Rarely has a week in seafood news been so heavily dominated by big events as this one, with news of Atlantic Sapphire's huge fish mortalities and cancellation of the Boston Show dominating the airwaves.
Monday morning in Europe saw IntraFish first to break the news of the loss of 227,000 fish at Atlantic Sapphire's Danish land-based salmon farm, quickly followed by analysis from both industry and our own journalists who followed the company's plummeting share price and dug into the how the news affected the only other stock-listed land-based salmon producer, as well as talking to analysts about what the event meant for the sector in general.
We also heard exclusively from CEO Johan Andreassen who told us that events like these were part of the learning process for the groundbreaking producer and that there was no reason for investors to lose confidence, after he and several other insiders quickly bought up shares in a very public show of confidence.
And the breaking news continued Monday morning US time. Following the growing trickle of exhibitors and buyers pulling out, IntraFish was first out with news that one of the seafood industry's biggest events, the Boston Seafood Show was to be postponed this year, with no news yet of a new date or venue.
The reason? The international spread of Covid-19. What now? We asked key players their plans and Executive Editor John Fiorillo pondered whether a show this year at all was even really feasible... or necessary.
But the big news didn't stop there and Tuesday we posted the news of more salmon mortalities, this time from Cooke Aquaculture over in eastern Canada, where around 77,000 fish died at one of one of the company's farms on Newfoundland's south coast, with the company blaming "severe winter storm events experienced over the past month."
Thursday saw more big news out of Canada, with the announcement of Canadian seafood giant Clearwater's new arrival to the acquisition market. Who will buy? IntraFish analysed the contenders and put in a call to CEO Ian Smith.
Over in Norway, our team was reporting live from the North Atlantic Seafood Forum and Editor-in-Chief Drew Cherry broke the news that the CEO of Russian pollock-trading giant Pacific Rim had stepped down to be replaced by a former BMW, Diageo exec.
More big names came in the form of Mowi's secret liasons with Google-parent Alphabet for the last three years, culminating in the huge roll-out of artificial intelligence technology across Mowi's farms.
Big stories, but just the tip of the iceberg. Check out our hompage for the whole picture of the week's news and make sure you are on top of events.
