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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 7
March 2008
Pollock, redfish: Can NE rebuild demand?
GLOUCESTER, MA – Bryant Moulton, skipper of the Portland, ME dragger Theresa & Allyson now fishing out of Gloucester, knows where there are plenty of redfish and pollock. So does Timmy Cook of Harpswell, ME, who spent time last summer as the captain of the Gloucester dragger Jamie & Ashley, which until recently fished out of Maine.
“The redfish are everywhere in the Gulf of Maine. You don’t even have to go to the humps now. The redfish are so thick in areas that I can practically guarantee catching only them,” Cook said last August.
Like many of their fellow groundfish fishermen, these two should be enthusiastic about these abundant, schooling Gulf of Maine food fish, which have no catch limits other than minimum sizes and can even be harvested with B-days. But between the low demand, subsequent low price, and the ever-increasing costs of going fishing, they’re not.
“You can’t afford to catch them with the $3-a-gallon fuel,” said Moulton.
Cook figured about 20,000 pounds of redfish frequently passed through his 6-1/2" mesh trawl during five-hour tows and only a fraction got caught.
“I could fill this boat with redfish in one day if the government let us use 5-1/2" twine in the codend,” he said.
But Cook and his peers know how to catch the redfish even with the big netting.
“Go to where the redfish are at the end of the tow,” he said. “By then, many of the codend meshes have been clogged by fish, especially dogfish. Tow there for awhile and then haul back.”
Pollock surge
Pollock are just as plentiful.
“The pollock numbers are like the good old days,” reported Geordie King, owner/skipper of the offshore gillnetter Ocean Pride III out of Eliot, ME.
King was referring to the pollock heydays of the late 1970s and the 1980s when inshore gillnetters often landed 10,000-20,000-pound trips a day in the fall, and offshore draggers frequently offloaded 100,000-pound trips.
In fact, the Gloucester dragger Miss Trish II recently netted 35,000 pounds of pollock during a morning tow about 30 miles off Cape Ann, further attesting to this species’ abundance in the Gulf of Maine.
The Grace Marie, another Gloucester dragger, then snagged 15,000 pounds of pollock during just a 10-minute tow.
“It was unbelievable,” said vessel owner/skipper Sebastian “Busty” Noto.
Pollock tend to move inshore in the fall, stick around there until early winter, and then move further off in the Gulf of Maine towards the east.
“Our guys get them year-round. Pollock make up 40% of our annual landings,” explained Bert Jongerden, manager of the Portland Fish Exchange, adding that many of the offshore draggers top their trips with incidental catches of redfish and pollock.
Primarily harvested by draggers and gillnetters, pollock – unlike redfish – require evisceration.
“The pollock is a very strong fish. Handling them alive (on deck) is hard on the hands and shoulders,” said Sal Ciolino, a crewman on the Grace Marie.
Price problem
The big drawback is the price. Although redfish and pollock prices occasionally spike to levels above $1 a pound when landings are low, volume catches often yield fishermen a price in the 20-cents-a-pound range, the same as they got decades ago when fuel sold for well below 50 cents a gallon.
“We frequently get the same redfish and pollock prices we got in the 1970s,” said Alden Leaman, the Harpswell, ME captain of the Gloucester dragger Emily Jennifer.
Pete Shoares, a crewman on the inshore Gloucester gillnetter Gillian Ann, added, “Today’s pollock prices are like those of the good old days, too.”
“Today, 800 pounds of cod are often worth 10,000 pounds of pollock,” said William Brown IV, owner of the Gillian Ann.
Glenn McIntyre from Freeport, ME further explained why many crews, like his on the Portland dragger Aaron & Melissa, are discouraged about catching pollock.
“We caught 110,000 pounds during two trips one week last July. The lumpers made more money than the crew,” he said.
Between cleaning all of those fish and getting such a little return for their efforts, McIntyre said, “This was way too hard on the crew.”
Marketing problem
Redfish and pollock still have regional image problems, but adding to that is the fact that the domestic infrastructure along the Northeast, including cutting houses with skilled fish cutters and packers to handle large volumes of these fish, are practically nonexistent nowadays.
