THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 18, 1995 TAG: 9512170160
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A7 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Dividing the Waters
SOURCE: BY STEPHANIE STOUGHTON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 195 lines
The loader for Wanchese Fish Co. is unhappy.
The company truck has just rammed the ramp, sending Max Brown into a red-faced rage. He quickly adjusts the ramp and jumps back onto his loading machine, all the while swearing at the truck driver.
It's only 1 p.m., but it's the last call for fishing companies on North Carolina's Outer Banks, companies trying to get their fish to markets all along the East Coast.
At Top Fin, a neighboring fish company, owner Charlie Fearing is pacing when the Wanchese truck arrives. He's got boxes of summer flounder for the New York market and other fish headed for Japan, where they'll be sliced into sushi.
A half-century ago, a fish company like Top Fin might have relied solely on tuna, flounder and other species caught off the Virginia and North Carolina coasts. And most of the catch would be sold regionally, or to only one or two primary wholesale markets such as New York's Fulton Fish Market. Not any more.
Rising demand, tight regulations and declining resources have led to an increasingly complex industry. Fish are now sold through catalogs, traders and brokers. Japanese and South Korean scouts scour local fish companies, demanding their freshest, most pampered fish.
Between 1980 and 1987, seafood consumption in the United States increased 30 percent. Last year, U.S. imports of edible fishery products rose 4 percent. United States fish dealers imported $2.8 billion more seafood than they exported in 1993. Last year, they paid $6.6 billion for 3 billion pounds of foreign fish.
The biggest exporters to this country were Canada, Ecuador, Chile, Iceland, Thailand and China. They shipped everything from red snapper to farm-raised salmon.
``Our business has changed so much,'' said Joey Daniels, vice president of Wanchese Fish. ``We used to sell almost all of our fish to the markets in New York and Philadelphia. Now we don't. We sell off the market.''
The Fulton Fish Market now serves as a last resort for many fish companies with surplus fish. Part of the reason is that the market's seafood dealers take fish on consignment, so companies like Wanchese Fish have lessened their risks - and increased their profits - by limiting the amount of product they send to New York.
Still, the Fulton market and the wholesaling network connected to it provide a telling glimpse into what has become a global and highly competitive marketplace for seafood.
It's 3 a.m. when Vance Daniels pulls the Wanchese truck onto Fulton Street. Workers who unload the trucks glance at their watches, swearing under their breath: Most of the trucks from across the East Coast have long since dumped their product and turned back home.
Daniels, the Wanchese semi driver, sorts through invoices as a worker yanks Top Fin's boxes of flounder off the truck. A half-hour later, a dealer at Sea Fresh Tuna slices open one of the cartons and scrutinizes Top Fin's offerings: summer flounder.
``It's OK,'' says dealer Joe Valente, shrugging. ``We'll sell it.''
When the sun rises, the market thins out. Dealers begin to drag in boxes and finish their last trades. Later, they'll hit the phones, seeking more fish for the next day.
``Right now, the hardest part is producing the fish,'' said Bob Samuels, owner of Blue Ribbon Fish Co. ``A generation ago, the hardest part was selling it.''
One reason fish wholesalers have such a hard time is that there are so many of them. Rising demand, strict regulation and declining resources forced suppliers to create a global network - a wide opening for anyone who wants to grab a piece of the fish industry. In Virginia alone, there are more than 150 licensed fish packers, processors and warehousers, according to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
``To be in the fish business, in a lot of places all you have to do is buy a license,'' said Robert Jones, executive director of the Southern Fisheries Association. ``And with everybody that touches the fish, the more opportunity there is to make money. The sales have gotten more complex because you're scrambling to fill the order.''
Take Sam Rust Seafood in Hampton, for example.
``In 1940, we had one employee: Sam Rust,'' said Bruce Edmonds, a sales account executive. ``There were no imports, no exports and no trucks.''
Today, Edmonds - Sam Rust's grandson - deals with dozens of wholesalers from Florida to Europe. He trucks fish to New York, ships fish to Miami and flys soft crabs to France. He gets daily price quotes faxed from a Boston company and dials an 800 number to place his order.
The extra transactions have gone unnoticed by customers, who are more likely to be shocked by rising seafood prices. An all-you-can-eat seafood buffet might have been marked $3.75 a decade ago, and now might cost $7 a plate, said Jones, the association director.
At many restaurants, customers may not realize that owners have had a difficult time finding something that's truly a fresh ``catch of the day.''
With irregular catches, some seafood suppliers are making up for the shortages through fish farming or selling once-unpopular species.
Still more suppliers have turned to foreign countries to make up for the shortages. Some flounder, trout and yellowfin tuna seen on restaurant menus and in supermarkets are now from other countries even though they were historically caught off the Atlantic coast.
