I see sharks!

I am not really seeing these maligned denizens of the deep.  I.C. Sharks is my seafood market of choice across Gandy Bridge on the Pinellas side. They sent an e-mail this morning that I thought may be of interest to more than just their customers:

"Well, like many of you we are monitoring the oil spill, and the devastating effects it could have on Gulf Seafood.  Subsequently, we would like to share with you our thoughts on how we initially see the oil spill affecting our products and their availability.

Shrimp, although we have carried a "Texas Brown" shrimp from time to time in the past, our focus when it comes to shrimp has always been the Key West Pinks and other pink shrimp taken from the Caribbean.  Therefore, although we anticipate the laws of supply and demand affecting the price of shrimp, we don't see any problem with supply.  Thus far, we haven't seen any sharp increase in price, therefore our prices remain unchanged.  Moreover, we just got in a load of fresh off the boat beautiful Key West Pinks (21-25 ct.).

Fish, all of our local fresh Red, Black and Scamp Grouper, American Red Snapper, Mangrove Snapper and Hogfish come from the Gulf waters directly off our coast.  So, at this point the areas where our fishermen target have not been damaged by the oil spill.  As a matter of fact we have two boats that are unloading this morning, so our supply of Grouper is outstanding!

Crabs, luckily for all of us thus far this year we are getting all our crabs from local Tampa Bay Crabbers.  In the past, due the shortage of local crabs we have gotten crabs from the NW Gulf regions, but at this point crabs are plentiful.  Again, will the laws of supply and demand affect the prices of live Blue Crabs...perhaps, thus far, our prices remain the same.

In conclusion, we are happy to report that all things are great at I.C. Sharks and we have plenty of fresh off the boat seafood for our customers.  If things change we'll do our best to keep you up to date on all changes.  Till then, we'll see ya at the market soon!

Darryl and your I.C. Sharks Crew"

For seafood lovers like myself, this is good news.  I have no illusions that it will last, but, in the meantime, I hope you will support this market and our fisher-people. Their lively-hoods depend upon us buying their products. Our family, friends and neighbors in Northwest Florida may not be so lucky.