By now most people have heard of Paul the psychic octopus, the prognosticating cephalopod that presaged the outcome of the 2010 World Cup. Paul, a caged male common octopus (Octopus vulgaris: the same species as the takoat your local sushi bar) at Sea Life Aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany, managed to successfully predict the winners of eight consecutive soccer matches – most of which involved the German national team – by eating a mussel from one of two small plastic boxes. Each box was draped with the flag of one of the upcoming competitors, and Paul was allowed to choose between the two at his leisure. Paul’s choices were accurate in all cases.
A statistician would tell you that the odds of an octopus predicting the correct outcome of a soccer match eight out of eight times are 255:1, or 0.39%. Then, of course, another statistician would tell you that this would be true of any sequence of choices that the octopus made, correct or otherwise. At this point a third statistician would remind you that regardless of the choices that the octopus had previously made, the chances of him accurately choosing the winner of any one game, World Cup Final or not, is exactly 50%. Then you’d probably get bored and go do something more interesting than listen to a group of statisticians talk about an octopus.
Gimme ten bucks on Paul
Oddly, the world at large did not get bored. In fact, just the opposite occurred. The buzz surrounding Paul and his alleged clairvoyance grew to such a level that in the final match, bookies could actually see a shift in betting patterns immediately after the octopus ransacked his chosen mussel box.
Others are not as reverent. The Germans, in particular, have loudly and repeatedly called for Paul’s blood (which is blue, by the way… octopuses use hemocyanin to carry oxygen rather than the hemoglobin many other animals use, and thus they end up with blue blood instead of red). Many indignant German soccer fans are demanding that the octopus be grilled, barbecued, or otherwise ritually killed and consumed for predicting Germany’s upset loss to Serbia.
The octopus is not the issue here, dude
I’m digressing. This isn’t supposed to be about the octopus, or the fans, or soccer. For me, the most compelling piece of this ridiculous story is the conceptual angle – the fact that we find ourselves opening our minds to the possibility that the ocean may have produced something that is far beyond our comprehension.
Paul’s feat reminds us that there is a tremendous amount of wonder and mystery in the sea. We have learned enough about the complex ecosystems of this planet to realize that there are any number of potential superfoods, magic bullets, and cures for cancer hiding in their midst; we just haven’t found them all yet. The ocean is no exception. We have no idea what marvels are down there, hiding in the depths.
Last month, at Jacques Cousteau’s posthumous 100th birthday celebration, the great ocean explorer’s grandson Fabian reiterated the popular adage that “we still know more about outer space than we do about the deep ocean.” While I’m not certain how we can qualitatively prove this statement, the thrust of it is what’s important: we are still incredibly ignorant when it comes to deep ocean ecosystems. Unfortunately, this has not stopped us from causing untold damage to these unexplored realms — and there is little more damaging to the ocean than bottom trawling.
Bottom trawls are weighted nets that are used by fishing vessels to ensnare species that live along the floor or the ocean. These nets are dragged along the seabed, pulverizing corals and causing tremendous damage to reefs, invertebrates, and rocky habitats. Given that the total area of ocean floor trawled each year is twice the square mileage of the United States, we’re no doubt causing serious trouble for countless animals that live amongst the stones and eelgrass. The mortality rate of bottom trawling – that is, the percentage of impacted animals that are killed by these nets – is extremely high, often surpassing 90%. Many of these creatures aren’t desirable from a strict economic perspective, and are tossed overboard as soon as they’re pulled up. This carnage is known as bycatch, and some trawlers (especially tropical shrimpers) have been known regularly to haul up nets with bycatch outnumbering the targeted species by over ten to one. For every pound of shrimp these boats catch, over ten pounds of other animals – fish, invertebrates, etc. – are pitched over the side, already dead.
Imagine the scale of waste and destruction that the global trawling enterprise precipitates on a daily basis – the loss of life, the destruction of habitat… it’s staggering. In exchange for a short-run profit bump, these trawlers ride roughshod over the deep like the horsemen of some marine apocalypse. Who knows what miracles we may have already lost to their greed and indifference?
Land of opportunity
While I haven’t yet made up my mind about whether or not I believe that Paul does indeed have some sort of extra-sensory perception, I am grateful to him for reminding us all that there is so much that we still don’t understand hiding beneath the waves. Psychic octopus or not, it doesn’t matter – the important thing is to realize that is that we can’t afford to sacrifice the immeasurable potential of the deep for a few extra dollars in the here and now.
