A recent article by Christine Blank over on SeafoodSource.com had some good news for both the restaurant world and the seafood industry.

According to Blank, “U.S. seafood restaurant chains bounced back in 2011, as the economy improved and more consumers returned to dining out.” She sites a new poll from Technomic, a foodservice research and consulting firm based in Chicago that showed overall, the country’s 500 largest restaurant chains had a 3.4% sales increase in 2011.

That’s good news for restaurant owners, and we’re heartened by the fact that Blank reports that a number of chains that showed growth are seafood focused. Seafood friendly restaurants that showed strong sales increases included:

• Joe’s Crab Shack
• Chart House
• Bonefish Grill
• Roy’s Restaurants and
• Red Lobster

Bubba Gumps, Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen, Legal Seafoods and Landry’s Seafood House were also included among “top gainers.”

What does that mean for the rest of the restaurant industry…

Lobster; it’s one of those menu items you often associate with the phrase “market price”.  Lobster availability (and therefore price) is constantly changing, and it’s tough to pin a price on them!

What we’re hearing from our lobster guys is that right now lobsters are especially tight.  Pounded lobsters are almost completely gone and the industry is more or less totally relying on “new caughts”.  Cold water temperatures mean that lobster catches are somewhat low, and we won’t see catches increase until those temps begin to climb.  Although the weather is great for fishing (little to no wind and flat, calm water) the ocean water is so cold the lobsters just don’t move.

We’re looking for a water temp of about 38+ to get lobsters to start moving again.  In the meantime, Boats are only going out 2 times per week.  We’re hoping to see warming waters and attendant higher catches come early April.

Additionally, the week of Easter is also a high demand week for Southern Europe, which puts additional pressure on the market.

If you’re looking to add live lobster to the menu – stay in touch with your Santa Monica Seafood Representative for day-to-day pricing and availability information.

While we’re on the subject of lobster, we want to share some pairing information we stumbled across…

The team up at the Alaska King Crab Research, Rehabilitation and Biology Program sent us an update about some field experiments with hatchery-cultured juvenile red king crabs Ben Daly did as part of his Ph.D. research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

According to the latest AKCRRAB Newsletter,

Daly and UCLA undergraduate researcher Timothy White tethered small (1.8–4.0 mm carapace width) crabs for 24-hour trials during July and September 2011 in southern Lynn Canal near Juneau, and used scuba and underwater video cameras to assess survival and predator interactions. Daly identified hermit crabs, Alaskan ronquil, arctic shanny, northern rock sole, and kelp greenling as predators and found that survival did not vary by body size or deployment month. Time until mortal attack was longer for larger crabs compared to small crabs and most mortal attacks occurred in daylight hours.

Predation will likely be the greatest ecological hurdle for hatchery-cultured juveniles in the wild; however, information on predation of red king crab juveniles in nearshore habitats remains scarce. This research is an important first step in developing release strategies and suggests predation pressure should be considered when selecting release time and location.

If you want to watch how it ends for a juvenile red king crab, here’s a video you might enjoy (hint; put your money on the greenling or the hermit crab)…

A short post on Marketing Today by Karlene Lukovitz alerts us to a growing consumer trend – snacking!

According to a survey from foodservice consultancy Technomic, almost half (48%) of consumers surveyed report that they are snacking at least twice a day – that number doubled from 2010 – which signals a fast growing trend.

They aren’t just snacking, according to the Lukovitz article, your customers are looking for some specifics:

• More than a third (37%) of consumers have broadened their definition of snacks to include more types of foods, beverages and restaurant fare.
• More than 33% expect to eat more healthful snacks in the coming year, indicating greater importance for operators to offer and promote better-for-you snacks.
• The mini sandwich, slider or wrap has evolved from a simple snack item to a down-sized gourmet version of signature full-sized offerings.

Is your next Santa Monica Seafood delivery setting you up for snacking success? Seafood lends itself perfectly to menu items that perfectly meet the criteria listed above…

If you love oysters and wine, you’ll be excited to know that the 2012 Pacific Coast Oyster Wine Competition has begun! This annual competition gives California, Oregon and Washington wineries the opportunity to submit white wines to a blind judging that ranks each wines’ affinity for the oyster, or what the competition’s organizers call “the bliss factor”.

Deadline for entries is 6:00 pm, March 28.  Preliminary judging will take place at Anthony’s Homeport at Shilshole Bay in Seattle March 29-April 4. Five veteran judges will select 20 wines for the Final Judging to be held April 24th  in Los Angeles, April 25th in San Francisco and April 26th in Seattle with a panel of 12 judges in each venue. Scores in the three cities are combined to select the ten 2012 “Oyster Award” winners, which will be announced on April 30th.

