COVID-19 impacts on United States crawfish. (Special Issue: COVID-19 impacts on selected commodities.)

This research determines the impacts of COVID-19 US on crawfish production and consumption for 2020 and 2021 using an Equilibrium Displacement Model. In the US, crawfish is one of the seafood commodities where most production is consumed by domestic consumers (7% of domestic consumption is from imports). Crawfish and rice are complementary. Therefore, the impacts of COVID-19 on crawfish consumption simultaneously influence rice production and crawfish producers and consumers. In the first year of COVID-19 (2020), the reduction in crawfish retail demand caused negative effects on final consumers and producers. However, crawfish consumption recovered significantly in the second year (2021), which could compensate for the loss in 2020. Overall, consumer and producer gains ranged from $549 to $626 million if the COVID-19 pandemic only impacted retail consumption. However, in 2021, the increase in production costs due to higher oil/diesel prices and other input prices caused the farm supply to decrease. As a result, total welfare gains ranged from $200 to $228 million. If the demand in 2021 did not increase, but the crawfish farm supply decreased, consumer and producer losses ranged from $929 to $1045 million. Overall, the total effects of COVID-19 on consumers and producers for 2020 and 2021 depend on its effects in 2021. If the demand in 2021 increased following the decrease in farm supply, consumers and producers would benefit from the shocks of COVID-19 due to higher post-COVID-19 demand.

A brief overview of the issues faced by Harmful Algal Blooms along Johor straits

Urbanization of coastal areas worldwide has increased due to an increase in the global population. The production of sustainable aquaculture is greatly impacted by a surge of this urbanization. In certain countries, particularly for individuals with more limited space in metropolitan areas, such as along Johor's coastal area, aquaculture might well be a good strategy to maintain food availability (continuous production plus high-quality meals). Consequently, the adoption of aquaculture along the Johor's coastal area has lead to Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB). This paper examines the evolution of the aquaculture industry of Malaysian Johor coastal areas in relation to HABs. In addition to HABs, the aforementioned metropolitan regions confront diverse economic and geographical obstacles when attempting to increase their aquaculture production sustainably. Those problems are therefore addressed using a variety of operations as well as surveillance techniques in this brief overview. Lockdowns and border prohibitions caused by the continuous COVID-19 infection have had a global impact. These logistical difficulties in the seafood industry have increased dependency on imported supplies. It is suggested that international decision- making, supervision, and knowledge exchange can successfully solve the challenges urbanized areas have in ensuring sustainable food security through the evolution within the aquaculture sector.

Fisheries and aquaculture products consumption in France: when the Covid-19 crisis did not lead to more sustainable purchases

In terms of food consumption, sustainability dimensions are often conflicting with purchasing power and practical purchases. France lands, farms, imports, and consumes large quantities of fisheries and aquaculture products (FAPs). The pandemic affected both domestic and foreign FAP supply through restrictions on trade and fishing conditions. Numerous sale points offering FAPs were closed during the pandemic. This general context has likely questioned the role of consumers on environmental, economic, and social matters. The aim of the paper is to assess whether the Covid-19 crisis has been an opportunity for French consumers to align their consumption at-home with the environmental issues by favouring domestic producers, short channels, or eco-friendly products. Quantitative data on at-home ordinary household purchases in metropolitan France from 2017 to 2021 was used along with t-test methods. It seems that fresh FAPs consumption did not truly adapt to the domestic fish production in defiance of import restrictions and available surpluses. While fresh shellfish at-home consumption did not change significantly in 2020, salmon and cod are still widely favoured by French consumers at-home, although their French production is virtually non-existent. On the contrary, domestically produced fish species remains poorly consumed at-home. The abundant supply of fresh salmon initially intended for other markets has permitted to consolidate the dominant position of this species on the French at-home consumption market. Initiated by supermarkets and hypermarkets and followed up by consumers, the trend of purchasing pre-packaged fresh fish has been substantially amplified by the pandemic and seems to persist over time. © 2023 EDP Sciences. All rights reserved.