Consider the seafood section at the nearest Farm Fresh. While the pan trout, croaker and spot are local, much of the selection is imported - frozen, shipped in and then thawed.
Orange roughy is from New Zealand, and red snapper comes from Taiwan or South America.
Tilapia, a reddish mild-tasting fish, and salmon were likely ``farm raised'' in big tanks or pens as far away as Central America.
``It's supply and demand,'' said Jim Newton, who buys seafood for Farm Fresh's supermarkets. ``Right now, we've got a lot more demand. You have to buy internationally.''
Buying internationally may solve the seafood supply problem for now. But it creates others, say those in the industry. The boat-to-plate path can get quite murky. A red snapper caught by fishermen Chile has to travel to the wholesaler at the docks and then be shipped to Miami, where it will be trucked or flown into Norfolk or Newport News.
``It's usually not less than 10 days between the time it's caught and the time someone eats it,'' explained Jimmy Arias, chief buyer for the Exportador-Frumar seafood company in Allejuela, Costa-Rica.
``If you take very good care of your fish, the whole fish will last two and a half weeks. Blue marlin do, at least,'' said Arias. ``I was the guinea pig just to test. It was very good.''
Fish caught in Costa Rican waters have a lot farther to travel before arriving at their destination dinner plates than those hauled in off American beaches. American fishing fleets can usually get to good hunting grounds in less than two days. And some Wanchese crews cruise to the Gulf Stream, fish a full day, and unload their catch back on shore that night.
But, as in any industry, quality varies drastically between companies.
Arias said he sees potential disaster for imported and domestic seafood at some American fish dealers.
A plastic-covered photo album he keeps in his desk contains pages of snapshots from Fulton's Fish Market in New York, where much of the East Coast seafood is sold. There, the same tuna Arias had so carefully inspected, processed and packaged at his Costa Rican warehouse were strewn along dirty wooden tables, without ice, left in the open air.
``The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is trying to pass a law for quality control of foreign fish processing plants. But I think you have to clean up the industry in your own country first. How can anyone tell me my fish is no good in New York when they treat it like this at Fulton's?'' Arias asked, pointing to a picture of a four-foot tuna infested with flies.
While the FDA may eventually intercede in regulating foreign seafood imports, some retailers have established self-imposed standards.
``I want to know where my fish came from, who's harvesting my seafood and which waters it came from,'' said Anthony Conte, a restauranteur from Williamsburg. ``Was the equipment safe and clean? Does the broker know about the fishermen?''
Responsibility for health safety ``starts off at the boat,'' said Edmonds of Sam Rust Seafood. ``In South America, the waters are hot and they don't have the same facilities. Many, many times we've sent stuff back . . . The worst was probably 1,000 pounds of tuna, rotting and lying in bloody water. It went right back.''
At a seafood conference in Newport News in August, local fishing companies complained to federal safety regulators that they have little means of ensuring that suppliers and transporters are taking safety precautions. At the conference, federal food safety regulators asked the local companies to begin policing themselves by keeping detailed records identifying potential hazards. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has proposed rules requiring each company to create a plan - the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point plan - and produce such records during regular inspections. The rules would impact everyone who handles seafood - processors, packers and warehousers.
If the FDA passes the proposed rules, which could occur as early as January, a fish company will essentially have to tattle on itself when it's in violation.
Some wholesalers say they like the FDA's proposal because it might help the industry expunge rogue processors and packers, and better control the quality of imported fish.
The problem with such regulations, however, is that many U.S. companies will find it both expensive and impossible to follow. Some seafood wholesalers wonder how they'll ensure that adequate precautions were taken at a fish warehouse 2,000 miles away in the tropics.
The fishing industry in Third World nations operates freely and cheaply.
``I can't compete with that,'' said Top Fin's Charlie Fearing. ``Neither can American fishermen.'' MEMO: Staff writer Lane DeGregory contributed to this story.
Main story about commercial fishing is on page A1.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by BILL TIERNAN, The Virginian-Pilot
New York's Fulton Fish Market...on page A1
New York's Fulton Fish Market
Packing it Up: Dink Shull of Top Fin, a fish company in Wanchese,
N.C., pulls boxes of fish from the freezer for loading onto a truck.
The fish is bound for the Fulton Fish Market in New York.
Unloading: Vincent Hernandez of Sea Fresh Tuna wheels newly arrivved
North Carolina fish into his stall at the Fulton Fish Market.
For Sale: Nick Fogliano has worked for 28 years at the Fair Fish Co.
at the Fulton Fish Market. Fish from all over the East Coast is sold
from boxes and bins like this.
Chart
Americans are eating more fish
KEYWORDS: COMMERCIAL FISHING by CNB