Life is full of mysteries. Some, like Paul, can bring great joy and wonder. Others may take a bit more exploration to unlock, but could be even more dazzling. If we don’t reign in our destructive practices, though, we may never find out.
In the embattled world of sustainable seafood, it’s always nice to see positive change in a major public venue. As heartwarming as it is to hear from someone who has pledged to stop eating Chilean sea bass or unagi, it feels even better when a restaurant – or even better, an entire seafood distributor – drops it altogether in the name of environmental preservation.
In this vein, I’m thrilled to see a spark of light appear in the otherwise relentlessly dismal saga of the bluefin tuna.
Bright lights and sharp knives
Many readers of this blog are likely familiar with Food Network’s Iron Chef America, a culinary contest wherein a visiting chef races against time to prepare an assortment of gastronomic delights for a panel of judges. At the same time, one of the resident masters – a star-spangled group known as the Iron Chefs – embarks on the same task in an effort to defend his or her title against the upstart challenger. The dishes are linked by the requirement that they must all involve the day’s secret ingredient, which is revealed only moments before the contest begins. The entire exercise takes place in front of dozens of cameras and a few quirky announcers in a regal arena known as “Kitchen Stadium.”
The chefs are allotted one hour to prepare their items and are subsequently judged on the relative merits of their menus. The chef whose culinary tour de force is deemed to “reign supreme” by the panel is considered the winner of the day’s contest.
Wait -- WHAT?!?
Iron Chef America is a interesting show, to be sure, but it has historically concentrated on strict gastronomic hedonism – it seems that no ingredient is too expensive (or too endangered) to be included in the Stadium’s massive inventory. I remember one particular episode of its forerunner, the Japanese TV cult smash Iron Chef, where a chef cooked down half a dozen lobsters with a few stalks of asparagus only to subsequently serve the lobster-infused vegetable and throw the crustaceans themselves in the trash.
Anyhow, the reason I bring this up is to highlight what I consider to be a significant shift towards ocean conservation in the highest levels of the modern American foodscape. Iron Chef America has catapulted any number of victorious challengers into the spotlight – perhaps it can now do the same for a fish.
So why did Auffrey take aim at someone who seems to be fighting on the same side of “Battle Bluefin”? (apologies to the Chairman)
Last week, Kitchen Stadium was visited by Makoto Okuwa, the former sous chef of Iron Chef and sushi icon Masaharu Morimoto. Over the course of the contest, Chef Makoto prepared five dishes, all containing the day’s theme ingredient (which, auspiciously for the sushi chef, happened to be sea urchin.) One of Okuwa’s offerings was his “unisurf and turf”: urchin-kissed wagyu beef paired with a ribbon of otoro, the belly flesh of a bluefin tuna. Brown did not raise any objections or offer any comments on the unsustainability of the dish, and Auffrey reamed him for it.
I’m proud of Auffrey for sticking up for the flagging bluefin, but that’s not why this is so interesting to me. The fascinating thing is what happened immediately after Auffrey posted his rant: Brown responded. Like, right away.
Brown fenced with Auffrey a bit over the aggressive and accusatory tone that the blogger had adopted, but he also admitted that the use of bluefin in Kitchen Stadium was lamentable and unnecessary. The two traded barbs and questions for a bit, but in the end, Brown took action and the oceans got what they needed. According to Brown, bluefin tuna is now banned from Iron Chef America.
Bluefin? Not in our house... at least, not anymore
This is fabulous. Iron Chef America is both one of the pioneering shows behind the recent explosion of food porn in the United States as well the American rendition of a classic Japanese TV program. To have the pseudo-traditional otoroexcluded from the Kitchen Stadium arsenal is an extremely powerful statement about the reality of our ailing oceans and the need for immediate action if we are to save them.
There are so many things about this story that I like. I like how Auffrey stood up to Brown and called him out. I like the prompt, gentlemanly, and constructive response Brown offered in spite of his indignation. I like the quick decisive action that Brown took to rectify the situation. I love the fact that bluefin tuna is now pisci non grata on a major Food Network television show. And the icing on the cake? Chef Makoto decisively lost the battle to Iron Chef Michael Symon, who didn’t use any bluefin at all.
I’m a big fan of mackerel. It’s a fantastic fish. Not only is it healthy and nutritious, but it reproduces quickly, breeds in large numbers, and often benefits from effective and precautionary management. Good stuff. In fact, saba has been a sushi staple of mine for years, and I encourage you to give it a shot in the place of other more troubling sushi items (like unagior hamachi, for instance) next time you visit a sushi bar.
