Americans and the chefs who cook for them love domestic seafood. But a simmering stew of labor concerns and changing government regulations are merging to create what may become a costly shortage in the supply of those fish.
While many large seafood restaurant chains harvest from international waters, smaller operations prefer to lure customers with local seafood offerings. Without access to those supplies at reasonable prices, many foresee a time when they will be forced to purchase seafood from sources outside of the United States.
If labor issues make local seafood so expensive that our customers won’t pay for it, then we have no choice other than to get it elsewhere, said Greg Reggio, partner and co-founder of New Orleans-based Zea Rotisserie & Grill, an 11-unit chain specializing in crab and crawfish, both of which require human processing. To live in this area and not be able to utilize that resource because processors can’t get the labor to do it would be a sin.
Though no official studies have been conducted, fishing industry experts say boat captains are an aging lot, and there aren’t a lot of new kids on the dock set to replace them. Seafood processors recognize that problem, as well, but they believe that particular crisis is still years away. Their more immediate concern is finding affordable labor to process the bounty already arriving at their plants.
Despite high U.S. unemployment, industry sources say the $8-an-hour average wage for working the slime line gutting fish, cracking crab and stripping squid is too little incentive for Americans to get dirty.
Yet while there are plenty of legal immigrants eager to do such work, processors claim pending changes in work-visa rules will send labor costs so high they could devastate their firms.
If we’re going to process crab, we’ve got to have a source of affordable labor, and it’s not going to be Americans, said Gary Bauer, owner of Pontchartrain Blue Crab, a processor in Slidell, La. I hate to say that because it makes me sound like I’m judging, but I’m not. They only allow 66,000 H2B [temporary work] visas a year, and these people are happy to come here and perform a job no one here wants to do.
Penton Media