Hurricane Sandy Hurts Fishing Industry, But East Coast Stays Strong

Thanks to Hurricane Sandy, fresh fish won’t be on the menu — or at the grocers — for awhile.

Yes, in addition to leaving much of the New York and New Jersey coastlines flooded and without power, Sandy has also managed to wreck the mid-Atlantic region’s fishing industry.

Major issues with transportation and Atlantic fishing operations mean that restaurateurs as far as Ohio and Kentucky will have to go without some of the season’s most popular (and tasty) catches — such as lobster, crab and cod — for at least a few weeks, reports Business First.

And while snobby seafood-starved diners may complain about the lack of sashimi or moules frites, it’s nothing compared to what the fresh-fish industry is going through right now.

Last week, Columbus-based seafood wholesaler Frank Gonzalez said that he expected his sales to be down as much as 50 percent due to the post-tropical storm — something he’s never seen in his 20-plus years in the business. Ouch. “You can’t buy fresh fish and sit on it,” he told Business First.

And many others are in the same boat. According to The Daily Beast, one famous Chelsea fishmonger had to discard up to 2,000 pounds of lobster and 500 pounds of other seafood — yes, that’s one day’s worth of inventory — after losing power.

Yet it seems that the city that never sleeps has already figured out how to swim around the issue. The Daily Beast reported on Tuesday that many New York City sushi restaurants returned with fresh inventory at the beginning of this week and shunned their limited post-storm menus for regular fare. Pretty impressive, NYC.

via Business First and The Daily Beast