That being said, some troubling news from the Atlantic has forced me to revisit my standard double-fisted endorsement.
The mackerel fishery off the coast of the British Isles has been growing in popularity now that the more traditional seafood options, such as haddock, have been depleted. One would hope that we can learn from our previous mistakes and manage this fishery in a precautionary manner that will prevent us from repeating the depressing boom-and-crash pattern that we’ve seen with cod, plaice, and other North Atlantic species.
Everything looked positive at first. A pole-and-line mackerel fishery in Cornwall, as well as several midwater trawl fisheries elsewhere in the British Isles, sought and received Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification. Management seemed to be sound and bycatch was low. Now, however, climate change has reared its head, and a new set of challenges is looming on the horizon.
Go north, young fish... actually, wait
Global climate change is affecting the water temperature of our oceans. The surface waters of certain areas of the Northeastern Atlantic are beginning to warm slightly, and this has driven the mackerel stocks further north. Their migration has taken them into Icelandic and Faeroese waters — the territories of two massive new predators whose presence had not been foreseen by management or certification authorities.
The mackerel stock in the Northeast Atlantic is managed under a joint quota that is split between the European Union, Norway, and Russia. Iceland, which has never fished this stock in the past, has now unilaterally declared that it will take over 100,000 mt of mackerel annually. The total quota set for the fishery for the EU, Norway, and Russia combined is just over 500,000 mt. The Icelandic fishing industry is taking an additional 20% on top of this, and is doing so in spite of the current international management efforts. The Faeroes have also announced that they will be substantially ramping up their mackerel fishery, which may compound the problem even further.
For cod and country
These international tugs-of-war over our fishery resources are never good. This kind of competition can lead to overfishing, increasing pirate fishing activity, and even — especially in the case of Iceland and the UK — direct confrontation. A few decades back, these two countries had a prolonged series of naval skirmishes over fishing rights. These “Cod Wars,” as they came to be known, included ramming, net cutting, and even shots being fired. Luckily no one was harmed, but the importance of this issue to the Icelanders and the British was underscored several times over.
It remains to be seen how the EU will respond to Iceland’s actions, but until we know more, we should exercise a bit of caution with our consumption of Atlantic mackerel… or, even better, buy domestic.
In an age where we are pushing our planet’s limits in search of resources, we find more and more poignancy in questions of corporate social responsibility. What obligations, either ethical or legal, should govern an a extractive operation as it roots around in the rainforest, slurps up the oceans, or grinds its way into the Earth’s crust in search of coltan, cod, or crude oil?
We have reached a point where the simple ability to access a resource can no longer be interpreted as right to do so. This kind of anachronistic thinking has gotten us into a world of trouble. The fact is that we are an incredibly powerful species, with the technological capacity to perform jaw-dropping feats. We can build immense transit tunnels below the ocean, launch intricate networks of satellites to enrich communication, and splice vegetable DNA into a chicken. This kind of space-age tech lends perceived legitimacy to business plans which make endeavors like offshore oil drilling appear safe and massively profitable. A few people make a lot of money, something goes horribly wrong, and we all pay the price.
Crude behavior
The toxic results of this kind of unmitigated rapacity have been spurting into the Gulf of Mexico for weeks now. A small group of people decided that they were willing to gamble with the health of our planet for their own personal gain. We should be furious. Who do these pompous egoists think they are, and why, for God’s sake, are we allowing them to compromise our future for their own profit?
This appallingly selfish approach to business must be stopped. Given that we live together on a finite planet, the corporations of the future must be those that are willing to take responsibility for their actions.
The concept of sustainable seafood is predicated on the idea that seafood purveyors, which have for decades served as implements of oceanic destruction, must start standing up for the planet regardless of traditional consumer preferences. The fact is that the average seafood diner or sushi patron simply does not have the time to educate him/herself on the environmental impacts of the vast and ever-changing array of seafood options available to consumers in today’s world. Diabolically efficient fishing technology coupled with cheap refrigeration and well-organized global freight networks allow us access to countless seafood items for all corners of the globe, some environmentally acceptable and some quite the opposite. As such, chefs, merchants, and restaurateurs that take the initiative to defend the ocean and its future. After all, if you work in the seafood industry, it is the ocean that is providing your paycheck.
The face of the future?
