Posted by Casson on Aug 15, 2011 in
4 Oceans,
Serial Pieces 
It may be in a can, and it may say chicken, but it's still a fish. Seriously, Jessica.
Seafood isn’t only sold in the seafood section. Americans buy a tremendous amount our seafood from the shelves of our local grocer rather than from the freezers, including one particular item that we put in everything from sandwiches to casseroles to salads: tuna fish.
For decades, tuna was the most widely consumed seafood product in the United States. Although it has recently lost pole position to farmed shrimp, it is still massively popular, and even though it’s in a can, it is still fish, and thus merits scrutiny in terms of sustainable practices – or, in this case, its total lack thereof.
Here’s the issue: catching tuna in a manner that keeps the price hovering around $1-$2 per can is difficult. It’s a challenging process for a number of reasons, not least of which is that most species of tuna are constantly on the move across the vastness of the open ocean. Chasing these schools around is a time- and resource-intensive process – especially with oil prices on the perpetual upswing – but the tuna industry has found a way to cut some pretty significant corners. Unfortunately, this has led to any number of nasty consequences, and those smiling bumblebees and luxuriating mermaids on the tuna cans at your neighborhood grocery store have done a great job covering them up… until now.
The tuna industry’s got a dirty little secret – actually, it has four of them. And here they are.
1) Fish aggregating devices
Fish aggregating devices (aka FADs) are floating objects that tuna vessels cast adrift in the open ocean. They are generally attached to a radio beacon and can relay their position back to a given tuna boat. FADs work because fish in the open ocean find random flotsam absolutely captivating. Small plants and polyps anchor themselves to the physical body of the FAD, small fish use it as a hiding place, and larger animals flock to it as a source of shade and as a fertile hunting ground. After a few weeks at sea, a FAD can develop an entire ecosystem around it – which is wiped out entirely when the tuna boat returns and scoops the whole thing up in a seine net.
A juvenile bigeye killed in a FAD-associated skipjack seine. There were hundreds more under my feet... and that was just one haul on one ship.
The problem here is that FADs don’t just attract the target species of tuna (usually skipjack). They are similarly mesmerizing to sharks, billfish, and other animals – most notably juvenile yellowfin and bigeye tuna – that come swimming by wondering what all the fuss is about. By then, it’s generally too late.FADs increase bycatch in the skipjack tuna industry by between 500% and 1000% when compared to nets set on free-swimming schools (FAD-free seining.) To make matters worse, between 15% and 20% of the total catch of a FAD-associated skipjack seine is actually juvenile yellowfin and bigeye – two species of tuna that are in serious trouble and cannot afford to have their young purloined before they ever have a chance to breed. The total content of bigeye and yellowfin in FAD-free skipjack seines is less than 1%.
I’ll put this plainly – if we don’t stop using FADs, we will run out of yellowfin and bigeye tuna because we will kill all of the juveniles.
Rule one for sustainable canned tuna: When shopping for “light” tuna, buy pole-and-line or FAD-free seined skipjack.
2) Longlines
Cans of “white” tuna contain albacore, a temperate tuna species that is only popular in canned form in North America. Albacore isn’t caught with purse seines as often as it is caught on longlines – an equally destructive practice that incurs a tremendous amount of bycatch.
A turtle caught on a Korean longliner's tuna gear. It's dead.
Longlines are just that – long lines set by fishing vessels that stretch from buoy to buoy across the open ocean, sometimes for multiple miles at a stretch. Every few yards, a long lead ending in a baited hook dangles from the main line. When the ship circles back to reel in the longline and assess its catch, it contains far more than albacore tuna. This indiscriminate fishing method is one of the greatest killers of turtles (which get hooked nibbling on the bait, can’t return to the surface to breathe, and drown), albatross and other seabirds (which dive on the glinting hooks thinking that they’re fish and are subsequently snagged), and other non-targeted animals.
The total bycatch rate of this massively destructive operation is estimated to be somewhere just shy of 30% of the total take… that means nearly one third of the total global catch of the albacore fleet – thousands upon thousands of tons per year – is turtles, sharks, sea birds, and other casualties of the industry’s callousness and greed.
Absolutely unacceptable.
Rule two for sustainable canned tuna: When shopping for “white” tuna, buy pole-and-line albacore.
3) Unregulated fishing on the high seas
Outside of the boundaries of a country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which stretches two hundred miles into the ocean beyond the shores of any given state, there exists a lawless, oceanic “Wild West” known as the high seas. When it comes to fishing, most anything goes out there as there are no universally acknowledged enforcement bodies that can serve to protect our common resources.
The water runs red with the blood of the tuna. As a seine net closes, the plastic filaments cut into the fish, slicing them to ribbons. Mortality in a seine operation approaches 100% -- another reason that there's no such thing as an "eco-FAD".
Tuna vessels regularly park just shy of this two hundred mile line, inside what are often referred to as the “high seas pockets” – four areas of unregulated ocean that are fully encircled by the EEZs of any number of island states in the western and central Pacific that depend on tuna stocks for their economic livelihood. Tuna, of course, know nothing of international boundaries, and pass freely back and forth over these lines until they are netted up by a nearby predatory seiner. Since these vessels are operating in what are technically high seas areas, they have no rules to follow – no quotas, no maximum limits, etc. – and they don’t have to pay dues or access fees to the countries that actually own and manage the resources. Activities like transshipping (transferring fish from one vessel to another to allow for longer fishing times and less resource expenditure) are common, which further reduces the abilities of these nearby states to manage their tuna stocks sustainably.
Rule three for sustainable canned tuna: Tuna should be caught in managed waters. Buy tuna from companies that refuse to fish in the high seas pockets.
