File:Coast watch (1979) (20036475794).jpg

Title: Coast watch
Identifier: coastwatch00uncs_1 (find matches)
Year: 1979 (1970s)
Authors: UNC Sea Grant College Program
Subjects: Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology
Publisher: (Raleigh, N. C. : UNC Sea Grant College Program)
Contributing Library: State Library of North Carolina
Digitizing Sponsor: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

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Fisheries hamstrung By 'fresh' market Fresh-frozen seafood may someday offer inland consumers good seafood more consistently. It may also help relieve some of the commercial fishing industry's toughest problems. Gluts, scarcities and market fluctua- tions have long plagued the industry, especially here in North Carolina, where most of the seafoods are sold whole and unprocessed. Sam Thomas, a Sea Grant seafood specialist at the NCSU Seafood Laboratory in Morehead City, says that, for now, seafood prices in the state are governed by the fresh market. Because unfrozen seafood is so difficult to handle, store and transport, distribution is very limited. Often, grocers will save space for only the most familiar species. To get assured supplies at the right times, dealers pay top prices. But when a glut comes, per- fectly good fish are sometimes dumped overboard for want of a buyer. Other times, scarcities among the popular species leave fishermen with nothing to fish for. "If you're a fisherman, you may come to the dock one day and get fifty cents a pound for trout," Thomas says. "The next day, you may get twenty. If we had a good market for frozen seafood, the processor could look at a more stable price at his end, and from that, he could probably offer a more stable price to a fisherman." Thomas spends much of his time ad- vising seafood processors on how to modernize their plants and improve ef- ficiency and sanitation. He and the Sea Grant marine advisory agents he works with see many very edible species of fish going begging, while fishermen struggle to stay afloat. They say a good market for fresh- frozen seafoods might enable the in- dustry to put more variety into the grocer's meat case. But Thomas admits the industry has a lot of work to do first. There are few modern commercial freezers in the state, and channels for marketing frozen seafoods don't exist here yet. "For the most part, we could offer a better seafood shipment frozen than we can fresh," Thomas says. "It's just going to take a lot of effort to get peo- ple to change their way of doing things." Racing to beat the clock Time is fresh seafood's enemy, from the minute the catch is made. At the fish house (below), seafood is quickly weighed and packed in ice. Many fish arrive whole at markets, where they're often sold wrapped in newspapers (right).
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