Thankfully, we are seeing a gradual shift towards this more responsible way of thinking. In the seafood world, I can think of no better example than Martin Reed and his sustainable seafood delivery business, ilovebluesea.com. Reed shoulders the burden of sorting the proverbial wheat from the chaff himself, so his customers really can’t make a mistake in terms of the environmental repercussions of their choices. Ilovebluesea.com refuses to offer seafood items that are in the Seafood Watch “avoid” category or on the Greenpeace red list, and demands transparency and traceability on the part of his suppliers. Gear type, catch location, and other important information must all be provided before ilovebluesea.com agrees to offer the fish. The company is even addressing packaging and shipping issues by using recyclable and/or biodegradable containers rather than Styrofoam and similar petro-synthetic nightmares.
The Greenpeace seafood retailer rankings also help to shed some light on seafood purveyors that are – or are not, as the case may be – doing the right thing. Companies like Target and Wegmans are taking positive steps and working towards truly sustainable seafood operations, while others, like Costco, are charging full steam, hands clapped over ears and yammering loudly, propelling us all in our mutual handcart down to Hades.
We obviously do not have the legal framework in place to reign in this kind of behavior. Otherwise, one could surmise, we would never have had a Deepwater explosion, and Costco wouldn’t be selling Chilean seabass and orange roughy in the first place. Given that, it is up to us as consumers to act.
We need to reward businesses that are making the change towards legitimate corporate social responsibility. Buy seafood from honest purveyors that don’t try to pull the wool over our eyes. Some companies are willingly selling out our oceans to line their bank accounts – so why are we shopping there?
If you want to make your money from my ocean, you’d better treat it with respect. It’s about responsibility, jerk.
(The following post is an annotated transcript of a conversation that Mark Bittman and I had about a frozen salmon fillet that he purchased in a Vermont grocery store. Mark and I wrote this together to be posted on Mark Bittman’s posterous, as well as here on sustainablesushi.net.)
Salmon with a side of certainty
One Way to Buy Supermarket Fish - Frozen
By Mark Bittman
I (Mark) found this salmon fillet at Shaw’s, in Berlin, Vermont. Frozen hard. It looked good, and the price was right ($12 a pound, I think, which for real sockeye isn’t at all bad), so I bought it. I had no idea what the numbers meant, so I asked Casson Trenor.
His response:
“Accurate species name — Latin name — certification # — FAO catch area — verbatim wild-caught language - Yes, this is very good. It’s nice to see grocery stores putting Latin names on their seafood – it helps consumers avoid confusion. Some fish are plagued by this problem – a big one on the West Coast is Sebastes spp., or the Pacific rockfish. You see that sold as all sorts of things – rock cod, Pacific red snapper, whatever. If we added a Latin name on the label it would be a lot easier. So it’s great to see stickers like the one on this salmon. Where did you find it?”
When I told him, he was surprised:
“This issue that I have is that Shaw’s is owned by SUPERVALU, which is notorious for their disregard of seafood sustainability. They continue to languish near the bottom of the Greenpeace rankings. In fact, a SUPERVALU executive once told me that their company was so decentralized that they literally did not even know what seafood they sold. How can you build a sustainable seafood operation on that? It’s terrifying.
“So while I see this labeling system as a positive trend, it is anomalous in terms of how SUPERVALU operates as a larger conglomerate. I strongly suspect that label was created and applied by the supplier that the salmon was purchased from, not by Shaw’s itself. You can see the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) coding on the label, so may have just been handed down. That’s fine, but why only in Shaw’s? What about at Albertson’s, or Jewel-Osco, or Lucky? And does this mean that SUPERVALU is looking at improving their labeling overall?”
Just to give you an idea of the size of SUPERVALU, here is a quick line-up of its US banners:
I said, “No doubt they’re opportunistic, but us showing this fish to markbittman.com readers is not exactly implicit support of Shaw’s or SUPERVALU – it’s demonstrating that sometimes you can find what you’re looking for in unlikely places.
“Fair enough,” Trenor responded. “That product itself certainly merits support. Sustainable, fairly priced Alaskan sockeye salmon, frozen and clearly labeled. I’m all for that. It’s just a shame that it’s such a rare occurrence at SUPERVALU that you and I can justify writing a blog post about it.”