4) Stolen fish, stolen future
Following on the above point, might tends to make right when there aren’t any overarching laws offering protection to those involved. The tuna industry has been the scene of an infuriating amount of bullying over the past decades, mainly by larger, more wealthy nations – countries like Taiwan, Spain, the United States – that have ransacked the waters of the independent Pacific Island states. Countries like Kiribati and Tuvalu have virtually no resources aside from tuna, and without a modicum of international law and market support to enable them to draw a fair and honest living from it, the established international tuna barons – companies like Thai Union (which owns the well-known US brand Chicken of the Sea), Fong Chin Formosa, and Dong Won – are able to pillage their waters with near impunity. Recently, a number of tuna-rich but cash-poor Pacific island states have banded together in an effort to take charge of their fisheries and to keep the tuna pirates out of their watery backyards. These states are known collectively as the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA), and they represent one of our best chances to foster a sustainable and equitable tuna industry that protects both the ocean’s tuna populations, and the peoples that depend on them.
For more information about the PNA and their struggle to wrest control of their own resources back from outside forces, please take a moment and watch this video.
Rule four for sustainable canned tuna: Buy tuna from companies that support the PNA.
Tags: bigeye, bumble bee, canned, charlie, chicken of the sea, dirty little secret, greenpeace, grocery tuna, skipjack, sorry, starkist, tuna, yellowfin
Posted by Casson on Jun 7, 2011 in
4 Oceans This installment of my monthly Alternet column, “4 Oceans,” was originally published on June 2, 2011.
From bad...
A powerful conservation movement is afoot in the United States. Shark finning — the practice of catching sharks, slicing their fins off, and then dumping the animals overboard (often still alive and slowly bleeding to death) — is being exposed for the monstrosity it is. Globally, we slaughter tens of millions of sharks each year. And for the most part, we do it for the fins, which can fetch hundreds of dollars a pound.
This is insanity. We need sharks in our oceans. Without sharks and other top-level carnivores to keep populations of sub-predators in check, we run the risk of losing productive and well-balanced marine ecosystems to trophic collapse. Thankfully, some communities are finally saying no to shark finning. Hawaii banned the possession and sale of shark fins in 2010. Washington State signed a similar prohibition into law on May 12 of this year, and in California, a ban on trafficking in shark fins is working its way through the legislature.
It’s difficult to overestimate the importance of such a law passing in California. More shark fins are sold and consumed in the Golden State than in any of the other 49. If we can manage to protect these unique animals under California state law, we may not be far from a nationwide moratorium on this staggeringly unsustainable practice.
Here are several common arguments being used to defend this practice, followed by my thoughts on why they’re unsound.
1: Shark fin consumption is a cultural practice and tradition.
Some cultures have a history of consuming shark fin. I am not in any place to pass judgment on these cultures, and I don’t want to. All I want to say is that culture is not the unchanging monolith that some make it out to be.
... to worse...
Culture is a dynamic representation of both the history and the current state of a particular group, be it based around attitudes, ideals, goals, shared experiences, or other connective forces. A culture is not a static thing — it changes with the times. Over the centuries, many cultural practices have ended in favor of the evolving wisdom and consciousness of the human race. For example, while I may not be part of a culture that has historically practiced shark finning, I am a member of a culture that has historically practiced slavery.
I am a Caucasian American and a direct descendant of slave-owning ancestors who believed in the inferiority of human beings with a darker skin color than their own. I even have relatives who died while shooting at the Union army to protect this cultural practice (among other things, of course). Slavery was a common practice in North America for centuries. It was part of our culture. It was also wrong. And, thankfully, it ended.
Human beings evolve. Our cultures evolve. As we learn more about our planet and ourselves, we gain the opportunity to learn from our mistakes. We now know far too much about humanity’s dependence on Earth’s environment to keep slaughtering sharks for their fins. The tragedy of shark finning is more than just sharks dying for shortsighted profit — it’s that today, when we have learned so much about sharks and their irreplaceable roles in our oceans, we continue to mindlessly slaughter them in the name of “culture.”
2: Shark fin is good for your health.
Some schools of Eastern medicine equate shark fin consumption with heightened energy and virility. I am certainly no nutritionist, and will not attempt to dispute this belief. That said, it’s a proven fact that a typical bowl of shark fin soup is in actuality quite devoid of most vitamins when compared to, say, a similar serving of vegetable soup. Shark fin does have some nutritional value — especially some key elements like iron and zinc — but it’s nothing one couldn’t get from any number of other foods. To kill a shark for such a meager nutritional reward is a terrible bargain for the planet at large.
3: Sharks are dangerous! They eat people!
Certain works of art, literature and film have such a profound impact on society that they literally shape our culture. Jaws was one of those films. It terrified an entire generation and set shark conservation efforts back 20 years.
... to even worse.
Jaws was also one of the most inaccurate and unfair films ever made when it comes to portraying actual shark behavior. The film that made us all afraid to go back in the water had virtually zero basis in reality, yet it engendered a phobia of sharks that has afflicted us for decades. The problem is so acute, in fact, that Peter Benchley, the creator of Jaws, had a massive crisis of conscience and dedicated much of his later life to ocean conservation and shark protection efforts.
Globally, shark encounters with humans account for about 10 deaths a year, give or take a handful. By contrast, lightning strikes kill over 20,000 people each year. Dog bites, pig attacks, and even fugu blowfish (due to improper preparation) cause more human fatalities annually than sharks. Sharks are not the mindless killing machines that we once feared they were. The contribution sharks make to a healthy ocean vastly outweighs their danger to the human race.
4: We can fin sharks in a sustainable manner.
Really? Can we? I personally doubt that very much. We understand very little about most species of sharks, and it is extremely difficult to properly manage a fishery when we lack such key information as growth rate, migration patterns, and reproductive behavior.
It's not worth it.