Innovation to limit seafood fraud post-COVID-19.

Seafood is an important source of protein and micronutrients, but fishery stocks are increasingly under pressure from both legitimate and illegitimate fishing practices. Sustainable management of our oceans is a global responsibility, aligning with United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14, Life Below Water. In a post-COVID-19 world, there is an opportunity to build back better, where locally sourced food via transparent supply chains are ever-more important. This article summarises emerging research of two innovative case studies in detecting and validating seafood provenance; and using alternative supply chains to minimise the opportunity for seafood fraud in a post-COVID-19 world.

Unwarranted Exclusion of Intermediate Lineage A-B SARS-CoV-2 Genomes Is Inconsistent with the Two-Spillover Hypothesis of the Origin of COVID-19

Pekar et al. (2022) propose that SARS-CoV-2 was a zoonotic spillover that first infected humans in the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China. They propose that there were two separate spillovers of the closely related lineages A and lineage B in a short period of time. The two lineages are differentiated by two SNVs;hence, a single-SNV A-B intermediate must have occurred in an unsampled animal host if the two-spillover hypothesis is correct. Consequently, confirmation of the existence of an intermediate A-B genome from humans would falsify their hypothesis of two spillovers. Pekar et al. identified and excluded 20 A-B intermediate genomes from their analysis. A variety of exclusion criteria were applied, including low read depth and the assertion of repeated erroneous base calls at lineage-defining positions 8782 and 28144. However, data from GISAID show that most of the genomes were sequenced to high average sequencing depth, appearing inconsistent with these criteria. The decision to exclude the majority of genomes was based on personal communications, with raw data unavailable for inspection. Multiple errors, biases, and inconsistencies were observed in the exclusion process. For example, 12 intermediate genomes from one study were excluded;however, 54 other genomes from the same study were included, indicating selection bias. Puzzlingly, two intermediate genomes from Beijing were discarded despite an average sequencing depth of 2175X;however, four genomes from the same sequencing study were included in the analysis. Lastly, we discuss 14 additional possible intermediate genomes not discussed by Pekar et al. and note that genome sequence filtration is inappropriate when considering the presence or absence of a specific SNV pair in an outbreak. Consequently, we find that the exclusion of many of the intermediate genomes is unfounded, leaving the conclusion of two natural zoonoses unsupported.Copyright © 2023 by the authors.

A Modified Artificial Neural Network (ANN)-Based Time Series Prediction of COVID-19 Cases from Multi-Country Data

The deadly Corona virus that first appeared in a seafood market in the Wuhan city of China in December 2019 has been causing global distress by claiming lives and collapsing economies. Given its serious nature, there is an urgent need to understand the virus's future trajectory. The current study predicts the next day confirmed, death and recovery cases of COVID-19 pandemic for India, Italy, Spain, and the USA by using a modified multilayer neural network (MMLNN) model. The spread of the COVID-19 data is collected from the Kaggle website for the period of 22nd January 2020 to 20th April 2020 (i.e., for 90 days). The predicted figures of the spread of the disease have been estimated and compared with the actual values. Higher precision of the estimates has been observed from the MMLNN model compared to the conventional multilayer neural network (MLANN) model. Specifically, the MMLNN model does faster and more efficient training of the data resulting in less error. The paper forecasts the next day figures (i.e., for 21st April) for all the three cases and does the comparison of the results with the actual values reported. A deviation of 6% is obtained for India, and for the other three countries the deviation is below 3.5%. Given the high accuracy predictive power, the authors recommend that the MMLNN model can be integrated into the health policy of the countries that are struggling with the spread of the virus. Specifically, a decision on health policies such as restrictions on movement can be based on the short-range predictions of the spread of the virus infection.