“If over 100,000 pounds of redfish were landed in Gloucester in one day now, it would probably sell for bait,” explained Lenny Parco, owner of Ocean Crest Seafood Company in Gloucester.
Gloucester and Rockland, ME were major redfish ports and processing centers from the 1940s to the 1960s. Today, small amounts of redfish fillets are sold primarily in the seafood departments of supermarkets, especially in the Midwest.
Critical government contracts for volumes of redfish and pollock fillets vanished in the 1980s after a mislabeling scandal that resulted in fines and imprisonment for several individuals in the Massachusetts and Maine processing industry. After the scandal, those fish contracts went to the West Coast.
Limited domestic demand
The Canadian salt fish and limited domestic fresh fillet and steak markets absorb most of the pollock landings. Canadian salt fish processors like Adlai Cunningham’s Sea Star Seafoods at Clark’s Harbour, Nova Scotia buy small-, medium-, and large-size pollock when prices dip to 40 cents a pound and under.
Between commission and trucking costs and huge shrinkage during processing, low pollock prices are a must to make their salting operations feasible. The finished product, which is boxed into one-pound “woods,” is exported to Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and back to ethnic communities in the US.
As good as cod
Even after numerous regional promotions, including as “Boston Bluefish,” the popularity of the darker-fleshed pollock as a food fish hasn’t risen much.
“Many people still think of pollock as junk harbor pollock,” said Dan Rand, a fish buyer for Pigeon Cove Whole Foods in Gloucester.
Added his associate, Joe Mason, “People are used to cod, haddock, and sole. They have their preferences, and they don’t change very easily.”
Jimmy Turner, owner of Turner’s Seafood in Gloucester, further explained, “People like that real white fish.”
Ironically, pollock and redfish are just as nutritious as cod, haddock, and sole.
“Pollock cooks up white. It’s a great fish,” said Louis Linquata, a fish buyer/grader for North Coast Seafoods in Boston.
Many fishermen today say pollock and redfish need national promotions followed by good press. They also believe that it’s time to bring big government contracts for these fish back to the East Coast.
According to David Webber, vice president of operations at Gorton’s of Gloucester, companies like his currently rely on volumes of industry-standard, 16-1/2-pound blocks of frozen Alaska pollock fillets.
“Nothing nearby has the capability to provide the raw materials we need,” Webber said. “There is no East Coast block-making capacity. We buy only in large quantities from Alaska and China.”
Quick trips
However, there have been recent signs of hope for the pollock fishery.
Noto’s Grace Marie and at least three other medium and large Gloucester draggers have had success last fall and this winter making repetitive, quick-volume pollock trips. These trips generally last between 15 and 30 hours and the vessels have brought in about 50,000 pounds.
“It’s a lot of work, but it has paid off,” said Noto.
Such fishing requires upping crews by one or two men. The crew of the Grace Marie – Noto, Joe Cusenza, Kirk Wonson, Frank Siragusa, and Sebastian and Salvatore Ciolino – recently spent 12 straight hours on deck dressing 65,000 pounds of pollock weighing six to 15 pounds apiece.
Remarkably, the draggers lately have been paid 30 cents a pound or better in Gloucester for the fish, which totaled over 400,000 pounds alone during one week in mid-January.
“The more fish, the more opportunity for buyers to open new markets,” explained Larry Ciulla, co-owner of the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction.
Consumers take note
Maybe people’s perceptions about pollock also are changing during these times of rising food prices. In mid-January, the Market Basket supermarket chain in Massachusetts and New Hampshire was offering super-fresh pollock fillets for $1.99-$3.99 a pound.
“We have done pretty well with the pollock,” Liviu Ion, deli/seafood department manager at the Rowley, MA store reported.
Norm Stavis, co-owner of the giant North Coast Seafood in Boston, which handles redfish and pollock and has been pushing the quick-trip pollock, offered more hope.
“Fishermen can’t live with the 30 cents a pound fish just as processors can’t live with the $2 a pound prices,” he said. “The prices need to reach a middle ground. There will be plenty of fish the next three to five years. We have to get back the markets.”
For many discouraged fishermen like McIntyre, it wouldn’t take too much to encourage them to begin targeting redfish and pollock.
“If we could get 50 cents a pound back to the boat, that would do it,” said McIntyre.
Peter K. Prybot
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