That, however, is not even the main issue. Sustainability goes beyond choosing which species are acceptable to consume and which aren’t. One of the core issues here is respect for the animal — which, in this case, is manifest in how we are using it for our own purposes. How can we have a sustainable fishery that involves cutting off the fins of a living creature and dumping the rest? This kind of waste and disrespect has no place in a modern food system that is based on ecosystem awareness and sound resource management. To look at this in simple economic terms: If a given shark weighs, say, 150 pounds, the fins might be 10 pounds of that. So to cut off the fins and dump the rest is equivalent to a retention rate of 1:14 — one pound of catch, 14 pounds of waste.
The very act of shark finning flies directly in the face of sustainable living. We need to outgrow this practice and embrace a positive relationship with sharks. For those of you residing in California, please contact your state representative as soon as possible and urge her/him to support AB 376. An ocean without sharks just won’t work.
Tags: ab 376, china, chinese food, fin, finning, great white, green, leland yee, mako, san francisco, shark, soup, thresher
Posted by Casson on May 4, 2011 in
4 Oceans,
Serial Pieces 
A dangerous path
This installment of my monthly Alternet column, “4 Oceans,” was originally published on April 26, 2011.
Even as the plight of our oceans worsens, a large sector of the seafood industry continues to defend the status quo. Issues of grave concern like overfishing, bottom trawling, and piracy are swept under the carpet time and time again by the same tired argument: “sustainable seafood is too expensive.”
This adage comes in many forms. “Sustainability is just for the rich,” is a common one. Or maybe the scoundrels go for the jugular with pseudo-patriotic poppycock like “real Americans can’t afford to eat sustainable fish.” This scare tactic is designed to end the conversation so conventional industry can get back to slinging the same ill-gotten plunder that’s gotten us to this point of ailing seas and depleted fish stocks.
The fact of the matter is that, at the end of the day, it’s not sustainable seafood that’s too expensive – rather, it is unsustainable seafood, with all of its associated externalities, subsidies, and Faustian bargains that is out of our price range. It’s time to put this argument where it belongs: in the past.
This month’s 4 Oceans highlights several stores priced for mainstream America that are leading the charge on sustainable seafood in conventional retail. If these guys can do it, anyone can.
1) Safeway
It may come as a shock, but the 1700+ Safeway stores across the country are on track to become a powerful force for ocean conservation. According to Greenpeace’s most recent seafood retailer ranking, Safeway has the most sustainable seafood operation of any major market in the United States. With a score of 6.5 out of 10, Safeway has a long way to go yet, but has still managed to outperform stores like Whole Foods that are generally assumed to be more able to provide sustainable options thanks to more affluent clientele.
Safeway has recently discontinued some particularly unsustainable seafood items (like orange roughy) and is providing thorough in-store information about their commitment to sustainability. The company has also spoken out publicly in favor of global conservation efforts; their recent shout-out supporting Ross Sea protection is an excellent example of how mainstream retailers are rounding the horn on seafood sustainability and foraying into the highly political – and critically important – arena of marine reserve establishment.
Do the right thing
2) Target
The big-box retail titan from Minnesota tied for the #2 spot in this year’s rankings with Wegmans (a progressive high-end grocer that has also done some extremely impressive work on seafood sustainability). This is actually a slight step down for Target – the company took the top spot in last year’s rankings, largely because of its willingness to tackle Matterhorn-like challenges that other companies refuse to even consider. A prime example is Target’s decision to discontinue all forms of farmed salmon throughout their entire operation. This initiative has greatly deflated conventional industry “farmed salmon is necessary because people want inexpensive salmon” fear-mongering.
Target has also evolved beyond the sale of unsustainable mainstays like Chilean sea bass, and continuing to press forward along other avenues of seafood sustainability. It’s true that Target doesn’t sell a great deal of seafood when compared to many other nationwide retailers, but this kind of progress still goes to show that even big-box discounters can do great things for environmental preservation when they commit to it.
3) Harris Teeter
The growing consumer demand for sustainable seafood is not only found in the leftist enclaves of Northern California or among patrons of trendy, feel-good East Village restaurants. The sustainable seafood movement is making headway all across the country, and in the American South, this has been spearheaded by the remarkable efforts of Harris Teeter, a household-name grocery store that has dominated much of the retail sector in Georgia and the Carolinas for decades. Even though Harris Teeter competes directly with price-focused grocers such as Food Lion and Walmart, the company has taken an aggressive approach to seafood sustainability and is becoming an undeniable leader in the sector.
Over the past couple of years, Harris Teeter has discontinued orange roughy, augmented their sourcing policy to take key environmental issues (such as pirate fishing) into account during purchasing, and created a comprehensive seafood information clearinghouse within their website to enable their customers to learn more about all of the various seafood options available at Harris Teeter. The company is currently #6 in Greenpeace’s retailer ranking, but with a score of 5.8/10 is less than three-quarters-of-a-point behind the current #1 (Safeway).
Lifting the veil
4) Aldi
Aldi’s no-nonsense approach to discount retail has earned the company appeal in the eyes of many bargain hunters across the Midwest. Still, it doesn’t often figure as a top destination for seafood shoppers… but maybe it should.Aldi doesn’t sell a tremendous amount of seafood, but for such a small category, Aldi’s seafood gets an impressive amount of attention and dedication from company leadership. Aldi has leapt up Greenpeace’s retailer rankings for the second year in a row, moving from a 1.9 out of ten in 2009, to a 3.9/10 in 2010, and now to a 5.5/10 this year (which has earned the company seventh place overall in the 2011 rankings).
Aldi sells no farmed salmon, has already eliminated the worst of its unsustainable species (like orange roughy), and currently offers only seven red list items (where most markets average around 12 or 13). The company also provides a substantial amount of information to consumers through comprehensive seafood labeling practices. Interested customers can discern where any given Aldi seafood product was caught (FAO catch area), the precise species in question (latin name), and the method used in capturing the fish (gear type indications) just by looking at the label. It’s refreshing to see a discount retailer selling fish without obfuscating it under market monikers; hopefully this is a trend that will continue as seafood sustainability continues to enter the mainstream.
