According to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the University of Washington, researchers found that older adults who had the highest blood levels of the fatty acids found in fish lived, on average, 2.2 years longer than those with lower levels.  The study found that older adults who have higher blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids may be able to lower their overall mortality risk by as much as 27% and their mortality risk from heart disease by about 35%.

And where are those omega-3 fatty acids found?  Almost exclusively in fatty fish and seafood!

According to lead author Dariush Moaffarian, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at HSPH;

“Although eating fish has long been considered part of a healthy diet, few studies have assessed blood omega-3 levels and total deaths in older adults.  Our findings support the importance of adequate blood omega-3 levels for cardiovascular health, and suggest that later in life these benefits could actually extend the years of remaining life.”

Check out the study here, and as always, eat more seafood!

We’d like to introduce you to the Pfleger Institute of Environmental Research’s project to test alternative deep set buoy (DSBG) swordfish gear in the Southern California Bight. DSBG, if proven effective, will enable our fisherman to increase landings of harpoon-quality fish in a more environmentally responsible manner then the current drift net fishery at about the same operating cost. In turn, this will reduce our dependence on foreign imports and help revitalize our local fishing communities.

We rely a great deal on swordfish at Santa Monica Seafood. It ranks in the top five highest volume species in pounds purchased and it is generally plentiful. Harpoon-caught sword is the premium when it comes to quality, but is increasingly harder to get our hands on because of the associated fuel costs.

Over the last 75 years we have seen the great loss of local landings and fishery jobs in our community…

Congratulations to all 30 chefs who have advanced to the next stage of Skuna Bay’s Kentucky Derby Challenge!  Competition now begins to see who will represent Skuna Bay at the Taste of Derby at this year’s Kentucky Derby culinary experience!

We’d like to send a special shout out to all those chefs who got there using Skuna Bay Salmon from Santa Monica Seafood:

• Eugenio Martignago (West – Carlsbad, CA)
• Christopher Eddy (Campanile, Los Angeles)
• Kenneth Fazel (Tender, Las Vegas)
• Andrew Sutton (Napa Rose, Anaheim)
• Chris George (Roy’s Pasadena)
• John Vega (TAPS Fish House, Corona)

Here’s hoping that one (if not two!) of our regional chefs will advance to the finals and be chosen to represent at the cook off at this year’s Kentucky Derby…

Daniel Smith wrote a compelling piece recently for FSR entitled “7 Innovations of Highly Imaginative Restaurants” that we found interesting…  of course, we’re going to give you our seafood-centric take on his ideas for how your restaurant can stay ahead of the curve when it comes to future foodservice trends.

1. Micro-pairing – offering a specific cocktail paired with one dish on your menu.   You may already be doing this with wine, but why not add a suggested cocktail?   Appetizer items, like shrimp or oysters, could pair nicely with a variety of specially crafted drinks.

1. Pickling – What an interesting way to offer seafood out of season…  we’re big fans of pickled wild salmon, and a pickled shrimp topping a bloody mary would be a delightful touch at brunch.

1. “New Peruvian” – sounds like working a Peruvian seafood dish (like ceviche) into your menu will keep you on the cutting edge…

1. Farm-to-Table Inspiring In-house Butcheries – according to the article, “for many restaurants, an in-house butchery offers heightened control over freshness, portions, and pricing, a particularly critical element as beef prices are projected to reach record highs in 2013…
   

We’re now carrying two great options for those of you looking to add a Canned Tuna to your inventory. Canned Tuna is an easy way to offer a lean and nutritious seafood option at a price both you and your customers will appreciate. Additionally, canned Tuna is convenient, rich in essential nutrients like protein and Omega-3 fatty acids and is naturally low fat. All that, and it’s delicious!

We tasted a lot of tuna in our effort to bring you the highest quality canned tuna on the market. That’s why we’re now bringing in Contessa Premium Tuna – a trusted seafood name for decades! We’ve worked with Contessa for years, and we’re excited to be adding their Tuna to our inventory – we think you will be too!

We’re offing two options – Solid Albacore and Chunk Tongol Tuna – both in 4 lb 2.5 oz. cans (6 cans to a case) making it easy for you to add tuna to your menu. Tuna Salads, Tuna Wraps, Tuna Melts – no matter how you menu it, your guests will appreciate the flavor and quality of both these tuna options.

Ask you Santa Monica Sales Representative about this new Tuna option today!

Like most of the seafood industry, we’ve got a group of people packing their bags (and winter coats) and heading to East Coast late this week for the International Boston Seafood Show.   This annual event is the largest seafood trade exposition in North America and we’re looking forward to another great event in 2013!