Antarctic krill are tiny shrimp-like crustaceans that cluster in vast multitudes (known as “blooms”) in the waters of the Southern Ocean. They form a critical building block in the oceanic food web: small fish consume the krill before being eaten themselves by seals, penguins, toothfish, and other animals. Krill are also a primary source of nourishment for migratory whales — in fact, the majority of the world’s baleen whales journey to the southern ocean to feed on krill and replenish their energy supplies after depleting their reserves during their mating and calving seasons.
While krill in their vast numbers do seem on the surface to be an “inexhaustible resource,” one would hope that, by this time, we have learned that this mindless assumption will never be accurate in regard to any of the inhabitants of our finite planet. There is no such thing as an inexhaustible resource. Ask any great auk or passenger pigeon, they’ll tell you.
Oh, wait — you can’t ask them.
Because there aren’t any left.
Because there’s no such thing as an inexhaustible resource.
Trouble bath
There are a few things that we are certain of about krill. The first is that the tiny animal, like many other sea creatures — especially crustaceans — is vulnerable to climate change, especially through the ocean acidification trends resulting from the rising levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Nowhere in the Marine Stewardship Council certification system are the potential effects of climate change even discussed, let alone taken into account by the methodology. Strike one.
Next, we know that Antarctic krill exist in the Southern Ocean – an area adjacent to a land mass that is uninhabited by humans. The simple fact that we are sending fishing vessels into this area bespeaks an unsustainable paradigm, known as finite expansion. There is a certain amount of ocean on this planet. That we continue to fish farther, deeper, and longer simply underscores the fact that we are not approaching the management of our oceanic resources from a sensible and comprehensive standpoint that would account for the idea that one day – one day quite soon, actually – these fishing boats are going to bump up against the ice shelf. No more expansion. What then? The Marine Stewardship Council methodology again fails to even consider these perspectives, concentrating instead on discrete management techniques that do not consider the idea that sustainability is more than a fishery-by-fishery label – it is a way of looking at the world. Strike two.
Little critter, big mystery
Finally, we know that we have only a very rudimentary understanding these tiny animals. Krill have been studied only cursorily and we have almost no knowledge of their life history and behavior. It is irresponsible in the extreme to proceed with the certification of a fishery that is so cloaked in mystery – we have no idea what kind of damage we could be doing. Strike three.
And yet in the face of all these worries, the rubber stamp comes down and the MSC pronounces the krill fishery to be sustainable. Let’s not forget that vehement objections to this certification have already been lodged by the Pew Environment Group and the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition. These objections were overruled — but let us not forget that the three strikes listed above were not taken into account in the decision, as they are simply not part of the MSC methodology… and if something isn’t part of the system, it apparently doesn’t have any relevance on reality. Or so the adjudication decision would lead one to believe.
In search of pink gold
There is a conceptual concern here too. The certification of this fishery gives an unofficial nod to the basic idea that vacuuming up the tiny life forms forming the foundations of the oceanic ecosystem is an acceptable practice. In reality, it’s not. Even the United States fishery management authorities banned fishing for krill in US waters, specifically to allow it to remain in the ocean as a food source for other organisms. Legitimizing and expanding Antarctic krill fishing is simply transferring our unceasing resource demand to a hitherto unrecognized protein source. This is not the way to move forward – in fact, pulling too hard on this loose yarn just might unravel the whole tapestry.
The certification of krill makes no sense. It’s a minuscule building-block animal on the other side of the world that simply doesn’t belong to us. We can’t even eat it – the krill will just be used to make oil, fish food, and other rendered products. And for this, we may end up short-changing whales, toothfish, seals, and other animals – all because the powers that be refuse to look at the entire issue from a larger perspective. Fishing for krill will not feed the world — but it just might end up starving it.
I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by a team from CNN on sustainability issues in the sushi industry.This clip is me explaining what I call the “4-S rule” – a simple, if somewhat crude, guide to eating in a more sustainable fashion at the sushi bar (oh, and a small correction to CNN’s byline – I am a co-founder of Tataki Sushi Bar, but I don’t actually own the restaurant.)
As I discuss in the video, there are four adjectives, each starting with the letter S, that form the eponymous rule.If a sushi bar patron bears these descriptors in mind while he or she orders, it can markedly diminish the environmental footprint created by dinner.This is not a perfect system – there are exceptions to each of the four “S” words – but by and large, it does help one to order a more sustainable sushi meal overall.
Skipjack tuna served nigiri-style with gobo, scallions, and a shiso leaf. The skipjack is the smallest tuna found in the sushi industry, and has both the lowest average mercury content and the highest reproduction rate.