Tags: 4 Oceans, aldi, alternet, carting away the oceans, cato, cato v, greenpeace, harris teeter, orange roughy, safeway, target
Dynamite fishing?
This installment of my monthly Alternet column, “4 Oceans,” was originally published on April 1, 2011.
The thunderous power of the dollar can obliterate nearly all barriers between consumers and the objects of our desire. If one is willing and able to throw out enough cash, there’s very little in this world that we can’t have. Sadly, this reach extends to a number of aquatic species that just aren’t built to cope with such pressure. In this month’s “4 Oceans,” we examine several seafood items that we just shouldn’t eat, even if we have the wherewithal to acquire them.
Bluefin tuna
This is probably old news to a lot of readers, but the current state of the world’s bluefin tuna populations have been reduced to shadows of their former glory. The fish that fed Rome’s legions now barely ekes out an existence as it is hunted relentlessly to satisfy the top echelon of the world’s sushi industry. Bluefin prices soar while stocks continue to plummet, shackled to the twin lead weights of insatiable demand and ineffectual management.
I can answer that
Last year, a smattering of different countries attempted to grant the bluefin protection under the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES), which would have effectively ended international trade in this animal. This push was mercilessly quashed by a larger and more committed cadre of governments led by Japan, which hosted cooperative delegates at a pre-vote banquet where they served – you guessed it – bluefin tuna.
Bluefin stocks around the world are verging on utter collapse and yet fishing pressure does not abate. Politics and short-sighted economic interests are nearly always victorious over science and environmental consciousness whenever this bluefin is involved. But even if we can’t depend on political processes, we can least put the chopsticks down.
Orange roughy
Over the last four years, ten of the twenty largest seafood retailers in the United States have discontinued orange roughy. Some stores, like Whole Foods and Wegmans, even made public statements on the environmental impacts associated with this fishery when explaining their decisions to stop selling this species. It’s comforting to see for-profit retail enterprises taking stands that seem based more on ethics and long-game considerations than simple quick-fix cash grabs.
You're having a rough day, orange you?
Anyhow, orange roughy is a fish that has no business playing any significant role in our seafood industry. The animal simply isn’t built to withstand heavy fishing pressure. First off, it reaches market size well before sexual maturity – a lamentable characteristic, since this results in many roughy being eaten before they’ve had a chance to reproduce and repopulate the fishery. Second, the animal itself can live to a tremendous age – ninety-year-old roughy are not uncommon (at least, they weren’t before we started eating them all.) Fish that live that long are generally not built to reproduce in great numbers; they have evolutionarily invested in longevity rather than in quantity of offspring.
To worsen matters, orange roughy is caught using wantonly destructive bottom trawl nets, and its flesh is a simple, flaky white fillet (there are other, more sustainable sources for this type of product.) It’s best to avoid this species altogether.
Shark (and shark fin)
Mmm-mmm-bad
The more we learn about the role that sharks play in our oceanic ecosystems, the more bat-shit crazy we have to be to keep slaughtering them. Sharks are apex predators, feeding slowly from the top of the food chain and ensuring that the populations of other animals in their areas are kept in check. Without sharks, we see population explosions of their prey items, which in turn devastate the organisms that they prey upon, and so on and so forth. The removal of a single shark from the food system it polices is akin to hurtling a massive monkey wrench into the core gears of the ocean’s ecological stabilization machinery, and we are tossing out somewhere between 50 and 100 million of these wrenches every year.
While many sharks are killed accidentally as bycatch in longline fisheries that target other animals (longlined swordfish is particularly worrisome), the majority of annual shark casualties are perpetrated intentionally by those the shark fin industry. Shark fins – used for soup, especially for weddings and other significant events, by certain segments of the world’s Chinese communities – can fetch astronomical prices and are often used to convey a message of status and wealth. Luckily, the world is waking up to the damage that finning wreaks upon our ocean. Shark fin bans have been enacted in Hawaii, Guam, and Saipan (Mariana Islands), and have been proposed in California, Oregon, and Washington State. If these landmark pieces of legislation pass, we will have taken a great step towards protecting these unique and mysterious creatures.
Chilean sea bass
The Patagonian and Antarctic toothfish (aka Chilean sea bass) are long-lived, slow-to-reproduce apex predators. Still, there are those that claim there is such a thing as a sustainable Chilean sea bass fishery. Some would argue that a particular population, under the guidelines of a particular management authority, governed under a certain catch quota, can in fact be fished sustainably, and that this particular fishery, cut off from the larger amorphous Chilean sea bass industry – dominated as it is by pirates and a rapacious gold-rush mentality – merits our support.
The face of overfishing?
Allow me to propose a slightly different line of thought.
The world is a finite place. I know it doesn’t seem as such, but the ocean is a contained area, and it has boundaries. It does not go on forever. It ends – and in more than one sense.
Over the past century, the way that we fish has changed. Decade after decade, we have pushed the boundaries of our oceans in every way imaginable – geographically (ships are going farther), bathymetrically (ships are fishing deeper), and temporally (ships are spending more time on the water). In our quest for seafood, we strain at the very boundaries of our food system, until we reach the ocean’s farthest-flung reaches in all three categories – by dropping hooks to the ocean floor off of Antarctica in the middle of winter.
That is how, where, and when we catch Chilean sea bass.
Sustainable fishing simply cannot occur in an area and at a depth that is so obviously a reaction to an overblown and exhausted food system — a food system that, because of its inability to balance itself, has cantilevered out into dangerous extremes. The very existence of a Chilean sea bass fishery is in itself evidence of an unsustainable fishing paradigm. To label a Chilean sea bass fishery sustainable only serves as evidence to the contrary, as the claim itself underscores our failure to grasp and to apply the true meaning of sustainability to our seafood industry.
Tags: 4 Oceans, alternet, bluefin, chilean sea bass, dollar, dynamite, fin, finning, orange roughy, otoro, overfishing, shark, toothfish, toro
Posted by Casson on Mar 1, 2011 in
4 Oceans This is the most recent installment of my monthly Alternet column, “4 Oceans.” It was originally published on February 25, 2011.
