NEW ITEM! FRESH LARGE GEORGES BANK HADDOCK FILLETS – Taste the sweetness in every bite of our domestic large haddock fillets. Trawl caught on the Georges Bank, 60 miles east of Cape Cod, the beautiful fish are sold at auction daily in New Bedford Massachusetts. Haddock have a far superior flavor profile to the more traditional cod. Try some this week.
2. VENZ JUMBO LUMP COLLAPSE! TIME TO RUN A JUMBO LUMP CRAB CAKE SALE! Well, it took 3 weeks longer than last year, but the price of fresh Venz Jumbo Lump finally dropped 20% this week. Fresh HPP jumbo lump with at least a 14-day shelf life is barely over $1 per ounce!
3. STILL CATCHING NICE LOCAL BLUEFINS OFF THE OUTER BANKS OF NC – If you didn’t get a chance to try some last week, we have another beautiful specimen, 300 lb. dressed weight, courtesy of Capt. Jimmy Hahn of the F/V Allison, with number #1 color and nice fat, arriving Wednesday morning. Loins are big, about 60 lbs. per loin. This highly migratory specie won’t be hanging around the OBX too much longer (about two more weeks) before they head towards their next destination. One curious fact is that 100 miles to the south off Morehead City NC, fishermen are catching bluefin tuna now, but those bluefins all come from the Mediterranean while the OBX bluefins are from Canada & the Gulf of Mexico.
4. WILD HALIBUT PRICE REBOUNDS – The bad weather off the Canadian maritime provinces stopped the flow of fish and the value pricing on wild halibut last week burned up all the fish on the market so we are back to “traditional” wintertime halibut pricing this week. Next week we may see a dip in the market based on projected boats coming in.
5. CORONAVIRUS CAUSING STAGGERING DISRUPTION TO CHINA’S ECONOMY – As reported this morning on a financial channel (Bloomberg), China’s first quarter, year over year, GDP growth is estimated to be down a whopping 60%! That figure is hard to fathom. How does this affect you? This event will manifest itself in the form of lower pricing across the seafood spectrum. We are already seeing the effects on the live lobster market. Producers of lobster tails and meat are very nervous, and the closer we get to the May 1 Canadian season, the more desperate they will be to move inventory. China is also the largest IMPORTER of shrimp in the world and with virtually no shipments going to China now, the shrimp market is poised to fall dramatically this spring.
6. LOCAL FISH ARE PLENTIFUL – WILD ROCK, JUMBO BLACK SEA BASS & SUMMER FLOUNDER (FLUKE) – These are three excellent white meat fish choices this week with fillet prices on flounder under 75 cents an ounce and the rockfish & black bass around 85 cents an ounce.
7. MAHI PRICE REBOUND – With the rush of business for Valentine’s Day and the full moon last week (gets tough to catch mahi on a full moon) the price of whole head off mahi jumped 30%. However, the fillets are still a value at just under $10.
8. SPRING MENU PLANNING – Now that Valentine’s Day is behind us, the next major event to impact business will be the Lenten season and new Spring Menus! We have an office full of experienced, seasoned sales staff and buyers who can help with the planning of your Spring menus. We love having chefs come to our facility to tour the warehouse and sample some of the fish in our cooler. Our test kitchen is available, and our corporate chef is usually on hand to do tastings. Let us know if you want to schedule a time to come visit – you won’t regret it if you do!
