Larry Collins thought he'd be at sea now, furiously hauling tire-sized traps teeming with the city's famous Dungeness crabs during the frenzied first days of the season.
But on Friday, more than three days after the central California crab fishery opened, Collins' boat remained tethered to Fisherman's Wharf as he joined crab fishermen in refusing to take the price offered by the West Coast's largest processor: Pacific Seafood.
"I've got to make a living, but I'm not going to be some slave boat for some processor," said Collins, vice president of the San Francisco Crab Boat Owners Association.
PHOTO: AP
"We love to fish, but we can't keep doing it if it's a losing proposition," he said.
The dispute that stalled the opening of the Dungeness crab season highlights the increasingly bitter struggle between commercial fishermen and Pacific Seafood, the company that dominates the West Coast's seafood industry.
Industry critics call the company the "Wal-Mart of the Seas" -- a symbol of what's wrong with the seafood business. They complain the company has become so powerful its uses its dominance to dictate lower prices for their catch and also drives small processors out of business.
"It's the Wal-Mart syndrome," said Pete Leipzig, who heads the Fishermen's Marketing Association. "They are so large that they dictate to companies what to produce and what to pay."
Pacific Seafood officials say they offer prices based on an increasingly global market.
"The fishermen are still independent. They make the choice on where to deliver," said Tim Horgan, the company's chief operating officer.
"We can't force them to do business, nor can we force the other processors to pay a lower price," he said.
The Central California Dungeness fishery, which stretches from Monterey County to Mendocino County, officially opened after midnight on Tuesday.
But in an unusual show of solidarity, crab fishermen in the region's three main ports -- Bodega Bay, Half Moon Bay and San Francisco -- have stuck together in what has amounted to a fishing strike after failing to agree on catch prices with Pacific Seafood and other processors.
The fishermen originally asked for US$1.85 per pound (0.45kg), while the processors offered to pay US$1.50 per pound. After negotiations between crabbers and processors at the three ports, Pacific Seafood raised their offer to US$1.65 per pound by midweek, but the fishermen wouldn't go lower than US$1.75.
Pacific Seafood lowered it's offer to US$1.25 on Friday, saying the fishermen had missed the deadline to meet the lucrative market for the weekend before Thanksgiving.
The fishermen said fuel and bait expenses have nearly doubled and they can't afford to fish for US$1.25 per pound, US$0.50 below last year's rate.
"The price of everything has gone up except the price of my crab," said Dave Shogren, 60, whose boat Aleutian Storm sat idle on Friday.
The processors said they were also dealing with higher energy prices as well as weaker demand because Hurricane Katrina had wiped out casinos and hotels that have become big crab buyers in recent years.
"Everybody's got higher fuel costs. With the amount of money it would cost us to process, we gave them the best offer we could this year," said Joe Cincotta, who manages Pacific Seafood's San Francisco plant.
The standoff left San Francisco Bay area retailers and restaurants without the fresh crabs consumers have come to expect in mid-November -- two weeks before the opening of fisheries further north and just in time for Thanksgiving.
Michael Guardino, owner of Guardino's restaurant at Fisherman's Wharf, was selling fresh crabs shipped in from Canada because that's what his customers want.
"San Franciscans are waiting for local crabs. Until they settle this dispute, I can't sell local crabs," Guardino said.
Last season, California's crab fishery had its second-largest catch on record with 10,750 tonnes landed, said Pete Kalvass, a marine biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game. But he expected lower numbers this year.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day