The ocean is mysterious. It has obscured many of our planet’s most fantastic treasures from view since time immemorial, tucking them away in remote tropical waters, or hiding them deep beneath the white-capped fangs of raging polar seas. Sadly, many of these wonders are threatened by unbridled fishing pressure, deluges of castaway plastics, and a simple but devastating characteristic that, more than anything else, could guarantee their destruction: anonymity.
In this installment of “4 Oceans,” we’ll take a look at four astonishing marine marvels that most people have never heard of, and then discuss how these delicate ecosystems are under threat and what we as consumers can do to protect them.
He's a little crabby about the trawlers in his backyard
1. Zhemchug Canyon
Zhemchug (“pearl” in Russian) is the longest, widest and deepest canyon in the world. Its total volume is nearly twice that of the Grand Canyon. It is vast beyond description and teems with fascinating organisms. It is also hundreds of fathoms underwater.
Zhemchug, sprawling southwest from the Alaskan shore and deep into the Bering Sea, is home to dozens of soft corals, sponges and other invertebrates found nowhere else in the world. Only in the last five years have scientists have begun to plumb the depths of Zhemchug, and we still have virtually no information on what marvels it may conceal. That said, time is already running out.
Every year, the Alaskan pollock fleet rakes Zhemchug repeatedly with gigantic trawl nets in its relentless quest for fish protein (pollock is the low-value, high-volume fish often used to make products like fish sticks and fast-food fish sandwiches). While there is an argument for using pollock in our food system, there is no excuse for pulverizing Zhemchug Canyon (or its neighbor, Pribilof Canyon) to get it.
The pollock fishery covers thousands upon thousands of square miles outside of the canyons, and the vast majority of pollock is caught in these areas rather than Zhemchug or Pribilof. Pollock producers and companies that sell pollock products must commit to sourcing their pollock from outside the canyons if these amazing treasures are to survive.
To help protect Zhemchug Canyon: Avoid pollock products until leading seafood companies pledge only to source pollock from outside of the canyons, and then support those companies.
2. The Ross Sea
The Ross Sea, a remote, half-frozen dent in the side of Antarctica, is aptly nicknamed the ”the Last Ocean” — it is the only remaining oceanic ecosystem on our planet with a relatively intact animal population at all levels of the food chain. Elsewhere in the world, the ocean’s apex predators — sharks, bluefin tuna, swordfish, etc. — have been fished to the point of near-collapse. After nearly a century of industrialized fishing, the Ross is the only remaining sea that still has a strong top-level predator population.
The Last Ocean
The Ross Sea has no sharks. Instead, the food chain is dominated by two predators: the Antarctic toothfish and the Ross Sea orca. The toothfish, more commonly known by its menu-friendly moniker “Chilean sea bass” is the largest fish in the Ross Sea and a lynchpin of its ecosystem. The Ross Sea orca is a rare and isolated subspecies of killer whale found nowhere else in the world. Both species are under threat.
The Ross Sea is under increasing pressure by an emerging fishery targeting Antarctic toothfish. In order to satisfy a hunger for Chilean sea bass fillets, ships are now beginning to enter the last pristine ocean in search for white-fleshed plunder. Chilean sea bass is also a prime prey item for the Ross Sea orca, and recent science has identified a correlation between decreasing Antarctic toothfish populations and a diminishing orca presence.
To protect the Ross Sea: avoid Chilean sea bass, especially from the Ross Sea. Also, don’t be fooled by certifications — astonishingly, the Ross Sea toothfish fishery is Marine Stewardship Council-certified.
3. Palmyra Atoll
Cast far into the Pacific like a stone that has lost a child’s interest, Palmyra Atoll is a tropical wonderland upon which humanity has taken a sort of self-serving pity. Once privately owned by a wealthy American family, Palmyra was purchased some time ago by the Nature Conservancy in an effort to safeguard this virtually untouched ecosystem for study and posterity, and the atoll still boasts strong populations of many species that are disappearing from other areas of the tropics at astonishing rates.
It's me or the SUV
Unfortunately, localized precautions cannot forestall a larger creeping doom that threatens to swallow Palmyra like a massive turtle — the menace of global climate change.
As we pump carbon into our atmosphere, we increase the rate at which our polar ice caps melt and give these areas less time to re-freeze in the winter. As such, water that had been frozen for eons is now streaming into the ocean, causing global sea levels to rise. A few vertical inches can spell the end for atolls like Palmyra, which is just one of the many sandbank jewels scattered about our world that may not survive to see the coming decades.
To save Palmyra: the best we can do is support clean energy efforts, limit our consumption of fossil fuels, and keep the climate crisis in mind as we go about our daily lives.
4. The Sargasso Sea
The world’s only “sea without shores” is geographically defined not by a neighboring land mass, but rather by the spatial dimensions of its own ecosystem. There is no other expanse of ocean like the Sargasso; a unique conflux of swirling currents, temperate weather, and the calming winds of the horse latitudes has given rise to an enormous morass of Sargassum seaweed. This vast aquatic jungle is the basis of an entire ecology involving dozens of species found nowhere else in the world.
It's a jungle down there
Between the leafy sea dragons, pipefish and man-o-war peppering the Sargasso swim American and European freshwater eels, known in the sushi industry as unagi. These animals hatch in the waters of the Sargasso and are slowly swept along by the currents of the Atlantic Ocean. When the tiny eels enter water with decreased salinity — due to a nearby river mouth — they transform, developing muscles and the ability to propel their bodies through the water. These eels — now known as “elvers” — swim directly upriver, where they feed, grow and mature. They will spend their life in fresh water until they reach adulthood, whereupon they leave the river system and return to the Sargasso Sea to mate. All freshwater eels from both sides of the North Atlantic come to the Sargasso, and nowhere else, for this purpose.
