COVID Shell-Shocks the Seafood System
Research Shows U.S. Distribution Dropped Steeply at Start of Pandemic
The United States’ seafood industry declined precipitously in the months following the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, and research shows that targeted federal assistance will be necessary to bring it back.
UC Santa Barbara aquaculture and fisheries professor Halley Froehlich and colleagues suspected as much early on in the pandemic, but for something as large and complex as the seafood industry, the trends were not so obvious. As a result, financial assistance in that direction has been slow.
“Seafood is part of the narrative that I would say doesn’t get as much attention as something like agriculture,” said Froehlich, an author of a study published in the journal Fish and Fisheries. “And that certainly appears to be the case when we’re looking at something like the CARES Act, the federal funding source specifically passed to provide economic relief in the U.S.”
