(seafood.com) Japan's purchase of king, snow crab show recovery in July; imports of frozen pollock roe from U.S. and Russia total about 40,000 tons

(Vietnam News Brief) Vietnam earned over $1.066 billion from pangasius fish exports in the year up to August 15, rising 1.8% from the same period last year.

(vasep.com.vn) In the second quarter of 2012, Vietnam shrimp exports reached US$579.22 million, up 8.24 percent from that of the same period of 2011. Through June 2012, shrimp exports gained US$1.015 billion, up 4.5 percent over that of the same period last year. Along with persistent epidemic on shrimp starting since the first quarter of this year, in the second quarter, main bottlenecks of shrimp sector are barriers from consuming markets, reduction in global shrimp price led to loss in shrimp’s competitiveness, increase in raw material price and input costs. In June, shrimp exports tended to drop by 4 percent and may be continued unless barriers from importers are removed, especially Japanese market which inspected Ethoxyquin residue on shrimp consignments originated from Vietnam. Shrimp production and export situation in the second quarter of 2012 include 10 remarkable points as follows:

(IntraFish) US catfish farmers are struggling to make ends meet as catfish feed prices rocket -- they hovered near $250 (€199) a ton for two decades before jumping to $600 (€477) a ton in the past two years, the New York Times reported last week.

(seafood.com) Japan has imposed tough restrictions on domestic farming of bluefin tuna as the young ones caught from the ocean for rearing in captivity do not get the chance to lay eggs thereby depleting stock of the high-demand fish.

(seafood.com) Russian fishermen have caught 2.83 million tonnes of fish since the beginning of the year, which is 0.8% more than they caught in the same period of 2011.

(fis.com) The Foreign Trade Chamber (Camex), under the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade (MDIC), decided to reduce the import tax applied to frozen sardines, from 10 per cent to 2 per cent.

(vasep.com.vn) Over the five recent years, Vietnam has remained the leading supplier of pangasius to Singapore. Vietnam’s earnings from fish export to the market were 2 times higher than that of Indonesia – Singapore’s second largest supplier.

(VASEPNews) In the first seven months of 2012, Minh Phu Seafood Corporation (Minh Phu Seafood Corp) exported 17,867 MT of shrimp products for total revenue of US$211.86 million. The figures rose by 32.66 percent in volume and 30.61 percent in value from the same time last year. Minh Phu Seafood Corp still ranked the first place among seafood exporters in Vietnam.

(brecorder) Although Pakistan's seafood exports have grown considerably even after the EU ban, yet this achievement cannot be attributed to real increase in terms of value.