But the Sargasso is in trouble. Not only are eels themselves severely overfished (that unagi at your local sushi bar may be “farmed,” but in reality, it was captured from the wild as an elver and transferred to a rearing facility for fattening), but the greedy eddies of the Sargasso attract massive amounts of jetsam from all over the Atlantic, especially plastic and container waste, which disrupt the ecosystem and hinder many animals’ ability to feed.
To help save the Sargasso: avoid unagi, and be judicious about the use of plastic bags and other refuse that often ends up in the oceans.
Tags: 4 Oceans, alternet, antarctica, bering sea, canyon, eel, elver, orca, Palmyra, pollock, Ross, Sargasso, toothfish, unagi, Zhemchug
What problem?
It is a frightening concept to mess with success. The old adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” is alive and well in our modern economy, and the seafood industry is no exception. Many seafood purveyors, when confronted with pressure to change their ways, can be resistant – especially if they see success and growth in their businesses. Why change, if the status quo seems just fine?
The fact is, however, that all is not well. There are a plethora of rocks and growlers lurking in the murky waters of the seafood industry: overfishing, habitat destruction, IUU fleets, and more. Still, it’s not common that a business owner is able to see all of these obstacles clearly… especially if ones perspective is obscured by the constant back-and-forth of a ringing cash drawer.
Chef Hajime Sato, however, is different.
A tiny revolution
Mashiko restaurant has been operating in Seattle for fifteen years, and it is by no means an unsuccessful operation. Chef Sato has a line out the door nearly every night, and unless you arrive just as the restaurant opens, it’s almost certain that you’ll be waiting for a table. By all standards and appearances, this is a prospering business. And frankly, Chef Sato had all this to lose when, in August of 2009, he took his entire business model and turned it upside-down.
Mashiko is the first sushi restaurant in the world that has transitioned from a conventional operation to a sustainable one. With only minimal help from myself and the other players in the movement, Sato turned his restaurant into a sustainable operation. He bid good riddance to his bluefin, hamachi, eel, monkfish, and other unsustainable items. These days, he directs his efforts towards innovation, education, and the identification of local and sustainable options.
New moves
Moreover, Chef Sato is the first traditionally-trained Japanese sushi chef to embrace the sustainable sushi movement. In his words, however, he is simply returning to the basic principles that gave rise to sushi over a hundred years ago: utilization of local and seasonal products, reverence for life, and interpretation of the bounty of the oceans in a respectful and reverent manner.
In the last few months, Mashiko has achieved a much greater degree of exposure than ever before. Interviews with Chef Sato have run on any number of popular food blogs; he received a glowing review of his operation from the Seattle Times and has appeared on the Food Network’s Extreme Cuisine with Jeff Corwin, where he discussed innovation in sushi, local seafood sourcing, and the amazing bounty of Puget Sound.
Through his bravery in challenging the conventional model, his determination to hold ethics and ocean conservation over the maximization of profit, and his contribution to the nascent sustainable sushi movement as well as the overall awareness of the consumer public in the Pacific Northwest, Chef Hajime Sato has brought a new spark to the sustainable sushi movement.
Good to have you on board, buddy.
Tags: ankimo, bluefin, corwin, eel, extreme cuisine, hamachi, IUU, mashiko, monkfish, overfishing, pacific northwest, sato, seattle, success, unagi, west seattle
This article is continued from a previous post.
Desperate times
As promised, after four weeks of waiting, I finally have something substantial to report.
At three o’clock on a dark, sweaty Thursday morning, I was called to the bridge by the watchkeeper. I stumbled through the alleyways and hauled myself up two rolling and pitching stairwells, my shirt clammy and wrinkled and my eyes bloodshot from a long bout with insomnia. After nearly a month at sea and nothing to show for it, I was dearly hoping that I had been summoned for a good reason, not for just another false alarm. Please, I pleaded silently, please let there be a ship out there.
My bleary eyes were directed to the softly backlit radar screen, and suddenly my adrenals shot into overdrive and I was wide awake. There wasn’t just one ship on the screen – there were four.
Somehow, in the middle of the night, we had bumbled our way right into the center of a fishing fleet.
Filling their purse
As soon as it was light enough to see, the Esperanza’s crew sprung into action. A launch was scrambled and the boarding team shot off towards the nearest seiner, which had already set its net and was beginning to haul it in.
Our launch pulled up alongside the fishing vessel, close enough that we could almost touch the floats that kept the seine net in contact with the water’s surface. The massive net was looped around a FAD that had been bobbing in the water for a week or more. The seiner’s crew hooked the seine net drawstring to a massive, towering winch, and slowly the net began to constrict as the drawstring pulled tight: an ocean-going python of immense length and power.
A bloody mess
Eventually the fish trapped within the net began to panic. We began to see tuna jumping and splashing frantically, churning what had been the ocean’s calm surface waters to a white, bubbly froth. The net pulled tighter and tighter, forcing hundreds, even thousands of these animals together into a lethal gridlock. The winch slowly and inexorably cranked the net aloft, as unstoppable and unforgiving as the reaper’s scythe. The massive weight of the catch forced the strands of the net into the scales and flesh of the unfortunate animals on the bottom. The seine began to weep blood.
The fish were hoisted onto the deck and dumped into the cargo hold. We boarded the ship and set about scouring the decks and holds for evidence of bycatch. Our photographer and videographer documented everything as the unwanted catch, including dorado (mahi mahi), triggerfish, marlin, and mackerel, was tossed over the side or simply tossed into a trough that served as a temporary storage for bycatch. The fishermen were actually quite pleasant and helpful as a general rule, although that may have been because the language barrier prevented us from offering an in-depth explanation of our true motivation.
One of the lucky ones
Throughout the day, the boarding team cycled back and forth among the different ships, witnessing, boarding, and documenting. On two separate occasions we saw turtles ensnared by the seiners. They had been attracted to the FADs and were in the wrong place at the wrong time when the ship set. Luckily, the fishermen were able to free the animals both times. Turtles aren’t always so fortunate in these situations.
