Fall 2007 Seafood Buys

Early fall is normally a good time to snap up some relatively good buys on seafood. Demand from summer coastal resorts typically drops off rapidly at the same time that regular restaurant sales also soften due to the back-to-school doldrums. But while demand takes a hit, fishing normally remains quite good for many species.

Take lobster. For the first time since 2003, the boat prices to Maine fishermen fell below $4 a pound at the end of the summer. That prompted Down East lobstermen to tie up their boats to protest the low prices being offered by lobster dealers as the tourist season wound down. While that's not exactly a steal, it should make lobster a better buy this fall than it's been the past few years.

On the wild salmon front, most prices have also eased a bit. Alaska's harvest of some 200 million fish was about 30 percent higher than last year. The state's sockeye catch of almost 50 million fish was the largest since 1996. That means there will be plenty of frozen sockeye fillets available until next summer's fishery. Catches of kings and cohos, which normally account for less than 10 percent of the Alaska catch, were below average, however, so don't expect to see a lot of that fish available.

Farmed salmon prices took a tumble this September to their lowest levels in two years; Larger than expected harvests from Chile and Norway were the main reason. Last year, Chile, the main source of farmed salmon for the U.S. market, shipped a whopping 220 million pounds of Atlantic fillets to the U.S. Even at these lower price levels, salmon farmers are still making good enough margins to increase production, so prices should stay at or below their current levels for the next year.

Cod prices, on the other hand, keep creeping up. In September, Iceland, once the world's largest cod producer, cut its cod quota by a third to less than 300 million pounds. That's increased demand for cod from Alaska, where fishermen catch almost 500 million pounds of cod a year. European, Japanese, Chinese and U.S. buyers are all scrambling to buy Alaska cod. With the Euro at a record high, the Europeans are able to outbid other buyers. As a result, the wholesale price for frozen Alaska cod fillets hit a record $4 a pound this October.

If the price of fresh yellowfin and bigeye Ahi, is too high, think about trying tombo. That's the Hawaiian name for the big albacore that longliners catch in the deep waters of the South Pacific. Unlike the small albacore caught off the West Coast, whose meat is a light brown color, tombo ahi have deep pink meat. They're a good buy in the fall, especially when the fish are running off Hawaii and Fiji; expect to pay about half the price of yellowfin or bigeye. If you don't see tombo at your favorite fish counter, ask your fishmonger to find some.

Prices for larger sizes of wild shrimp have jumped about 17 percent above last year's levels, in spite of the fact that fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico had a decent year. The price of similar sizes of farmed black tiger shrimp, however, are up only slightly. That's because the U.S. shrimp industry, armed with millions of dollars in federal and state marketing dollars, appears to be getting some traction in its promotion campaign to convince Americans that wild shrimp is better than farmed. The best buys on shrimp remain the medium and smaller sizes of farmed white shrimp.