The first word is SMALL.Smaller fish are generally lower on the trophic scale (food chain), grow more quickly, die younger, and breed in larger numbers.These biological survival tactics are employed by many fish to help them withstand heavy predation — they play the numbers game and simply create as many offspring as possible so a few manage to escape the yawning maws of hungry predators. In essence, these are the kind of fish that are designed to be fed upon.Their physiology and population dynamics are generally more resilient to our fishing pressure and protein demand than top-of-the-food-chain carnivores, such as large tunas, swordfish, and sharks.Moreover, smaller fish generally have less mercury accumulation in their systems than these apex predators due to their shorter life spans and less voracious appetites.
Wild coho salmon, sashimi-style. Alaskan coho is well managed, healthy for consumers, and seasonally available.
The next word is SEASONAL.Seasonality is key to sustainability.If we are to reduce our carbon dependency and rekindle our connection with the ocean, we need to be more aware of where we are and what time of year it is when we order our fish.A good rule of thumb is to order off the specials board rather than the laminated menu when possible – any items on a year-round menu are unlikely to be sourced on a basis of seasonal awareness.It was our demand that certain intrinsically seasonal products be available to us year-round that gave rise to environmental missteps like conventional salmon farming.This category also offers us the added opportunity to take advantage of seasonal vegetables and fruits, which innovative chefs often incorporate into their specials.
Pacific saury prepared over wood charcoal. These cold-water schooling forage fish have high levels of omega-3 fatty acids.
The third word is perhaps the most surprising – SILVER.Eat sushi that is served with a silver skin still on it.This category of fish is known as hikari mono in Japanese, and contains mackerels, halfbeaks, shads, and similar fish.These animals tend to be loaded with omega-3s as well as being low in mercury, and can be sourced from many well-managed fisheries.An added bonus is that the hikari mono are some of the most treasured fish in the repertoire of a traditional sushi chef; a menu featuring these items will often prove to be an unforgettable culinary experience. I highly encourage all sushi-goers to explore the world of hikari mono – you just may find your new “absolute ultimate all-time favorite” sushi item.
Kumomoto oysters on the half-shell with momoji oroshi. Oysters are high in protein and easy to raise in low-impact farms.
The final word is SHELLFISH, and I’m speaking specifically of bivalves and mollusks.Not only are these creatures excellent sources of protein, but they are considered by many to be delicacies and aphrodisiacs. Bivalve and mollusk aquaculture has sound environmental benefits as well: it tends to involve relatively low-impact farming methods when compared to other types of fish farming, such as tuna ranches or salmon farms.As filter-feeders, animals like clams, scallops, and oysters can be grown without the use of any additional feed. This reduces their dependence on marine resources and eliminates the kind of inefficient protein use that we find in operations like hamachiand unagiranches. These mollusks also grow quickly, and can be raised in cages and bags that require no dredging or other types of seabed alteration during harvest.
That’s about the size of it.Small, seasonal, silver, and shellfish – a quick-and-dirty road map to a more eco-groovy sushi experience.There are, as I mentioned earlier, numerous exceptions to this rule, but it serves as a fairly reliable lodestone for those who are interested in shifting their sushi dining habits toward a more sustainable paradigm.
Oh, and one final quip: as it happens, the letter S occurs exactly four times in the term “sustainable sushi.” Remember that to keep the 4-S rule in mind.
First, we have the overfishing crisis, which continues virtually unabated.Every day, we yank hundreds of thousands of pounds of life out of the sea, often in strikingly inefficient and destructive ways – bottom trawls rake the floor of the ocean, pulverizing corals and flattening any animals that lack the locomotive capacity to evade them, while pelagic longlines indiscriminately slaughter curious seabirds, turtles, and sharks as collateral damage in our unrelenting quest for seafood.
To make matters worse, President Obama, who was elected in part by an engaged and hopeful environmentalist demographic, has completely turned his back on the oceans and their largest denizens – whales.His 2008 promise to strengthen the international moratorium on commercial whaling has been completely subsumed by an insidious new agenda that seeks to dismantle the moratorium, legalize whaling in the Southern Ocean (including Japan’s ongoing hunt for endangered fin, sei, and humpback whales), and create an unspoken tolerance among the world’s governments for this intolerable activity.
Nice work, slick
And above it all, offshore drilling has finally revealed itself as exactly what we have always feared it would be – an inevitable environmental cataclysm.The ruptured Deepwater Horizon pipeline continues to release untold amounts of toxic crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, strangling birds, fish, and any other life forms unfortunate enough to be caught within its suffocating expanse… which is currently the size of the State of Delaware, not to mention up to 45 feet deep in some areas.