On one of the ships, I managed to sweet-talk my way deep into the guts of the ship so I could crawl into the fish hold itself. I rummaged through a pile of thousands of dead and dying skipjack, looking for juvenile bigeye and yellowfin tuna that had been netted along with their more numerous cousins. It only took me a matter of seconds to find the first, a bigeye that was no larger than my forearm. After that, I started to see them everywhere. My rough estimate is that between 10 and 15 percent of the seiner’s total catch was juvenile bigeye and yellowfin.
Don't it make your bigeyes blue
I grabbed a dead bigeye and a dead skipjack and showed them to a fisherman. I pointed at the skipjack and asked him in Spanish what it was called. He looked at me blankly and replied, “atun.” I nodded, and then pointed to the bigeye. “This one is different, though,” I said, “it’s a different species. What’s this one called?” He shrugged and gave me a friendly grin. “Atun,” he said.
Maybe that’s part of the problem.
We repeated these visits all day, moving from ship to ship, documenting clean catches as well as hauls that were stuffed with unwanted animals. I saw dozens of dying mahi mahi and triggerfish tossed back into the sea, left to bleed out and sink to their doom. Large, majestic marlin, crushed and suffocated by the seining process, were tucked away in back corners of the hold as a private stash for the seiner’s captain. Worst of all, we saw hundreds of baby bigeye and yellowfin tuna – species already under serious threat — meet their end as they got lost in the shuffle, mixed in with skipjack destined for low-value tins. No doubt the bigeye and yellowfin stocks will never be able to recover if we keep purloining their young, but that is precisely what is happening.
We shall overcome
Still, as troubling as it was to witness these travesties, morale on the ship has never been higher. We have done what we set out to do — obtained photographic proof of the horrifying bycatch associated with these FAD seiners. We still have several more days to search, but even if we end up with nothing more than what we’ve already collected, it is certainly enough to convince me that something rotten is afoot in the Eastern Pacific.
Tags: ban, bigeye, billfish, bycatch, camera, dorado, ecuador, FAD, mahi, marlin, net, purse seine, seine, seiner, skipjack, triggerfish, tuna, turtle, video, yellowfin
This article continues from a previous post.
Come together, right now... under me
So another week has passed, and life aboard the Esperanza goes on relatively unchanged. The air is muggy and heavy, tempered only by an ephemeral breeze, weak to the point of being almost imaginary. The furious equatorial sun rises above the bow and slices the bridge open in the morning, spends the day beating its chest high in the sky, and finally tires itself out, slipping astern, red and exhausted beneath the indigo sea.
We still press on eastward, slowly gobbling up the massive distance between us and our final port, keeping watch for the purse seiners that ply these waters. We also have daily watches that consist of various crew members staring at the sea, searching desperately for fish aggregating devices (FADs) — small rafts or buoys used by skipjack seiners that draw many different kinds of fish together, causing the bycatch problems that brought us out to the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the first place.
The problem is, we haven’t been able to find any of these things. At least, not until a few days ago.
Ghost ship
On Wednesday night, a blip appeared on the Esperanza radar screen. It was over twenty miles out, moving quickly, and in completely the wrong direction, so direct confrontation was out of the question. Still, we were able to raise the ship on the radio. A short conversation confirmed that we had indeed found a purse seine vessel. It was steaming northwest, off to find FADs that it had deposited earlier.
Since we were not going to be able to intercept it, we elected to use some subterfuge. Without disclosing who we were, we mined the seiner’s radio operator for information. A cordial discussion yielded some excellent direction about where we could go to “find some fish,” and where a “private vessel” such as ourselves could reasonably expect to find “productive fishing grounds.”
We cross-referenced the information we got from the seiner with our charts. Everything was matching up — climactic anomalies, plankton blooms, underwater topography — and it all highlighted one particular area as a potential magnet for neighborhood skipjack poachers. Luckily, this target zone was directly on our course, about a week away at full steam.
Aww.. you say such nice things
At present, we’re only about three days away. The crew is energetic, and standard watches on the bridge have been augmented with volunteer labor by officers and deckhands that are eager to see some action. We’ve seen increased signs of life as well in recent days, with pods of spinner dolphins cavorting off the bow and innumerable birds circling off the foredeck. Flying fish continue to provide a beautiful distraction, especially when entire shoals of the delicate little creatures rise from the waves in unison, hundreds of glimmering pairs of wings stretched akimbo, tiny shining bodies gliding effortlessly into the air as the ship splits the water just behind them.
More next week. At the risk of being overconfident, I’m quite certain that I’ll have something more substantial to report by the time next Monday rolls around.
This article continues in a subsequent post.
Tags: bycatch, dolphin, ecuador, esperanza, FAD, flying fish, greenpeace, IUU, katsuo, pacific, plankton, radar, seamount, seine, seiner, skipjack, tuna
... and all the boards did shrink
This article continues from a previous post.
Ahoy there. Apologies, but I don’t have much to report.
For the last week, the Esperanza has been steaming through the Doldrums, a notorious latitudinal band of weak currents and unpredictable weather that straddles the Equator, reaching from about 5°N to 5°S. Historically, sailing ships dreaded entering this nefarious swath of ocean for fear that they would be becalmed – that the wind would suddenly die, leaving the crew to languish in the unrepentant equatorial sun, baking in their bunks and making no progress. Ships would roast in the Doldrums for weeks at a time, where the heat and hopelessness would incite disease, madness, and mutiny.
So all hail the modern age, where internal combustion assures that such a fate shall no longer befall an intrepid group of seafarers daring to traverse the Equator. Still, the presence of an engine changes neither the terrain nor the weather. Indeed, we may be moving, but for all intents and purposes, we are not. Each morning brings a sunrise that is a carbon-copy of the one previous, the tiny yellow eye of the tropical sky burning with fever, floating up from waves that are indistinguishable from those which we have watched glide by again and again, day after day.