Meta-analysis: COVID-19 diagnosis in chest CT—master key for radiologists

BackgroundCOVID-19 was discovered in February in China. Due to the high prevalence of the disease, early detection and rapid isolation of patients are the vital points for controlling the outbreak. The purpose of this study was to determine the correct location of chest CT scan in the diagnosis of COVID-19.Main textThe current study is a systematic review and meta-analysis. 2959 papers were found in all national and international databases. The study has been reported based on the PRISMA checklist. All analyses were done by CMA Ver. 2 software. The statistical analysis results show that the GGO observation level in the available shape was 46% in CT scan results, and the consolidation observation level in the general form was 33% in CT scan results. Pleural effusion was 7%, and linear opacity observation level was 24% in CT scan results in the general form. The CT scan test sensitivity level was gained 94.7%, and PCR test sensitivity level was achieved as 94.8%. This level was 89% in the early stage.ConclusionThe chest CT has about 24% higher diagnostic sensitivity than the PCR test, in the early stage. GGO revealed a declining process and also indicates that GGO is an early symptom of the disease in CT scan. Linear opacity is the reason behind the initial dyspnea in coronavirus suffering patients referring to the medical centers. The extra-pulmonary lesions increase in the last stage of the disease that makes the patient's worse.

Content and economic evaluation of omega-3 fatty acid nutritional supplements

Marinederived omega3 fatty acids, namely eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) are abundant in seafood and fish oils. They are recommended for their many health benefits. There has been a large and sustained growth in sales of nutritional supplements containing omega3 fatty acids during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, a total of 54 omega3 fatty acids supplement products of various brands available in Turkey was analysed for their fatty acids content using gas chromatography. In 59.3 % of the products examined, EPA plus DHA content was found to be less than what was stated on the label. It was observed that 25.9 % could meet the daily EPA+DHA need with a capsule or a measure of consumption. Overall, 35.2 % of products were found satisfactory in terms of providing 80 % or more of the daily EPA+DHA requirement with a capsule or a measure of consumption and advantageous in terms of contents and price. The remaining 64.8 % of products could not provide 80 % of the daily EPA+DHA requirement with a single capsule. This study provided information on the accuracy of the declared contents of omega3 fatty acids supplements and evaluated the advantages for the consumers.

Pre- and post-pandemic seafood purchasing behavior in the U.S.

The global COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an unprecedented economic shock in current times. Previous literature on consumer shopping behaviors during economic downturns is limited, and studies specific to seafood focused primarily on supply-side shocks. A national survey was conducted using an online platform from February 22 to April 6, 2021 that targeted 100 seafood consumers in each of 20 market areas across the U.S. Following data cleaning, 1908 usable responses were obtained. Results documented significant changes in consumer shopping behaviors. Significantly greater percentages of meals (generally and of seafood) were consumed at home and fewer away from home, as expected. Demographic differences were found in shopping behaviors by age, education, income, and gender, but not by ethnic group. Frequency of shopping decreased in 2020, but the expenditure per shopping trip did not, resulting in less overall spending for groceries as compared to 2019. Respondents were less likely to purchase seafood for takeout or for home delivery of prepared meals as compared to general meals because of concerns over quality, freshness, and safety of seafood. Half of respondents consumed approximately the same amount of seafood as before the pandemic; with 31% reporting decreased seafood consumption, and only 19% increased seafood consumption. Thus, study results provide evidence of a pandemic-imposed shift to consuming greater proportions of seafood meals at-home than away-from-home, and not an overall increase in seafood consumption. The choice of species eaten most often did not differ pre- and post-pandemic. Those respondents who reported decreased seafood consumption in 2020 did so primarily because of: 1) its expense, given reduced incomes from working fewer hours or being laid off; 2) unwillingness to prepare fish at home for the smell and "mess", or being uncomfortable preparing it; or 3) simply not preferring or liking seafood well enough to eat it more frequently. Those who reported increasing seafood consumption did so primarily because it was considered to be a healthy food choice. Additional work is needed to further examine consumption and shopping behaviors throughout the recovery in 2021 and 2022.

