Target achieved
The conventional salmon farming industry has never had it so tough.
In an unprecedented policy shift, the Target Corporation – one of the largest retailers in the United States and a direct competitor with Walmart – has just today announced the elimination of all farmed salmon products from its stores. Fresh, frozen, shelf-stable, and smoked items will from here on out exclusively be made with wild Alaskan salmon — no exceptions. Even its sushi department, which is notoriously the most stubborn part of this industry when it comes to change (thus the existence of this website), is in the process of phasing out the last bits of its farmed salmon.
While this act is truly staggering in its magnitude and its implications for the seafood retail industry, of equal importance are the reasons behind Target’s decision. The company does not mince words when it comes to why they have made this transition — Target’s communications department clearly states that the company is not interested in supporting an industry that has done such harm to our marine ecosystems. Their press release spells it out quite simply: “Target is taking this important step to ensure that its salmon offerings are sourced in a sustainable way that helps to preserve abundance, species health and doesn’t harm local habitats… Many salmon farms impact the environment in numerous ways – pollution, chemicals, parasites and non-native farmed fish that escape from salmon farms all affect the natural habitat and the native salmon in the surrounding areas.”
Preach on!
Wild salmon for the people
This move will undoubtedly shake the salmon farming industry to its very core. Target, after all, is not exactly a high-end gourmet market – rather, it’s a price leader that specializes in providing quality products for low prices. How, then, does a market that worships price-driven competition manage to eschew an item that embodies the very concept of bargain seafood?
With help from Greenpeace and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Target has opened the door to a new era of seafood – one that dares to question tired old paradigms that cannot withstand this kind of innovation. Retailers which have parroted the weary excuse of farmed salmon filling an otherwise unattainable price point will now be exposed as complacent rather than pragmatic. If a low-cost hypermarket like Target, which needs to sell salmon for $6.99 a pound, can manage to transition entirely to wild, sustainable product, how can the Whole Foods clones of the world defend their reliance on environmentally dubious farmed products that sell for over twice the price?
Off to the races
To make matters even more difficult for the industry, a new threat has arisen in the form of legitimate and economically viable closed-containment salmon. Earlier this month, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program took another swipe at the open-net nightmares that festoon the Canadian and Chilean coasts by giving the “Best Choice” green light to a new closed-containment salmon farm in Washington State. This operation, lovingly termed “Sweet Spring” by its proprietor Per Heggelund, raises coho (silver) salmon in a sealed recirculating system located many miles inland, far from the fragile habitats of the Pacific Northwest’s wild salmon populations. The feed component of this operation is still not perfect as it does exceed an even fish-in-to-fish-out ratio, but compared to the parasite-riddled, antibiotic-laden concentration camps that provide much of the world’s farmed salmon, Heggelund’s facility is a beacon of progress.
The horror... the horror
Conventional farmed salmon is caught between a rock and a hard place, and it is not a moment too soon. Salmon farms have been the source of countless problems over the past decade – diseases in Chilean farms rip through penned animals like hot knives through butter; parasite swarms in Canadian farms threaten the very survival of co-habiting wild salmon runs, not to mention the essence of Pacific Northwest cultural integrity.
Salmon are the backbone of who we are here on the west coast. It is the wild salmon runs that bring nutrients from the sea to the land, that fertilize the river banks and feed the yawning bears. If we allow this, our greatest legacy, to perish at the hands of a small group of cash-blinded eco-criminals, it is doubtful that we will ever find another source of such selfless bounty.
We need courage, innovation, and foresight if we are to create a wise and responsible seafood industry that can steward our oceans in the coming decades, and it’s companies like Target and entrepreneurs like Per Heggelund that are leading the charge. Remember this day — this was the day that we took our salmon back.
Tags: Alaska, coho, farm, sake, salmon, seafood watch, sweet spring, target, wild
Tataki Sushi and Sake Bar was the first sustainable sushi restaurant in the United States. When it opened in February 2008, however, it was to deafening silence from the culinary scene. Little money was available to spend on advertising and fanfare; chef/owners Kin Lui and Raymond Ho had already put themselves deep in debt merely through attending to the bare necessities that came with opening a restaurant. Although I was lucky enough to be involved in concept and development, I certainly wasn’t able to bring any money to the table.