Meetings with current (and potential) suppliers, checking out new products, attending educational panels and presentations, and plenty of informal relationship building – Boston is the place to be this weekend!

Our Executive Vice President, Michael Cigliano, is looking forward to seeing some current customers along with plenty of potential new customers – all in one spot.  “Boston is a great sales opportunity and I love learning about what’s new on the market,” he says.

Logan Kock, our Vice President of Strategic Purchasing & Responsible Sourcing says his favorite part about the Boston Seafood Show is “reaffirming vendor relationships even if it’s just a hand shake enroute between meetings. Our long term established suppliers are one of our most important assets, providing us market information as well…

It’s been a tough month for lobster lovers, for a number of reasons…

Typical winter weather (think strong winds and snow storms) keeps boats in the harbor so there has not been a lot of fishing for the last month or so.  The water temperature is also low, so even if boats could get out, their catch would be limited…  Lobsters tend to dig in and not move when the water gets cold – they’ll wait for a warming period before heading out again (who can blame them!)

Meanwhile, any lobsterman that was holding lobsters, waiting for prices to go up has now most likely sold them; even the dealers and wholesalers have moved the majority of their winter inventory.  What’s left are weaker lobsters that generally don’t meet our quality standards.

And that’s the good news. The bad news is it’s not going to get better for another month, at least.  One supplier told us “it’s going to be more of who has any lobsters, not about price.”

Please talk this over with your Sales Representative.  We don’t want increased prices to come as a surprise to anyone, and we also want you to be prepared for shortages. We have some options available to help tide you over, and your Rep can help you decide what works best for…

The Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) Gulf shrimp fisheries improvement project (FIP) has been supported with RSVP Program funds now for almost a year, working on retrofitting the trawl fleet on the Northwest coast of Mexico with bycatch-reduction devices and training the ship’s crews in their use. Additionally, this fisheries improvement project is engaging with the Mexican government to increase enforcement and regulations pertaining to the gulf shrimp fishery.

The Gulf fleet, which provides 70 percent of its pacific blue, whiteleg, and yellowleg shrimp catch to the United States market, has an unfortunately high rate of unintended catch. Industrial bottom trawlers indiscriminately net non-target species, which in this region includes endangered sea turtles, seahorses, and the totoaba – an endemic (found only in the Gulf of California) sea bass species. SFP estimates that to date tens of thousands of tons of bycatch has been discarded in this fishery, spanning 600 non-target species.

In August and September of 2012, the SFP held a total of 8 training workshops in Mazatlan, Topolobampo, Guaymas, and Puerto Peñasco for members of the gulf shrimp trawl fleet. The workshops were split into two parts: the first focused on the basics of bycatch-reduction technology and the changes being made to the Mexican Official Standard regulating body. The second part of the workshop focused on the specifics of retrofitting gear and training in the use of the new equipment…

Seafood fraud continues to make the front pages of newspapers across the country, and if you are keeping up with the numbers, it would seem that species substitution is a national epidemic. We fully support any effort to expose fraudulent purveyors, restaurant owners and chefs but we also want you to understand the steps we take to make sure all of our seafood is exactly what we say it is.

Let’s start at the receiving dock. We receive a huge percentage of our fresh fish and shellfish in whole form – there’s no way to label a whole farmed steelhead salmon as “Wild King Salmon” and get it past our experienced receiving team. Not that we’d ever get to that point – a key component of our sourcing program are the long-term relationships we’ve formed with quality suppliers over our 70-plus years of doing business. All of our suppliers understand that we have a zero-tolerance for species substitution. It’s simply not acceptable.

However, we do perform random DNA testing as a backstop, and we keep our supplier relationships in an “active” mode – that is, we don’t just sit back and purchase seafood; our purchasing team spends a lot of time on the road, visiting suppliers and making sure operations are up to our high standards. We also interact with our suppliers and other purveyors at industry events throughout the year.

Santa Monica Seafood is proud to announce we are now an ISO 14001 certified company! This globally-recognized certification acknowledges that the standards used throughout our entire operation will help ensure the reduction of our environmental impact on the planet.

This was not an easy feat — we are one of only two seafood companies in North America to achieve this globally recognized certification.  And, more impressive, we are the only seafood distributor, in the entire world, to possess both the ISO 14001 as well as the FSSC 22000 certification on our food safety systems!!

If you’re wondering just how we’re going to achieve our commitments under our ISO 14001 certification, we’ve started by implementing an Environmental Management System incorporating compliance with ISO 14001 standards in ALL our operations…