Factors Influencing Consumers' Willingness-to-Try Seafood Byproducts.

With increasing global demand for seafood, seafood byproducts (SB) utilization can contribute to a more sustainable food supply chain through waste-to-value food product development. However, consumer perceptions of SB (e.g., fish skin and bones) are underexplored. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate some factors influencing consumers' willingness-to-try seafood byproducts. An online survey was conducted in the USA regarding intervention of SB informational cues with N = 904 adult seafood consumers internationally. The proportion of consumers willing to try SB increased significantly (McNemar's test, α = 0.05) from 47% to 68% after SB safety and health claims had been presented in the questionnaire. Gender, race, SB knowledge, and previous SB consumption were significant predictors of trial intent (based on logistic regression), as were emotional baseline scores during the COVID-19 pandemic. Males were more open to SB consumption than females, and racial identity was associated with differential responsiveness to SB information. Higher levels of "bored" and "unsafe" feelings, and lower levels of "free" were associated with increased SB trial intent. Potential SB consumers identified fish products (82% willingness-to-try); seasoning mix, sauces, and dressing (71% willingness-to-try); and soup and gravy products (62% willingness-to-try) as most appropriate for SB incorporation. Predominant reasons for SB avoidance were concerns about sensory quality, safety, and nutrition. These consumer-driven data could guide SB product development concepts to encourage trial and overcome aversions through new consumption experience.

Perception shifts in seafood consumption in the United States

Perceptions about specific seafood attributes play an essential role in American consumers' choices of a seafood entre ' e served in casual and fine dining restaurants. However, the trends and determinants of consumer per-ceptions are underexplored. This research analyzes how consumers perceive specific attributes of a seafood entre ' e and examines the effect of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics on their perceptions. Factor analysis and multivariate Tobit models were employed to analyze data collected online via Qualtrics' consumer panels in the U.S. The results indicate that the proportion of participants who deem farm-raised and sustainability-certified fish safer to eat, better tasting, higher quality, more fairly traded, and more environ-mentally friendly is the highest. However, the difference in perceptions of domestic and imported fish is ambiguous. The perceptions of nutritional value for human consumption are near neutral among these seafood attributes. The main determinants of these perceptions are the frequency they eat fish, whether having children in a household, gender, ethnicity, and the age of consumers. These perceptions and determinants are relatively consistent before and during Covid-19. This study contributes to the literature on seafood perceptions at casual and fine dining restaurants and provides the most recent trend on American seafood perceptions and their de-terminants. These results are beneficial to seafood producers, distributors, and policymakers for providing more appropriate regulations related to future seafood supply in the U.S.

A price index of farmed fish: The case of Turkish aquaculture market

This study analyzed the market price dynamics of farmed fish using a price index in Turkey. A specific "Price Index" incorporating the leading aquaculture species produced by Turkish aquaculture, has been calculated for a five-year period spanning from 2016 to 2020. The empirical analysis is based on 60-month price and quantity data of chosen aquaculture species traded in a major wholesale fish market. Calculated prize index clearly indicates the noticeable effects of unusual economic and market dynamics on farmed fish prices. The significant increase in prices of agricultural inputs including aquafeed, electricity, fuel, maintenance of materials, and maintenance of buildings, as well as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, are the major factors influencing upward changes in price index. The "Turkish Aquaculture Price Index" is a practical tool that uses numerical expressions to reflect the periodic increase or decrease in the price of the aquaculture product commodity and makes significant contributions to understanding the price patterns and factors that have a cointegrated relation with the price changes in aquaculture market.