Our oceans and their denizens are besieged on all sides.Given these seemingly insurmountable odds, it is difficult to maintain any sense of optimism when one considers the state of our world’s waters.Still, all is not lost.All three of the aforementioned menaces have sparked resistance, and with the right kind of passion and leadership, we just may find a way out of this mess after all.
Misleading labels: an endangered species
Although overfishing remains a tremendous problem, Greenpeace’s recent Carting Away the Oceans report highlights some significant progress: quite a few major retailers have taken strong steps towards the development of sustainable seafood operations.Companies like Target, Wegmans, Whole Foods, and Safeway are making positive sourcing decisions that reduce environmental degradation and enable their customers to shop with a more confidence.Even Trader Joe’s, which earned both ire and infamy last year for its indifference to sustainability in seafood, has turned a corner. A recent announcement on the company’s website indicates that Trader Joe’s has discontinued orange roughy and is currently developing a sustainable seafood policy as well as more informative and transparent labeling.Beyond this, the company has called out the need for marine reserves in fishery management and has promised to use its purchasing dollars to support visionary leadership in industry (such as closed-containment salmon). The work has only just begun, but it is comforting to know that this company, which was once an incorrigible laggard in these areas, may now be in the process of becoming a true leader.
Our government’s efforts to legalize whaling and reward Japan, Iceland, and Norway for their continual disregard of international law and the will of the vast majority of the Earth’s population seem to have hit a snag as well.Monica Medina, the lead US delegate to the International Whaling Commission and the champion of the legalization effort, seems to be backpedaling a bit in the face of enormous public resistance.Opposition to this despicable initiative is so vocal, in fact, that a petition urging Congress to reconsider has received over 100,000 signatures – and the number is growing every day.
Apply lessons learned... please
It’s not easy to find something positive to say about the horrific oil disaster in the Gulf, but maybe – just maybe – we can find a way to coax a silver lining out of this mess.One can surmise that if it is this difficult to repair oil drilling mishaps in an area as accessible and temperate as the Gulf of Mexico, it would be infinitely more challenging in the Arctic.And there will be mistakes in the Arctic.There will be spills, fires, and other accidents – they are inevitable to some degree, as we have so painfully learned.So perhaps our government will read the writing on the wall and reinstate a total moratorium on offshore drilling, including the new leases in the Arctic.While this won’t quell Deepwater’s hemorrhaging, save Louisiana’s shrimp industry, or clean the crude off of any brown pelicans, it would certainly be a massive positive step towards precluding even more – and even worse – nightmares like this from occurring in the future.Even California’s Governor Schwarzenegger has heeded the harsh lessons of Deepwater Horizon and rescinded his support for a bill that would prompt new oil exploration off the coast of California.Now, I never thought I’d want Obama to take a page from the Governator’s book, but in this case, it seems like Schwarzenegger has the right idea.
Thank you
So yes, things look grim for our oceans, no doubt about it – but there is hope.There is always hope.Countless people are struggling against the crises facing our oceans, doing their utmost to heal this planet that we are ravaging so blindly.And it is those people, and their efforts, and the possibility of a better future for us and for our children that keeps hope alive.It is undoubtedly a bad week to be a fish, or a whale, or a turtle, or a Louisiana shrimper – but next week just might be a little better.
There were any number of reasons for my delay in writing this. March was a busy month for sure: the resurgence of competing priorities, such as working towards the successful end of Greenpeace’s Trader Joe’s campaign, certainly did their part in keeping me away from this blog. The Boston Seafood Show and related pandemonium was no help either. But to be honest, the main reason that I haven’t written is much simpler than that.
I have spent the last few weeks seething over the unconscionable actions of the Japanese delegation. CITES wasn’t even about coming together and discussing the real issues – frankly, it never got that far. Riding in on a horse of flame and bluster (earlier that week, the Japanese government had stated that “even if the bluefin were awarded CITES protection, the Japanese would ignore it,”) a fifty-strong group of delegates from Tokyo stormed the meeting, bullying and coercing smaller nations into supporting their myopic, arrogant agenda. And the cherry on top of this bloody sundae? The Japanese delegation hosted a dinner during CITES to discuss this issue, at which they had the audacity to serve – you guessed it – bluefin tuna.
