Maryland Seafood Sales Sink Under Fears About Pfiesteria
By Eugene L. Meyer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thurs., Sept. 25, 1997; Page A01
From the Maine Avenue fish markets of Southwest Washington to
places as far away as California, Japan and Europe, once sought-after
Chesapeake Bay seafood is being rejected by fish buyers, with
devastating repercussions.
Supermarket chains are advising consumers that they are not selling
Chesapeake Bay fish. Faced with sharp declines in business, many
seafood restaurants have followed suit.
Seafood wholesalers and fish shops are reducing their payrolls
and the working hours of increasingly idle employees. Charter
boat captains are putting their boats up for sale.
The widespread and growing depression in Maryland's $400-million-a-year
seafood industry can be attributed to public panic over Pfiesteria
piscicida, the microbe that in its toxic form has been blamed
for sickening or killing fish in three Chesapeake tributaries
and illness among two dozen people.
The fish kills affected mostly inedible menhaden fish in a few
miles of the rivers on Maryland's lower Eastern Shore. And the
impact on human health so far appears limited. But consumer fears
have extended to all seafood from the bay, and even ocean fish
caught hundreds of miles from the Chesapeake.
"It's actually getting worse, business-wise," said Joe
Rupp, president of the 350-member Maryland Charter Boat Association.
"It's the thing that won't go away."
The consumer scare persists, despite increasingly anguished assurances
from Maryland officials that Chesapeake seafood is safe to eat.
Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) yesterday pledged up to $200,000
-- three times the state's current fish promotion budget -- for
a major marketing effort to reassure jittery consumers.
"It's very frustrating," said Glendening, who has publicly
devoured Maryland seafood even as he has underscored the seriousness
of the pfiesteria problem by closing waterways and appointing
a blue-ribbon panel to recommend solutions. A seafood marketing
committee will present to him a proposal tomorrow to deal with
the public relations nightmare spawned by the pfiesteria attacks.
Meanwhile, Glendening is taking issue with two supermarket chains'
promotions of their seafood as coming from waters other than the
Chesapeake Bay, promotions that fuel the perception that bay seafood
is unsafe or undesireable to eat.
Giant Foods, the 174-store supermarket chain with the largest
market share in the Washington area, stopped selling rockfish
Sept. 6.
"We had it, but nobody was buying it. We ended up dumping
it in the dumpster," said Giant spokesman Barry F. Scher.
Fresh Fields, an upscale grocery chain with 12 area stores, also
is not offering rockfish. "Ever since this issue came up,
we pulled it," said Joseph Dobrow, director of marketing.
Both chains have posted signs informing customers that they don't
carry fish from the affected waters and beyond.
"Most of the fish we sell is farm-raised or comes from the
coastal waterways of the Atlantic," says a sign Giant began
posting last weekend.
Glendening said yesterday that he would call top executives of
Giant and send letters to other grocers to complain about their
refusal to buy some or all types of Maryland seafood.
"I would urge the corporations to use some balance and act
responsibly," he said. "My frustration is for the workers
and their families" who rely on the bay for their livelihoods.
Although there have been no reports of Chesapeake crabs attacked
by pfiesteria, the demand for them has also slumped.
"We've had annual community crabfests, people who've been
with us for four or five years, canceling [orders], because they
can't get the participation," said Bert Kappel, director
of Annapolis Seafood, which owns three stores and three restaurants
from Severna Park to Waldorf.
As the story has spread, out-of-state sales of the Maryland blue
crabs -- the state's largest seafood export -- also have suffered.
Last week, Kappel said, a longtime customer in California canceled
an air shipment of two bushels of blue crabs. Customers closer
to home have "asked me about king crab legs from Alaska,
salmon, lobster, shrimp."
Restaurants also have distanced themselves from bay seafood. Legal
Seafood, a Boston-based seafood chain with 14 restaurants in Massachusetts,
Rhode Island and Washington, issued a news release last week emphasizing
that all its seafood is "caught in the open waters off the
Northeast coast of the U.S."
Similarly, Crisfield Seafood Restaurant, at Lee Plaza in Silver
Spring, is reprinting its menus to tell customers that its fish
isn't from the bay, even though the restaurant's walls are adorned
with classic Chesapeake scenes.
"We're not ordering anything from the bay because we want
to tell our customers that," said John Richmond, part owner
and general manager. "We're kind of going with the flow."
Dining at the original Crisfield Restaurant, on Georgia Avenue
in Silver Spring, is off about 20 percent "and getting worse,"
said Henry Landis, the general manager. Sales of soft-shell crabs
are down by half, he said, and overall income has dropped "at
least a third. Even people eating here say, `Boy, we feel we're
taking a chance.'"
The effect is also being felt on Southwest Washington's waterfront,
where generations of fishmongers have hawked seafood from boats
and barges.
"People are scared to death to eat seafood," said Sunny
White, an owner of White's Seafood on the wharf and of Capt. White's
Crabhouse Restaurant in Alexandria. "We've had to lay off
five people and change the hours of others. The profit's not been
there."
Last week's fish sales at the wharf were down 50 percent, compared
with last year's, White said.
At Jessie Taylor Seafood, also on the wharf, workers normally
spend seven days on, seven off. This week, a third of them were
put on a four-day work schedule. "We held off as long as
we could," an owner Shelton Evans said.
At a Mid-Atlantic Food Dealers Association trade show this week
in Timonium, Md., a booth for the Maryland seafood office proclaimed,
"It's Always Time for Maryland Seafood!"
But nearby, Quincy Martin, vice president of Super Pride, an eight-store
Baltimore chain, said that his fish sales were off at least 50
percent and that the seafood counter hours have been reduced by
four hours a day.
The 14 wholesalers at the Maryland Food Center in Jessup also
are hurting.
"Most of all the seafood wholesalers are reporting [sales
declines of] up to 60 and one or two as high as 90, with probably
30 the lowest decline, primarily in crab wholesalers," said
Roy Castle, director of seafood marketing for the Maryland Department
of Agriculture.
"We're off 50 to 75 percent," said Patrick Welsh Sr.,
54, owner of the Reliant Fish Co. and secretary of the Seafood
Dealers Association.
Reliant workers are being sent home early for lack of work, said
Patrick Welsh Jr., 32. "I've never seen anything like it,"
he said. "You get a product you bring in day in and day out.
All of a sudden, you get the rug yanked from right underneath
you, for God knows what reason. We're still trying to figure it
out."
Staff writer Charles Babington contributed to this report.
Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company