. . . By quality . . . 



Fish are packed in ice and loaded onto trucks for the 

 journey to market 



Fish change hands a number of times on the way 

 to the table and each time proper care must be 

 taken of the highly perishable stuff. Sometimes 

 people fall down. It takes a long time to win a 

 customer back. 



"No doubt it's a problem," Allsbrook says, "in 

 some areas, fishermen do not take care of the 

 product." Then, too, sanitary conditions in seafood 

 plants may soon come under fire. Allsbrook says 

 "You're going to see some big changes in the next 

 four or five years. . . Food and Drug (the federal 

 Food and Drug Administration) is really tearing 

 into those people." 



Others fault some retailers for selling "fresh" 

 fish that's actually been frozen in the round and 

 thawed (and may not have been so fresh even when 

 it was frozen). That gives fish a bad reputation, 

 they say. Some say the often poor locations, odor 

 and general atmosphere of some retail stores in- 

 land don't help sell North Carolina seafood, either. 



"Seafood in the past has been a dirty thing," 

 says Ralph Jarvis, president of the North Carolina 

 Fisheries Association and a seafood dealer himself. 

 "It's changed a lot in the last few years. We've 

 come a long ways, but there's still a whole lot that 

 can be done with keeping fish fresh. . . But on the 

 average, most of the larger fish dealers are doing 

 a good job." 



To help improve seafood quality from water to 

 table, Sea Grant researchers and advisory agents 

 have been working with fishermen and handlers on 

 boat insulation, proper icing and freezing methods, 

 plant design, and packaging. 



The Un 

 gram Newsle 

 veisity of No 

 Burlington 

 Carolina State 1 

 No. 6, June 1976. Dr. B. J. Copeland, director. Karen 

 Jurgensen, editor. Second-class postage paid 

 Raleigh, N. C. 27611. 



These oysters were loaded onto a small truck which carried them to the larger truck at right which in turn 

 carried them to a northern soup company 



. . . By channels of distribution 



But that's only half the battle. Says Jarvis, 

 "There's definitely a lot lacking in our marketing 

 of the finfish. There's a need for new market outlets 

 for finfish, that's our weakest thing." It's an area 

 the Fisheries Association has agreed to work on. 



At East Carolina University's Business School, 

 Dr. John Summey has been taking a look at the dis- 

 tribution channels for the state's seafood. His Sea 

 Grant-supported work has revealed a real "hodge 

 podge affair" with "undefined channels of distri- 

 bution." 



If he can find a common thread, if there is one, 

 Summey hopes the industry will be able to use the 

 information to better serve the public. 



"I don't have anything solid . . . there seem to be 

 a number of different ways fish move," depending 

 on the size of the dealer, how big the catch is, the 

 demand in the North, and the difficulty in (and 

 resistance to) inland delivery in North Carolina. 



It's a basic supply and demand situation, Sum- 

 mey says, the product moves where the price is 

 best and the hassle is least. And that's often in 

 large shipments moving North, rather than 

 smaller mixed shipments moving inland. 



In part, Summey thinks the problems of getting 

 seafood inland in North Carolina are "a real com- 

 munications, awareness problem. A lot of it is that 

 these people (buyers inland) don't know who on the 

 coast is shipping inland." 



The state, along with the Coastal Plains Re- 

 gional Commission, has tried to give distribution 



channels a boost by sponsoring trips to the Mid- 

 west to promote North Carolina seafood. Last year, 

 a trip to Chicago was arranged for dealers. 



Allsbrook, who arranged the trip, says the buy- 

 ers "want the product either headed and gutted or 

 filleted." And, they want it in small orders. 



"The difficulty we have had is in getting our 

 industry to respond to these small orders . . . we've 

 had some success, the biggest problem has been 

 transportation." 



In Washington, N.C., Milton Evans, who sends 

 three or four loaded trucks North each day, says 

 "the people in Virginia have got us whipped" on 

 the Midwest trade. They can put a small shipment 

 on a truck that's going that way anyway, he says. 

 But no trucks from here have similar routes, so a 

 whole truck-load would have to be made up to go 

 West. 



One thing that Jarvis thinks will help is the 

 port facility planned for Wanchese harbor. "That's 

 going to be a big help, it'll be a big supply area, it 

 would attract a lot of attention." 



And Alvah Ward, another of the state's seafood 

 promoters, agrees, "our greatest need in North 

 Carolina now is to develop centers of distribution 

 ... we are fast approaching the time for centrali- 

 zation." Wanchese Harbor fits the bill, "The total 

 concept is to have at one central point an area from 

 which both fresh and frozen product can move." 

 Ward thinks construction can begin this fall at 

 Wanchese. 