Am I the only one appalled by this unbridled hubris?
Ummm... a little help?
To worsen matters even more, a measure aimed at restricting the trade of corals was defeated, and of the eight species of shark that were tabled for potential protection, not a single one was given any succor whatsoever. Oh, and I almost forgot – the polar bear was left out in the cold as well.
Citizens of Earth – our leaders have failed us. Miserably. So what do we do?
No port in a storm
Although it may not seem like it from the title of this post, I’m still not ready to take the bluefin’s death certificate to the local notary public. We do have a slight glimmer of hope here in the USA.
The western population of the Northern bluefin tuna spawns in a small area in the Gulf of Mexico, much of which is located within US waters. Even if we can’t yet regulate international commerce, we can still do our part to protect these bedeviled creatures while they are visiting our coastline.
Targeted bluefin fishing in the aforementioned spawning grounds has been forbidden (under ICCAT, believe it or not) since the 1980s. Still, that doesn’t stop fishermen from targeting other species – mainly swordfish and yellowfin tuna – in those areas, and bluefin bycatch is a serious problem. Hundreds of spawning animals are killed every year by longliners that are operating in these areas.
Not in our waters
It is within our power to rectify this situation. If the US government bans the use of longline fishing gear within the spawning grounds, it will drastically reduce the overall bluefin bycatch rate in the Gulf and allow more fish the opportunity to reproduce. This is one way that we can bolster the population while we continue to push for the international management that the bluefin so sorely needs.
In an age and state where the word “patriotism” has been misinterpreted, manipulated, maligned, and mangled beyond recognition, it is often difficult to discern not only what it means to be patriotic, but what it means to be an American. In my experience, it is only on a rare day that it becomes unnecessary to differentiate between vying definitions – nationalistic pride, support of entrenched policies, endorsement of governmental shift, facebook-friendship of standing politicians, etc. – before I can state without equivocation that I am proud to be an American.
This is a game-changer. The world’s largest economy has finally weighed in on one of the most pressing issues facing the ocean conservation movement – the simple fact that commercially exploited fish have thus far been utterly ignored by the institutionalized international processes designed to offer respite to endangered species. The Northern bluefin tuna, decimated by the rapacity of the global sushi industry and of bluefin traders like the Mitsubishi corporation, has hitherto been largely ignored by the world’s protectionary bodies in favor of ICCAT, a malfunctioning, incoherent (mis)management system that has brought the bluefin to the brink of the abyss… but perhaps this is finally at an end.
The United States government’s role in this ecological chess match is unique. Even though US economy does not have a significant share of the world’s bluefin production, it does constitute a sizable share of overall consumption. Certainly it is not on a scale to match Japan (the world’s foremost consumer of bluefin, devouring approximately 80% of all bluefin tuna yanked from our ailing oceans) but the US sushi industry has exploded in recent years, bringing with it a skyrocketing demand for bluefin tuna. Many of the world’s most well-known sushi icons are based in the United States, and there is no shortage of American consumers willing to shell out fat stacks of greenbacks for the ephemeral bliss of a two-bite communion with Our Lady of O-toro. As such, the US is more than just a global economic engine in this scenario. The conviction of the Obama administration to stand behind Monaco’s proposal is a food policy statement – an admission that as we as a global community grow, we need to begin to make difficult choices, and that desire and wealth can no longer stand alone as the market mechanisms that drive our luxury food supply. We must begin to temper them with an awareness of the impacts our choices have on our environment.
Not on his watch
Certainly this is not the end of the struggle. Whether or not the bluefin will receive the support and protection it requires will be decided by a conference of all CITES parties in Doha, Qatar, later this month – and it will likely be a bloody affair. Japan vehemently opposes the proposal and is expected to break out every weapon in its considerable arsenal in defense of its hard-line position. China, too, has announced its opposition to the listing. Support for the proposal within the European Union is tenuous at best and could still sour. Many other countries, such as Australia (which has a bluefin industry of its own, albeit a different stock and species), New Zealand, and Brazil remain on the fence. There is still a great deal of work to do.
So while the champagne moment is yet to come, I would suggest making some room in the fridge to chill a bottle or two. The support of the Obama administration was an absolute necessity if the bluefin is to survive the CITES gauntlet, and with it secured, there may just be some hope for the world’s most expensive fish – and, symbolically, for the oceans themselves – after all.
![Kanikama [Surimi]](http://www.sustainablesushi.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/fish_kanikama.png)
