The Influence of Fisheries Regulation and Policy on Quality, Recovery, and Value
By Gregg J. Small
ABSTRACT
The seafood industry requires consistent supply of raw materials and uniformity of pricing to create and maintain successful products in the marketplace. To achieve these goals, seafood industry harvesters, processors and sales/marketers depend on their fisheries of interest to be sustainable for the long term. Better utilization of the fisheries and optimization of the raw materials during processing will result in less pressure on fish populations and produce a higher quality product. Optimization is carried out in two ways: value adding and increasing recovery during post harvest processing. With the advent of dedicated allocations, attempts at increasing optimization can also be the result of reduced fishing effort or processing effort. Timing the fishing season so that the biological condition of the fish protein is optimum for manufacture of the finished product is a step, which has been historically overlooked (Pollock roe season is an exception). If fish in the optimum biological condition are not available to the harvesters, the harvester's efforts to locate, catch and process the fish are increased. When the timing and area of harvest are synchronized with the physical condition of the species the available allocation is effectively increased without increasing the tonnage of fish removed from the resource. Through industry and fisheries management cooperation, the sustainability of resources is further assured with full utilization and maximum value to the marketplace.
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