The vision behind the restaurant was simple – to prove that sushi and ocean conservation did not necessarily run at odds in one another, and that in fact one could do honor to the art form and hold true to the pursuit of excellence that is part and parcel of the cuisine, while at the same time respecting and nurturing the bounty of our oceans.
Sounds simple enough, right?
Not in our house
There were some major challenges right out of the gate. The five most popular sushi items in the United States – open-containment farmed salmon, farmed shrimp, longlined yellowfin tuna, farmed Japanese amberjack, and ranched freshwater eel were all unequivocally unsustainable choices. They all had to go, as did the biggest moneymaker of them all: bluefin tuna.
An even bigger challenge has been the lack of a full kitchen. Tataki has had to cope with this since day one. Frankly, though, it has only served to show how much more a hypothetical sustainable sushi chef could do with a full suite of tools.
The Tataki menu has evolved over time, but not a single one of the aforementioned products has ever blemished its pages. This has been a struggle in some ways, but in others, it’s actually proven surprisingly easy. An example? Replacing farmed salmon.
I can't believe it's not eel!
Since farmed salmon was never an option for us, Tataki has always offered arctic char in its place. We expected some degree of resistance from our customers, but it has never materialized. The char was instantly popular among our diners and to this day remains one of the restaurant’s best sellers. We bring in wild Alaskan salmon as well, but as this is a seasonal product, it is a delicacy that we are not able to offer on a daily basis.
Eel was replaced with faux-nagi, Chef Kin Lui’s brainchild. This sablefish-based dish delivers the deep, dusky sweetness and fatty texture of unagi, but doesn’t rely on an overfished product.
The chefs eschew bluefin toro in favor of the sweet, supple belly flesh of local pole-and-line albacore. Hamachi was never an option either, due to the state of stocks and the rapacity of the industry. Instead, Tataki’s offers farmed Hawaiian kanpachi (as well as wild amberjack, depending on the season.)
Welcome back, vegans
Tataki also boasts a thorough vegetarian selection. It seemed to us that vegetarians had been severely marginalized when it came to sushi — how many cucumber rolls can you eat before the experience becomes unbearably mundane? Moreover, vegetarians are, by definition, sustainable seafood supporters insofar as they would never order bluefin, eel, farmed salmon, or other dangerous options. Kin and Raymond put a tremendous amount of thought into designing a menu that offers both vegetarians and vegans alike a plethora of animal-free delights.
The vast majority of Tataki’s customers are thrilled about the options. Sure, we have the odd one or two patrons that lament our lack of unagi or toro, but we’ve found that the gains vastly outweigh the losses.
While the restaurant’s popularity has continued to grow, nothing could have prepared us for a recent event that both flattered and humbled us to no end. In its October 5th issue, Time Magazine declared Raymond, Kin and myself “Environmental Heroes of the Year” in honor of our work with sustainable sushi.
Our little corner of the industry
As ecstatic as we are about this award, it is actually our hope that our little operation will soon be forgotten amidst the dozens, even hundreds, of other restaurants and grocery stores that make the switch to a more responsible method of selling sushi. A niche restaurant may command a distinct market share, but it will not change the world; it cannot save the oceans. A vanguard restaurant, however, defines itself by the slow demise of its individuality. We at Tataki will know that we’ve succeeded in our mission when, from an environmental perspective, there is nothing to distinguish us from any other sushi bar.
The concept of sustainability is ballooning within the public consciousness, and with each passing day, the ideals of a sustainable lifestyle penetrate further into our daily existence. For all of us in the Tataki family, it has been and continues to be a true honor to play a role in the development of sustainable sushi.
Tags: albacore, bar, bluefin, casson, diners, eel, environmental hero, fauxnagi, hamachi, ho, kanpachi, kin, lui, raymond, restaurant, salmon, shrimp, sushi, sustainable, Tataki Sushi and Sake Bar, time, trenor, tuna, vanguard, vegan, vegetarian
Posted by Casson on Sep 10, 2009 in
News and Announcements 
It's getting hot in here
I’m back from a much-needed vacation and ready to get cracking.
As you are likely aware, the oceans are continuing to heat up (both literally and figuratively, unfortunately.) we’re seeing an ever-increasing number of articles in the mainstream press about overfishing, piracy, fishery collapses, acidification, trade disputes, and more.
I’ve got several pending articles on my plate but I do want to float a suggestion so we can better get at the issues that are of the biggest concern to you, the sustainablesushi.net readership.
One of the ideas that I received a couple of weeks ago was to allow readers to ask direct questions that would then be used to formulate articles. I think this is a great idea, as I do have a tendency to get a bit off-topic and this would serve to keep my pen reigned in a bit and to ensure that the entries I’m writing are indeed of interest to folks that visit this site.
Have you heard the news?
So, let me ask — what’s on your mind? Concerned about the bluefin tuna hullabaloo going on in Europe? How about the New York Times front page article on hoki? Maybe your interest is piqued by all the new money the Canadian government is pouring into aquaculture? Is it the ongoing crisis within the Chilean salmon farming industry (they brought it on themselves) that’s got your attention? Or maybe something else entirely?
Please either post your questions and topics of interest here or send them to info@sustainablesushi.net, and I’ll take it from there. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Tags: acidification, aquaculture, bluefin, canada, Chile, Chilean, CITES, collapses, farming, hoki, input, issues, overfishing, piracy, questions, readership, salmon, vacation
Posted by Casson on Jul 30, 2009 in
Fishing and Farming 
Hey! What did I do??
I am no fan of farmed salmon. This is no secret. Having grown up in a community that prides itself on its legacy of healthy wild salmon runs, I am particularly sensitive to the creeping demise of these marvelous fish.
The connections between salmon farming and the collapse of wild salmon in areas like British Columbia and Norway are now beyond debate. I cannot count the number of panels I’ve been on and presentations I’ve given where I do my utmost to strip the veils from this industry and expose it for what it is. The vast majority of the farmed salmon consumed by the United States has been produced in a greed-driven, environmentally negligent manner that has polluted our oceans, endangered our native salmon, and hoodwinked the consumer public into thinking that they’re actually eating a healthy product.
Sea of green
I protest the British Columbia farmed salmon industry because of its politics, its parasite and waste problems, and for its heartbreaking effects native salmon runs. I avoid the Scottish and Irish industries because of their greenwashed, boutique-farm marketing schemes, their misleading regulations (organic salmon? From a net pen?), and their farmers’ thuggish habit of blowing seals’ brains out when they come anywhere near the salmon pens. I object to the Norwegian industry for the staggering volume of farmed salmon that they pump onto the world market, and for the unbearable pressure these farms place on wild Norwegian salmon runs.
But what makes me physically ill is the farmed salmon industry in Chile.
Farmed salmon can be a potential hazard to human health. This post concerns an extremely alarming bit of news about the Chilean salmon farming industry. Until very recently, Chile provided the lion’s share of all farmed salmon imported by the United States.
Fish pharm
A recent report by the Chilean Ministry of the Economy (and thrust into the limelight by Oceana, a science-based conservation group) has disclosed that the Chilean salmon farming industry used 325.6 metric tons of antibiotics in the year 2008. Compare that to Norway’s salmon farms. The Norwegian industry used 649 kilograms of antibiotics while producing more farmed salmon overall than Chile. That means that Chile used over 350 times more antibiotics per kilogram of salmon produced than Norway.
If this weren’t horrifying enough, hey, it gets worse!
Throughout 2008, the two most popular antimicrobials used used by Chilean salmon farmers were florfenicol (used in 56.7 per cent of the total, or 184 tonnes) and flumequine (in 9.9 per cent, or 32.2 tonnes). This latter chemical belongs to the quinolone family of synthetic antibiotics. Not only is flumequine absent from the US Food and Drug Administration’s list of approved chemicals for use in fish farming, but the FDA has banned the use of most quinolones for their negative effects on human health when used excessively.
Chilean roulette
What do you think? Do usage levels hundreds of times higher than Norwegian competitors qualify as “excessive”?
And finally, just to add insult to grave potential injury, you’re not going to be able to tell which Chilean salmon were produced the most egregious offenders. The report does not offer guidance as to the amount of antibiotics used by any particular farm, claiming a lack of information. So it’s anyone’s guess as to whether or not the salmon at your local grocery store has been stuff to the gills with toxins by overzealous salmon farmers.
Fabulous!
Don't you trust me?
Luckily, Hugo Lavados, the Chilean Minister of the Environment, soothed all of our fears when he announced that “companies do not medicate fish in the period before commercialising their products.”
Um… wait a minute. I don’t understand — you raise a fish. You give it large amounts potentially harmful antibiotic that is prohibited under US law. Sometime later, you sell it to me. I eat it. How is that not “the period before commercialising the product?”
Personally, I don’t care how much time passes between this chemical barrage and my dinner — it’s not going to be long enough. Moreover, it’s not just about the antibiotics reaching the end consumer. Where else do they go? Do the salmon farmers filter these chemicals (and all the fish detritus containing them) out of the water column that flows uninterruptedly through these open-net fish pens? Somehow, I doubt it. So how many organisms end up consuming or absorbing insane amounts of these chemicals merely because they inhabit nearby real estate?
This industry has always been a monster, but this statistic is simply shocking. If you care about the welfare of our planet, don’t buy any open-net farmed salmon. Don’t buy Chilean farmed salmon regardless of whether you care or not.
Tags: antibiotics, antimicrobial, Atlantic salmon, BC, British Columbia, carcinogen, chemical, Chile, farmed salmon, FDA, florfenicol, flumequine, Hugo Lavados, Loch Duart, Ministry, Norway, Norwegian, Oceana, open net, parasite, quinolone, salmon, salmon farm, Scottish, sea lice, seal
I’m not usually the kind of person that would look at a scrap piece of wood too closely. It wouldn’t catch my attention, and even if it did, I doubt I’d see more than its potential utility in construction or value to a beach bonfire.
Of course, that changed after I met Adeleine Daysor.
Daysor, 28, is a relatively new presence in the US art scene, having only recently arrived here from her home country of Singapore. She uses pieces of scrap wood to create abstract sculptures that are largely open to interpretation, and then marries them to food. It’s an odd relationship, and one that I didn’t fully understand at first, but have come to genuinely appreciate. The fact is, with Daysor’s art, the sculpture is really not the point at all.
Daysor gravitated to food imagery in her work because it was a way to transcend cultural differences. Even though food around the world is different, everyone in every country does have to eat. As such, there is no culture without food, nor is a there food without culture.
"Wood-crab study" (watercolor on paper)
When Daysor narrowed her focus from a broad spectrum of culinary interpretation to a more precise investigation of sushi and seafood, she was reacting to the materials she encountered rather than attempting to manifest an image that had already developed in her mind. The pieces of wood that later would become the physical presence of her pieces imposed themselves upon her imagination, rather than the other way around. What makes Daysor unique is that she strives to allow her viewers this same opportunity.
“I saw a crab in this block of wood, but someone else may see something different,” Daysor explains to me, “but not if I place my watercolor of the crab directly next to the wood block. Then it’s a crab to everyone.” This kind of orchestration, Daysor claims, leaves no space for art.
"Is Everything on a plate, food? Is Everything on Rice, Sushi? Is Everything on a hook, Fish?" (scrap wood and cooked rice)
This is one of the most interesting aspects of Daysor’s work. She does not consider her sculpture, watercolor, or mixed media to be her art in its final sense. Rather, the products of her effort are the images and emotions that the physical props conjure in an observer’s mind. This approach lends itself to a feeling of fluidity and open-endedness that is often missing from the work of many artists. Daysor seems to view the pieces she creates as stepping stones in a longer path of the viewer’s understanding or realization. “A lot of what I’m dealing with is the history of items, objects, things,” she says. “I put them together in different combinations that become an object, and that object starts its own history. Objects are like culture, they evolve and change, but there’s always an origin, and I want people to think about that.”