The Competition, sponsored by Taylor Shellfish Farms of Shelton, Washington and organized by Jon Rowley of Jon Rowley & Associates, Seattle, will select 10 equal winners for the coveted “Oyster Award”.  Judges include top food and wine writers, restaurateurs and retailers…

Linda Duke, CEO of Duke Marketing wrote a great piece for Restaurantville Magazine called “Marketing the Health Message” and she had a lot of great tips that we think will inspire you to sell more seafood than ever by focusing on communicating a healthy message to your customers!

Duke listed 5 tips to follow when working to create a healthy message in your restaurant (we’ve added our seafood-centric take):

Focus on local and seasonal

This is a great way to add seafood to your menu or specials board. Customers are often already excited about seasonal seafood – soft shell crabs, wild Alaska salmon, Stone crab claws – these are all seafoods with strong seasonal branding messages associated with them. Local seafood is always a good seller – check in with your Santa Monica Seafood Representative to see what were sourcing locally; Santa Barbara spot prawns, yellowtail, oysters from Carlsbad Aquafarm, perhaps?

Focus on where food and ingredients come from

This ties right in with local seafood, or even seafood we’re sourcing from around the world – customer want to know where it’s from. Check out some Fresh brown shrimp from Louisiana or some succulent black cod from Alaskan waters…

Congratulations to our colleagues across the Pacific at Hawaii’s Kampachi Farms – they announced last week they have completed their first harvest of kampachi from an unanchored drifter pen that has been riding eddies in the open ocean, 3 to 75 miles offshore of the Big Island of Hawaii, since last summer.  This is the first successful harvest of farmed fish in U.S. federal waters.

According to Neil Anthony Sims, Co-CEO of Kampachi Farms;

“This final harvest far surpassed our expectations. The fish thrived in the research net pen far from shore, with phenomenal growth rates and superb fish health… and without any negative impact on water quality, the ocean floor, wild fish or marine mammals. It makes perfect sense to raise fish in the ocean, where they belong. This was a healthy, low-stress environment for the fish, and we think that this allowed them to channel their energy into growing faster.”

The research project raised kampachi (a tropical yellowtail) in a single unanchored, submersible net pen tethered to a manned sailing vessel, in water up to 12,000 feet deep…

March means a couple of things to the seafood industry – and one of them is the fishiest trade show in the world – the International Boston Seafood Show! We look forward to this event every year, and this year we’re even more excited than usual…

That’s because not only are we attending the show, but we’re part of an educational panel that highlights the efforts of our Responsible Sourcing Vendor Partnership Program!

Logan Kock and Dave Litle will be joining Matt Owens from FishWise and Mary Luna of ReefCheck to give a panel presentation on Monday, March 12 at 2:00 called “Putting your Money where your Mouth is; Financing Positive Change in the Seafood Industry.”

We’re really proud of what our RSVP Program has been able to accomplish, and we’re looking forward to encouraging others to work together in making changes within our industry…

Chef Ming Tsai is back in the news after calling Black Cod (also known as Sablefish), “Alaskan Butterfish” on a recent menu.  For the President, no less…

It’s the same name that got him in trouble with the Boston Globe a few months back, where Chef Tsai was lumped in with other examples of mislabeled seafood.  We find ourselves wondering – is Chef Tsai’s name choice really part of the same issue?

Mislabeling of seafood is certainly an industry-wide problem that deserves to be taken seriously.  We take it seriously and make every effort to communicate our zero-tolerance policy to the vendors we work with.   Is what Chef Tsai did the same as intentionally subbing Tilapia for American Red Snapper?

Generally, intentional mislabeling of fish on a menu is done to save money – replace a more expensive fish (wild Alaskan sockeye) with a less expensive one (farmed salmon) without changing the name to make a few extra bucks…

We’re looking forward to fisherman and photographer Corey Arnold’s upcoming exhibition “Wolf Tide” at the Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica – the opening reception is from 5:00 to 7:00 on Saturday, February 25th, and the show runs through March 31.

Since we spend a lot of time promoting (and eating) wild Alaskan seafood, we think this is a unique way to get a fisherman’s perspective of his work through photography. We had a chance to get to know Corey a bit better this past week…

Corey started fishing when he was still in diapers, growing up fishing every weekend with his father. He told us that “the desire to be out and away at sea ran deep.” for Corey, photography began as “a means or an excuse to go and explore new subjects, search for the unknown, and meet interesting characters along the way. I always wanted to work as a commercial fisherman where I could work in blocks of time, and spend the rest of my year exploring and making photographs.  Nowadays though, the photo and fishing often happen at the same time.”

As a commercial fisherman who is also an artist, Corey bridges the gap between work and art behind his lens.  “I feel fortunate that my captain aboard the f/v Rollo, a Bering sea crab boat that I worked on for seven years was a creative guy that gave me leeway to snap photos here and there.  The fishing work always came first, but when I had an opportunity to take a few minutes to snap a roll of film, it was encouraged…