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 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
Gratuitously gratuitous
Have you ever seen one of those high-budget crime flicks where a bunch of slick dudes go out and rob a bank?
It starts with a group of chiseled Hollywood 30-somethings cocooned in tailored suits, driving fancy cars and armed with enough sexy crime tech to make even the most jaded geek swoon. There’s the compulsory uber-coolness sequence where they’re slow-motion strutting out of a building, all wearing expensive shades and silk ties, oozing style. Then there’s the heist scene, a spitfire collage of action shots and staccato sound effects that raises your heart rate and stretches your eyelids up past your forehead. Finally, the smoke clears on an empty bank vault, with a bunch of bumbling police officers looking at one another in confusion, and their mustachioed, hard-boiled lieutenant staring into the middle distance, clenching his jaw in impotent fury.
Invariably, these smooth criminals now need to liquidate their ill-gotten gains so they can flee to some non-extradition paradise festooned with string bikinis and mai tai umbrellas. Problem is, the cash is easily traceable – so they go for something else.
Bearer bonds. Raw diamonds. Postage stamps. They find one of those funny ways to steal money that won’t get them reeled in by Interpol or by some twitchy, obsessive FBI agent that has willfully exceeded his jurisdiction in order to bring his better-looking, cooler, and smarter nemeses to justice. Finally, there’s the scene at the bar of the expensive resort in Montenegro or Caracas, where the government agent sidles up to the criminal and informs him that sure, he’s out of his jurisdiction, but he knows what’s going on and will make sure that so-and-so suffers for his misdeeds….
That's the stuff
… sorry, I’m digressing. I meant to stop at the point where I said “bearer bonds.”
The reason I’m bringing this up is because there’s a point of commonality here between this stamped cellulose lucre and much of the fish that one can find everyday at the local sushi bar. Both are, for the purposes of everyday commerce, untraceable.
Much of the seafood swirling about the sushi industry chain of custody is “black box” fish. It passes through so many hands, is processed and repackaged so many times, and languishes in the bellies of so many cargo planes that its history is lost. Discerning where the fish is actually from becomes an impossible task. When they’ve finally finished ricocheting around the planet, these poor animals have accumulated enough frequent flyer miles to upgrade to first class on that final trip to your dinner plate.
Living in the present
International labeling laws tend to make things even worse. Generally, a fish product is only required to list the last point at which there was value-addition (a change in formatting – repackaging, processing, cooking, etc.) This process wipes out and redrafts the history of the fish as if it were on etch-a-sketch in the hands of a kindergartener with ADHD.
Thus do we have fish landing on sushi counters without any indication of their checkered pasts. A good example is the ubiquitous tako, the mottled purple octopus whose severed tentacles adorn sushi bars across the planet.
This precise Japanese term for this species of octopus (Octopus vulgaris) is madako, or “true octopus.” This multi-limbed wonder is caught all over the world, but some of the most productive fishing is traditionally done off the coast of North Africa in Moroccan, Mauritanian, and Senegalese waters.
Swimming towards ignominy
The problem here (beyond the fact that this octopus is largely bottom trawled from flagging populations with little management) is that the world’s tako chain of custody bottlenecks in Japan. Octopus is not simply yanked out of the water to be immediately slapped down on a sushi bar, as is the case with numerous other fish. Rather, octopus has to be properly blanched, seasoned, and packaged for travel. This takes place in Japan, where there is an entire industry based around octopus processing. The world’s octopus trawl fleets capture the animals, kill them, and ship them off to Japan where they are all mixed together in enormous processing facilities. The octopus is prepared for use in sushi through a method that involves hot water, vinegar, and copious amounts of plastic. This process strips each octopus of its individuality, creating an amorphous melange of tentacles that is then re-exported and disseminated to sushi bars throughout the world, bearing stickers that read: “Product of Japan.”
But it’s not really from Japan, is it? And by the time it arrives in the United States, neither the broker who imported the octopus, the seafood distributor who trucked it to a restaurant, nor the chef who chopped it up for a salivating sushi fan is able to trace it to its source. Any knowledge of original home of the octopus has been lost, wiped from history as cleanly as a child’s carefree sand scrawls are erased by a rising tide.
Octopus Anonymous
So if we need to know the original source of the fish to determine stock status and management rigor, and we need to know about stocks and management to determine the sustainability of a given seafood option, how do we deal with tako and other black box products? How can we make educated choices to promote sustainable fisheries if we can’t even tell where the fish is from?
This is the curse of the black box. It is a general dearth of information at the final point of sale that is enabled by ineffective trade protocol and labeling laws. It is a black hole languishing in the center of the world of seafood, drawing shipping receipts, landing logs, and other data into its gravity well, engaged in a perpetual implosion that disposes of fact and history more efficiently than an armada of paper shredders set upon the National Archives.
It falls upon us to apply the precautionary principle in these situations. If we cannot adequately defend a hypothesis stating that the dish is a sustainable option, we must assume the opposite. A precautionary approach to our marine resources will allow us to protect our planet by giving our oceans, rather than the fishing industry, the benefit of the doubt. This is how we avenge the dodo.
Pandora's box
Below is a non-exhaustive list of sushi items that commonly fall into the black box:
Tako (Octopus)
Anago (Sea eel)
Unagi (Freshwater eel)
Tobiko (Flying fish roe)
Toro (Bluefin tuna belly)
Kanikama (Surimi)
Sazae (Conch)
Processing bottlenecks, weakness in labeling, and IUU (pirate) fishing all contribute to the strength and volume of the black box. Consumer patronage of black box seafood has an extremely detrimental impact on our oceans. Please exercise extreme caution when considering any of the above options at the sushi bar.
Tags: anago, bank robbery, bearer bonds, black, black box, bluefin, bottleneck, box, conch, conger eel, curse, eel, export, flick, flying fish, flying fish roe, freshwater eel, import, IUU, japan, kanikama, labeling, madako, mauritania, morocco, movie, ocean's eleven, octopus, pirate, precautionary principle, processing, sazae, sea eel, senegal, surimi, tako, tobiko, toro, traceability, tuna belly, unagi, untraceable
