earlier were swimming in the ocean. This is the return to a captain and crew, the initial link in an economic chain, the first transaction before all the other stuff that must happen to get fish to market, or restaurant.
This payout almost always is expressed in a price per pound for what has been caught. The remarkable, startling truth is that the price per pound fishermen get from buyers, processors, wholesalers, retailers, for many species, too often is very similar to what it was five, 10, 15, even 20 years ago.
This is not always true, but the fact that it is the case often enough is amazing. No other industry I can think of would say this.
There are lots of reasons why. For one thing, a captain landing fresh, wild-caught fish does not have a great deal of leverage when it comes to holding out for better prices; fish that remain in the hold don’t get fresher, everyone knows that, so time is on the buyer’s side. An ex-vessel price that seems low or unfair today might well become even less tomorrow, and again the next day, until there is no price at all. Fishermen often feel they don’t have much of a choice but take whatever is on the table.
Bigger forces play a bigger role. Why are hundreds of boats in the Gulf of Mexico, domestic shrimpers, tied up at docks? The answer is that international competition in the form of shrimp farms from Chile to Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia have flooded the market with cheap, pen-raised product. We all know that these shrimp farms are environmental disasters, working conditions are bad, they use artificial feed and antibiotics, and the cardboard shrimp they produce have none of the taste and vitality of wild-caught. But domestic shrimpers need to charge at least three times the price of these imports to cover their work in the wild. So the market speaks the final words.
Closer to home, the market speaks in different ways. Wonderful local fish like scup, sea bass, hake, skate, pollock, dogfish are not in demand; markets would rather sell codfish fillets from Norway because that’s what people buy. So a lot of our fish heads overseas in froze bulk, at a low ex-vessel price. Volume rather than top quality becomes what matters. And buyers have so many costs that need to be added on for handling, packing, freezing, and shipping that even with low ex-vessel payouts, their margins shrink.
Fishermen know they might get paid less than $2 a pound for wonderful product, perhaps even half that, and that fish can wind up in a market or restaurant, here or far away, selling for five or 10 times as much. The sticker shock people feel walking into a fish market is real, but that doesn’t mean the fisherman is getting a big pay-out.
Tack on how rapidly the ecosystem is changing, far faster than public preferences and fisheries managers can respond, and the problem compounds. If skate, scup, and hake were as popular as cod, haddock, and flounder, the fishing economy would be much different. And if managers were allowing fishermen to be more flexible in how they target what is in the water, as opposed to what used to be in the water, we’d be better off too.
What’s to do about all this, beyond bemoaning? Stop eating products like imported cheap shrimp. Continue asking where the fish we see, in markets and restaurants, is coming from, with some proof if possible. Try out new species. Explore ways to get local fish from local outlets, or even direct from the boat, to cut down on carbon footprint and cost. Hard as it can be, accept that local, healthy, wild-caught fish might be more expensive.
And remember that of the price you pay, the fishermen’s ex-vessel is only a small part.
(John Pappalardo is CEO of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance)