Steve Bittenbender

Contributing Editor

Steve Bittenbender works as a freelance journalist based in Louisville, Kentucky. Besides working for SeafoodSource.com as a contributing editor, Steve also works as an editor for Government Security News and as the Kentucky correspondent for the Reuters News Service. He also works as a sports writer for The (Louisville) Courier-Journal and The Associated Press. He has received awards from the Kentucky Press Association and the Louisville Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for his on-going and enterprise reporting work.

Published on
July 24, 2020

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was joined by three industry groups and a technology company in a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and State Department regarding the actions of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to curb foreign workers from entering the country, primarily via the H-1B visa program.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, 21 July, in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, California, comes a

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Published on
July 24, 2020

Shrimp landings in the Gulf of Mexico are on pace for their worst year since 2002, according to data from the Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA) ...

Photo courtesy of Bonnie Taylor

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Published on
July 23, 2020

A panel of fishing industry representatives has called on the federal government to re-establish a National Seafood Council, which it believes will bolster the consumption of domestic fish and other seafood ... 

Slide courtesy of MAFAC/SeafoodSource

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Published on
July 17, 2020

The chairman of the U.S. House subcommittee that oversees the nation's fisheries wrote a stern letter to a top NOAA official on Thursday, 16 July, questioning how the agency has handled the COVID-19 pandemic …

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

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Published on
July 14, 2020

Seafood Harvesters of America is calling on NOAA Fisheries to develop a more consistent policy in issuing waivers for observers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bob Dooley, the organization’s president, and Leigh Habegger, its executive director, signed a letter sent Monday, 13 July, calling for NOAA to rethink the agency’s current policy regarding at-sea observer coverage. The letter – which was sent to Dr. Neil Jacobs, the

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Published on
July 9, 2020

Hundreds of seafood-related companies have received approval for Paycheck Protection Program loans of at least USD 150,000 (EUR 132,820), according to a database provided by the U.S. Small Business Administration ... 

Photo courtesy of

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Published on
July 7, 2020

The U.S Small Business Administration on Monday, 6 July, released data on businesses that received a Paycheck Protection Program loan of at least USD 150,000 (EUR 132,764) or more, and based on that information, only a few seafood-related entities were among the major recipients ... 

Photo courtesy of

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Published on
July 3, 2020

Four U.S. senators representing the Chesapeake Bay region wrote a letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on Wednesday, 1 July, urging him to invest COVID-19 funding to the area’s shellfish farmers whose businesses have been greatly affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

The letter, written by Virginia’s U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and Maryland’s U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, all Democrats,

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Published on
July 1, 2020

U.S. Representatives Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Florida) and Don Young (R-Alaska) filed a bill in Congress on Friday, 26 June, that calls for USD 3 billion (EUR 2.67 billion) in grants funding designed to restore the country’s coastal ecosystems, including fisheries.

The goal behind H.R. 7387, titled the “Shovel-Ready Restoration Grants for Coastlines and Fisheries Act of 2020,” is to fund resilience-building projects that could

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Published on
July 1, 2020

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday, 30 June, passed a bill that would extend the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) through 8 August, just hours before the application period for the small business COVID-19 loan program ended.

The measure still needs to be approved by the U.S. House of Representatives, which could take up the bill as early as Wednesday, 1 July.

The bipartisan plan to extend the forgivable loan program designed to keep workers on payrolls

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