Water, water everywhere
Although we keep a constant watch both to port and starboard, not one FAD has been located over the past week. Not a ship has been glimpsed on the horizon, nor has a single flicker of life and movement cast its green-lit ghost upon our radar screen. The Esperanza trudges resolutely along, utterly alone, hunting its phantom quarry in the untellable vastness of the Pacific.
Still, we do not lose hope, and morale remains high. All of our information suggests that we are moving into the thick of the seining grounds. Indeed, as each day passes, it becomes more likely that we will encounter our target.
Born free
We also take heart in knowing that our inability to locate a fishing fleet is not for lack of prey. There are shoals of flying fish constantly taking to wing along the bow, and we’ve even seen skipjack tuna – the very fish whose dilemma has brought us here in the first place – launching skyward from the waves in an effort to snag their winged meals from the air. Pilot whales, too, have graced us with their presence on more than one occasion. It’s nice to be noticed.
In truth, everything is proceeding apace, minus the fact that we really haven’t yet had the chance to do much in terms of accomplishing our mission and documenting the actions of these seiners. That will change, however — and soon.
Rest assured that I will report when I have something to report. Until then, please remember to enjoy all those things that land-based life has to offer — for the lot of us.
This article continues in a subsequent post.
Tags: doldrum, equator, esperanza, FAD, Fishing and Farming, flying fish, greenpeace, IUU, pilot whale, purse seine, seine, skipjack, tahiti
Does size matter? Ask Chris Jordan
Since I am currently on a ship slowly steaming across the vast azure void of the Pacific Ocean, it seems appropriate to discuss an artist that specializes in not only environmental conservation messages, but in a medium that calls our attention to the size and scale of the challenges that have beset our planet.
Chris Jordan is a Seattle-based artist who has both an unrivaled determination and an uncanny ability to tackle some of the largest problems in the world – and I mean that quite literally. Jordan excels at confronting issues that threaten our very survival, but are simply too large for us to easily understand. One of the ironic cruelties of ocean conservation is the fact that the problems facing us are so astoundingly immense that we simply lack the brain power to truly comprehend them. When talking about pollution, overfishing, and climate change, we routinely speak in numbers so large that we are unable to construct a mental picture that reflects the truth.
For example, consider the case of the world’s largest food fishery, Alaska pollock. For the last several years, the total landings of Alaska pollock have roughly averaged around 1.5 million tons. 1.5 million tons certainly seems like a huge number — but what does it look like? How many fish is that, exactly? How many freezers would that fill? How many people does that feed? How many football stadiums could we bury under frozen pollock fillets? The number is simply so large that we cannot grasp the actual amount of biomass in question. This lack of understanding stymies our ability to understand the impacts of our actions on the health of our planet.
"Gyre" (photograph)
Chris Jordan’s talent lies not just in his ability to translate the incomprehensibly large into the understandably small, but to do so in a way that actually enhances the gravitas of the subject matter. One area in which he has seemingly achieved the impossible is in the case of the North Pacific gyre, home of the litter-strewn waters known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” or “trash vortex.” When we discuss the gyre and its lamentable petro-saturated state, it becomes difficult to truly grasp the dimensions of the problem for the simple reason that it is so staggeringly large. We can say something like “twice the size of Texas,” but how does one truly visualize that expanse? What will it take to truly drive home the gargantuan scope of the trash vortex and the looming challenge that it represents?
Close-up of "Gyre": top of Mt. Fuji
Jordan attacked the problem head on by creating his awe-inspiring “Gyre”: a mosaic of discarded, waterlogged plastic that he has painstakingly arranged to mimic Hokusai’s “Great Wave off Kanagawa,” which is unequivocally one of the most well-known seascapes in the history of mankind. Jordan’s piece measures only nine feet by twelve feet, yet somehow manages to convey the immense scale of the trash vortex, which is nearly the size of the continental United States. The close-up shots reveal the millions of pieces of plastic that have been co-opted into this mammoth task. His use of actual flotsam and jetsam taken from the sea itself to create such an iconic encapsulation of the ocean is a stroke of genius — the viewer cannot help but imagine the foreboding reality of a sea composed entirely of plastic.
"Shark teeth" (photograph)
Jordan has also weighed in on the abominable practice of shark finning and the hellacious scope of the industry’s shark-slaughtering machine. His 2009 photograph “Shark teeth” showcases an artfully arranged collection of fossilized shark teeth ranging from off-white and beige to dusky blue and dark grey. The original piece measures 64″ by 94″ and is based on a watercolor by artist Sarah Waller. There are 270,000 teeth in the collage – one tooth for each shark that is killed by the global finning fleet every single day.
Jordan’s juxtaposition of stratospheric mega-imagery with close-ups of minute detail smacks the viewer with two difference senses of awe: the jaw drops upon perceiving the abyssal magnitude of the work, while the eyes squint and forehead wrinkles in disbelief at its pseudo-molecular intricacy. He accomplishes the same task on behalf of one of the world’s most beleaguered fish with “Tuna,” a photographic marvel detailing 20,500 tuna — the average number of tuna captured from the world’s oceans every fifteen minutes.
"Tuna" (photograph)
Jordan proves through his relentless drive, his attention to detail, and his willingness to confront issues beyond the scope of human imagination that we are truly an omnipotent race. We have created these problems for ourselves, but however massive they have become, however long they have festered, whether spiraling outward in plastic ripples across the face of the deep or tearing into it with greed-driven claws, it is within out power to understand them – and with that understanding will come one inevitable conclusion: we can, and we must, save the ocean.
Tags: Alaska, art, chris, chris jordan, collage, gyre, jordan, north pacific, photograph, photography, plastic, pollock, sarah waller, seattle, shark, sushi, teeth, tooth, tuna, vortex