Tasting the ocean: How to increase ocean literacy using seafood heritage with a visceral approach

This contribution explores the growing interest in ocean literacy and sustainable seafood consumption through the lens of transdisciplinary and visceral research methods. It illustrates a series of experimental, marine-focused workshops, carried out during the Covid-19 pandemic for Irish students aged between 15 and 18. The empirical body builds on a series of questionnaires completed prior, during and at the end of the workshops as well as direct observations of feedbacks and interactions. By offering to the students creative and playful methods which included cooking classes, coastal explorations and information about their coastal cultural heritage, we argue that transdisciplinary and visceral methods can facilitate how ocean literacy and sustainable eating is understood and operationalised—in both educational programmes and policy frameworks.

Impacts of COVID-19 on U.S. Seafood Availability

Seafood is the food group with the highest share traded, and the U.S. is the world's largest seafood importer, importing 79% of the seafood consumed. Hence, a study examining the impacts of the measures to contain COVID-19 on U.S. seafood imports will not only show how U.S. seafood availability has been affected, but will also give strong indications of how resiliently the global seafood markets have worked through the pandemic. We find that U.S. imports of seafood actually increased in 2020 and 2021, suggesting supply chains were able to adapt to potential disruptions. Moreover, for the 14 largest product forms imported to the U.S., there are no strong price movements. Given that there is a global market for most species groups, this adaption also suggests that the markets have worked quite well beyond the U.S. Hence, while there have undoubtedly been market shocks associated with the COVID-19 measures such as the reduction in demand from the restaurant sector and the increased sales in the retail sector, opportunities seem to balance out challenges, and the supply chains for seafood to the U.S. have been highly resilient. © 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2022.

Leadership as the Main Driving Factor of Regional Sustainable Development Cooperation: A Case Study of ASEAN Tuna Ecolabelling (ATEL)

ASEAN Tuna Ecolabelling (ATEL) has agreed on a scheme of tuna ecolabelling after the approval at the Ministerial of ASEAN Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (AMAF) meeting in 2018. It makes ATEL the first regional seafood eco-label scheme in the world. It becomes an achievement of ASEAN in supporting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially for tuna fisheries management. Unfortunately, after four years, its scheme has not yet been completed and takes no support from ASEAN countries, including Indonesia as the initiator. Lack of leadership in ASEAN is the leading cause of the delay in the implementation of ATEL in its region. Leadership is the primary key to encouraging sustainable development, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study aims to analyze the lack of leadership as the main factor in the low effectiveness of regional cooperation in ASEAN. This research is expected to be a solution for completing the ATEL implementation process in that region.

A Review on: Post-Covid Complications

The "Coronavirus disease 2019" has resulted by infecting millions of people globally and indirectly affect the individuals through disruption of daily routine. Since the diagnosis of index case, linked to sea food and wet animal wholesale market in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.The discharge of this virus has spread worldwide and has threatened the whole world and considered as pandemic recently. World Health Organization (WHO] has declared COVID-19 Pandemic on March 2020. Long term health outcomes of COVID-19 have been reported with the similar diseases from other coronaviruses. "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome" and "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome". Major adverse outcomes was found to affect different body systems in humans (neurological system, GIT, hepatic an renal system, CVS, muscle pain, mental health outcomes, pulmonary outcomes, fungal infection and many more chronic symptoms were observed in patients in Post-COVID-19 recovery. Globally the community is focusing on trialing COVID-19 vaccines and its treatment, and its equally important to focus on recovered patients an possible events faced by patients in post recovery period. Thus this article emphasizes long-term COVID-19 health complications in patients during Post recovery period.

