Why is fish so expensive?

[/pine]

... And they are using junk science to set the limits!

In the eyes of many people that actually are out there every day this is exactly right...to use one good example the "Redfish" (Red Drium)...Just about any old salt will tell you that most species have natural cycles (the same as just about everything else)...What happened with Redfish is like the 'The Perfect Storm' (crummy movie IMO)...Three things were happening at the same time...the "blackened Redfish craze", an increase in (inshore) recreational anglers, and a natural bottom of a cycle...and the powers that be decided that since Redfish were scarce they should not just put limits/quotas on them...they shut the fishery down entirely (both rec. and com.)...for years...meanwhile the fish rebound on their natural cycle and the restrictions get all the credit...confounding the ignorant (junk) science....funny it's not just the fishing industry that has succumbed to the same "ignorant" scenarios....

 

[Ted Summey]

Fishing commercially is like farming for a living. The producer gets a small fraction of the profit. It is all the middlemen that get their percentage of markup. I have friends that fish commercially. It really is a hard way to get by. Even my friends that run charters work way more hours on fishing days than most of us. Either part of the business is very weather dependent. There are lots of days they can't fish because of high seas. I love to fish and love the water but these guys have a passion for it that borders on psychosis.

The only thing more expensive than buying your fish is trying to catch your own - I've had trips where if I calculated the cost per pound it would work out to triple digits/pound:shocked:

 

[WayneB]

Here in New England all of the fisheries are locked up tightly by Government intervention. The catch limits are so low that many professional fisherman are selling off their boats and seeking other means to support their families. I believe all fish are now sold through the fish coop's and the cost is pushed up to make sure the industry is able to make some sort of a living. There was a day one could drive up US route 1A and buy all kinds of fish or lobster right off from the boat for really inexpensive prices. Shrimp were available cheap also, but now with the aid of over-night delivery all of the good shrimp end up in the mid-western area's. I think what is really sickening is cannery boats sit outside the boundary lines catching and canning tuna daily and there is nothing that can be done to them in international waters.

There is zero doubt that measures have to be taken to protect the fisheries. So just maybe raising the price so high that fewer and fewer people can afford to buy good fish.

What is really bad is people think they are buying Cod or Haddick and who knows what they are getting, normally it is the white fish of the day!

Huge cuts in all fishing off from New England

Regulator: Huge cuts coming to New England fishing

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Wait...you can buy fish?

 

[forgeblast]

If I ever get my solar thermal greenhouse running, I plan on doing aquaponics, with the ibc totes to raise fish and add a heat sink. There are aquaponic places making some great cash providing year round organic fish and vegs.

 

[daugen]

If I ever get my solar thermal greenhouse running, I plan on doing aquaponics, with the ibc totes to raise fish and add a heat sink. There are aquaponic places making some great cash providing year round organic fish and vegs.

save a little section for some clams and oysters...yum.
yes, I'm sure they can't live together, like a giant aquarium, but then who could then eat Boopsie?...
Now the hydroponic lettuce we have in our local Acme almost looks too good to be true, beautiful heads of lettuce.
Just never bought one, suppose I should try and see if the taste is different. In the depth of winter, the hydro tomatoes sure tasted better
than the plastic creations in the cello three pack.

Sounds like a good adventure; once past the initial investment and setup, somehow seems easier sounding than my twenty eight step
rototilling process...

if you do start growing fish at home, please keep us posted. No snake heads please...

 

[mjarrels]

hit a dampa market in the Philippines...

mark

 

[Jim Shooz]

Don't think you'll get a chance at the fish off those boats. I understand they are coming over the bar into Greymouth down on our West Coast. Looks like the Grey river is in flood and the boys wanted to get in before the pubs shut.

 

[forgeblast]

Sounds like a good adventure; once past the initial investment and setup,...
I have been saving materials and every year have been getting one step closer.
I have the solar heaters made for using the ground as a heat sink, I have finally located someone who has ibc totes, and will need to start digging out and making the foundation for the greenhouse.
The ratio is 2x1x1 (wxlxh) I am thinking of 24'x12'x12' since I have the area for it.

 

[JDgreen227]

I recently read a book that was about the life of those two brothers who are featured on the tv show about commercial fishing...gave the book away or I would know the title. They made the life of a commercial crab fisherman sound really brutal. They can earn great money sometimes but it's really dependent on the market and how much you can catch. About the only fish I consume are farm raised and frozen, mostly cod, and I can buy it for $4 per pound. Seems pretty darn costly when you can buy ground chuck for $3 per pound, and the frozen fish loses about a quarter of it's weight when thawed and the excess water is squeezed out. I have not priced nor purchased fresh fish for a long time as it's well out of my budget.

 

[daugen]

As for the video...The times I have encountered not as severe but similar conditions is when there is a very strong current/tide that is running opposite of the wind/seas...in some sort of inlet of pass...

Oh to live by an inlet and watch the passing scene.

And then you get that wonderful yet scary thing called a standing wave. A seriously big wave that just sits there, not moving it seems, acting like a wall of water in your way. supposedly three to four hours later it subsides when the tide turns, to normal inlet nastiness, but if seems these guys sure didn't want to wait. This is when you are very, very happy you changed your Racor fuel filters before you went out, as being in that washing machine with working engines is scary enough. Have the engine go out, you are really toast. I'd hang it up if I ever tried an inlet like that, but then I would simply wait offshore pointed out and try not to get sick until the seas subsided and I could come in. Only done this a few times, never tried the big inlets in NC, and certainly not like the West Coast ones. And never hope to.

Those fishing boats must have some serious ballast down low to stay upright in these conditions. I saw the one boat's spreader get into the water, that's not good for steering.

Now Bird's comment has me thinking back into the 50's when we'd go down to the local "co-op" food store, and there would always be fresh fish.
No tilapia or designer fish, just cod, flounder and trout once in a while, salmon, shrimp, and catfish. My parents liked it, my father loved to shuck clams and it didn't seem "so expensive". Maybe it was and I just didn't know better.
We used to eat a lot of raw shellfish, loved the intense salty bite of a fresh clam. No more. Sorry little guys, you're getting steamed from now on.
Not rubberized, but cooked. And I guess heavy metals don't cook out well, but at least the nasty bacteria does.

But if it means my salmon has to have eel DNA to get it down to six bucks a pound, well, yuk. IMHO eels are the grossest looking things, slimey beyond belief, crammed in those wooden crates wriggling around. And yes, I'm sure "good eating" to some, certainly overseas. You eat what you can catch. I just couldn't scrub one of those things enough to get it in my mouth.

Well, how about some cheap NE lobster for all of us? I'm told there's actually a glut of the stuff, or was, which sounds good by itself to witness a fishery recuperating. Or maybe they just all crawled back from Bermuda...
Believe it or not, lobster is the only thing I've read about being a good deal, though not for the guys catching it, and somehow, like our gas at the pump, what we pay doesn't seem to have much contact with reality.

 

[Ted Summey]

I've run most of the inlets here in NC in less that ideal conditions for my 23' Walkaround cabin. They are treacherous especially when wind and tide are running against each other. Of course i'm usually coming in rather than trying to get out in rough conditions. A captain has to know how to read the waves, know how to time his run and know when to apply throttle and when to throttle down. Surfing the front of a wave is a bad thing in a boat. You run the risk of burying your bow in the back of the wave in front. That's a recipe for swamping and capsizing.

While I have stood on land and seen a couple if inlets look like the video, thankfully I've never encountered anything like the video in my boat!