Nora Almond of Cranston looks over the fish selection at the new self-service seafood display at the Stop & Shop off of Cranston Street.

The Providence Journal / John Freidah

Supermarket chain Stop & Shop is switching to self-service seafood sales in some of its 390 stores to manage costs at a time of high prices, a company representative says.

The Quincy, Mass., chain last month began replacing its ice-laden display cases in some stores with refrigerators and freezers stocked with prepackaged fish. Dutch conglomerate Royal Ahold, which owns Stop & Shop, is making the same changes at its Giant store chain in the Chesapeake Bay region.

“This is a business decision to control these costs,” said Robert Keane, a Stop & Shop spokesman. “The fish is just as fresh as before.”

Fresh-seafood prices remain high after the end of Lent, when prices traditionally fall. Lobster hit a new high, for instance, selling for as much as $17 per pound at retail recently. Freshly caught cod cost hit $11.99 per pound, and winter flounder is $12.99 at retail.

Supermarket chains around the country are taking diverging paths as they deal with such cost pressures and the inroads made by discount chains, drugstores and other retailers.

Some supermarkets are adding more workers and more high-end fare as a way to set themselves apart from discounters Wal-Mart, Costco and BJ’s.

Others are stressing the convenience factor, offering more prepared foods and aisles of non-food items such as office supplies and books to help people combine trips that were once spread out among various stores. They’ve also opened stores around the clock to accommodate people who work off-hour shifts or who might need medicines or other items late into the night. Late-night shoppers are accustomed to helping themselves because stores keep few workers on hand during those shifts.

But Bill Greer, a spokesman for the Food Marketing Institute in Arlington, Va., said there was no clear trend on service. The number of stores with deli and bakery service went up from 1995 to 2005, and more butchers were hired during that period.

In contrast, institute surveys show 70 percent of meat is sold by self-service, as is 84 percent of seafood.

Many stores maintain both self-service and full-service seafood sections, he said, but the number of full-service sections is declining, from 64 percent of all stores in 2002, to 60 percent in 2004.

“There’s been a general trend with supermarkets going self-serve with seafood products,” Greer said.

While Stop & Shop and some other chains have followed the self-serve path in the seafood section, consumers have taken to eating more of the product. People in the United States consumed 16.2 pounds of seafood, per capita, in 2005, according to data compiled by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Department of Commerce. That’s up nearly 10 pounds from 2001, when it was 14.8 percent.

“We expect that this upward trend will continue due to the fact of the health benefits of seafood,” said Stacey Viera, of the National Fisheries Institute, a trade-member organization. “The industry is focusing on aquaculture [fish farming] as an affordable supply of seafood for a growing population.”

Five of the top 10 types of seafood that consumers like are at least farmed to some degree, including shrimp, salmon, catfish, tilapia and clams, according to the Fisheries Institute.

However, the move to self-service seafood sections may go against the grain of New Englanders, said Jim Riley, secretary/treasurer of Local 328 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the union that represents about 10,000 Stop & Shop workers in Southeastern New England.

He said people in the region have a close connection to the ocean and high expectations for the seafood they eat.

“This is New England,” Riley said. “You don’t do this in New England; you don’t take that fresh seafood away.”

He worried that customers would go elsewhere in search of fresh seafood and never come back to Stop & Shop. “We believe it’s going to cost them customers,” Riley said.

It won’t, however, cost workers their jobs, he said.

The self-service sections are going into 24 stores in Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts, he said, affecting about 50 members of Local 328. The workers are moving to other duties and shifts.

“It’s not like they’re going to be laid off,” Riley said. “They’re just going to be moved around.”

As for the bakery, floral or other departments, Stop & Shop has yet to announce its intentions, Keane said.

“Right now, we’re just talking about seafood,” Keane said.

The change in the seafood section comes after other moves the chain has made to cut prices.

Stop & Shop began working in price cuts last fall, starting with the produce section. Since then the cuts have moved into the paper and breakfast goods aisles. “We view these new prices as an evolution, as opposed to a one-night revolution,” Keane said.

pgrimald@projo.com