Perception shifts in seafood consumption in the United States

Perceptions about specific seafood attributes play an essential role in American consumers' choices of a seafood entrée served in casual and fine dining restaurants. However, the trends and determinants of consumer perceptions are underexplored. This research analyzes how consumers perceive specific attributes of a seafood entrée and examines the effect of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics on their perceptions. Factor analysis and multivariate Tobit models were employed to analyze data collected online via Qualtrics' consumer panels in the U.S. The results indicate that the proportion of participants who deem farm-raised and sustainability-certified fish safer to eat, better tasting, higher quality, more fairly traded, and more environmentally friendly is the highest. However, the difference in perceptions of domestic and imported fish is ambiguous. The perceptions of nutritional value for human consumption are near neutral among these seafood attributes. The main determinants of these perceptions are the frequency they eat fish, whether having children in a household, gender, ethnicity, and the age of consumers. These perceptions and determinants are relatively consistent before and during Covid-19. This study contributes to the literature on seafood perceptions at casual and fine dining restaurants and provides the most recent trend on American seafood perceptions and their determinants. These results are beneficial to seafood producers, distributors, and policymakers for providing more appropriate regulations related to future seafood supply in the U.S.

Disruptive Technologies for Achieving Supply Chain Resilience in COVID-19 Era: An Implementation Case Study of Satellite Imagery and Blockchain Technologies in Fish Supply Chain.

In supply chains where stakeholders belong to the economically disadvantaged segment and form an important part of the supply chain distribution, the complexities grow manifold. Fisheries in developing nations are one such sector where the complexity is not only due to the produce being perishable but also due to the livelihood dependence of others in the coastal regions that belong to the section of economically disadvantaged. This paper explains the contextual challenges of fish supply chain in a developing country and describes how integrating disruptive technologies can address those challenges. Through a positive deviance approach, we show how firms can help unorganized supply chains with economically disadvantaged suppliers by carefully redesigning the supply chain through the integration of satellite imagery and blockchain technology. With COVID-19 in the backdrop, we highlight how such technologies significantly improves the supply chain resilience and at the same time contributes to the income generating opportunities of poor fisherfolks in developing nations. Our study has important implications to both developing markets and food supply chain practitioners as this paper tackles issues such as perishability, demand-supply mismatch, unfair prices, and quality related data transparency in the entire value chain.

Challenges and opportunities: impacts of COVID-19 on Norwegian seafood exports

A rapidly growing literature shows that COVID-19 and the measures to contain the spread of the virus can have significant market impacts for seafood. These can be interruptions of production, or reductions in demand directly or indirectly due to supply chain challenges. In this paper we investigate the potential impacts of COVID-19 on seafood exports from Norway, the world's second largest seafood exporter, using highly detailed data from 2016 through May 2021. These data allow us to assess upstream impacts in the seafood supply chain close to the producer level in aggregate and by main sector, impacts on the largest products, and the extent to which export firm structure and export markets served have changed. We find very few impacts in aggregate as well as for individual products, suggesting that the markets and supply chains used by Norwegian seafood exports were sufficiently robust and flexible to accommodate the shocks created by COVID-19. Given Norway's size as a seafood exporter, the impact of COVID-19 has likely been moderate upstreams for a number of seafood sectors around the world, especially those in wealthy nations, with opportunities balancing out challenges, and that the supply chains have been highly resilient.

Sustainable Food Consumption: Demand for Local Produce in Singapore

The rapid pace of climate change has exacerbated Singapore’s ever-present vulnerability to food shortages. While most of Singapore’s current food supply is imported, the country is working towards becoming self-sufficient in at least 30% of its food demand by 2030. Though a high proportion of Singaporeans have pro-environmental views and believe that buying locally grown food is more eco-friendly, the demand for local produce remains low. To better understand the cause of this attitude–behaviour gap, this study investigated the factors influencing the purchasing decisions of local consumers, as well as their willingness to pay a premium for locally produced vegetables, eggs, and seafood in Singapore. The estimation results suggested that what primarily hinders the local produce demand of consumers with positive perceptions towards sustainability is not their income or product price. Instead, product-specific factors, such as freshness and quality of the produce, and easiness to identify the product at store were found to be positively associated with local produce purchase. Ensuring these factors can potentially lead to higher demand for local produce in Singapore. Attitudes and behaviours related to sustainability played a larger role in the willingness to pay (WTP) than purchase decision making. Thus, to enhance the WTP for local produce, educating the public regarding the sustainability aspect of local produce may prove to be effective.