"Afternoon Tea" (mixed media)
Daysor’s shows are interactive events. They combine a smattering of actual, edible food with her sculptures and paintings, all of which depictions of food in various degrees of abstraction. With little or no explanation given, Daysor’s show is similar to a zen initiate’s first taste of koan meditation. In her effort to create fertile ground for personal reflection and interpretation, Daysor offers no guidance as to how the pieces should be approached or interpreted. The audience is immediately confronted with a pronounced sense of insecurity.
There are paintings on the wall, but are they related to the sculptures on the pedestals? If so, why aren’t they displayed together? Not to mention — there is an abundance of edible food mixed in with the artwork, but is it supposed to be eaten? Is the food being wasted? What would happen if I ate it?
"Salmon Log Cake" (mixed media)
Daysor smiles when I ask her about this. “The first time the salmon log cake [a sculpture that flanks slices of real salmon with two pieces of wood that masquerade as salmon] was displayed, I offered it to be eaten, and people ate it. Second time, I didn’t say no but didn’t say yes either, and no one ate it.” She pauses for a moment before adding, “I think they didn’t eat it because the real food next to the constructed objects puts food outside its natural context. Also, it’s playing with the rules – people don’t know if they can eat it, or should eat it, etc.”
Daysor allows these questions to bloom in the minds of her viewers and to play themselves out in a natural progression. Sometimes the food in her shows is consumed, sometimes it’s not. To Daysor, this is the core of her art. Without free interpretation and participation to give depth to the piece, the work is merely two-dimensional.
"Wood-prawn study" (watercolor on paper)
To me, Daysor’s work echoes one of the most fascinating aspects of sushi, seafood, and the ocean in general: the sense of limitless potential and possibility. The monsters that coil about the edges of ancient mariner’s maps were spawned from the same place that Daysor is urging her viewers to return to. The reflective sheen atop the world’s oceans provides an optimal setting to nurture the imagination. What incredible creatures and undiscovered treasures lie beneath the waves?
Daysor’s work encourages us to believe in the wondrous nature of our world. In order to ignite a passion for the ocean, one must truly believe in its magnificence. The depth and mystery of the ocean is indeed indescribable, but we have largely allowed this awe to be supplanted by more pedestrian interpretations of the ocean (like fish sticks, for example.)
What do you see?
It doesn’t matter if I see the same thing that you see in a given piece of wood or a passing cloud. What matters is that we open ourselves to whatever blossoms in our imagination. I am not satisfied with the idea that the entire world will be force-fed a single interpretation of our ocean. As I said — that way lies fish sticks.
We need our passion, our hope, and our powers of imagination all operating at full capacity if we are to save our planet. We need the ability to visualize an answer, to work together, and to believe in ourselves. We have to challenge the paradigm that got us into this mess, and anyone that can use a forlorn, castaway piece of wood to fuel their creativity is on the right track.
Tags: adeleine, adeleine daysor, art, crab, culture, daysor, display, fish sticks, food, interactive, rice, salmon, scrap, sculpture, singapore, sushi, watercolor, wood
Feeding the world
When Sustainable Sushi was being developed, the Alaska pollock fishery — the 2nd largest fishery in terms of total biomass in the entire world — seemed relatively healthy and stable. At the very least, it provided a traceable and ostensibly well-managed seafood source that was superior to the random mash of imported whitefish that provides the ersatz fish protein underpinning our fish stick and surimi industries. In fact, the Alaska pollock fishery has been considered a “Best Choice” by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program for years, and is an MSC-certified fishery.
Things seem to be taking a turn for the worse, however. Recent developments in the fishery seem to suggest that all may not be well in pollock country.
Bottoming out
For five years running, the stock has seen lower levels of recruitment (new fish in younger age classes) than historical trends would lead researchers to expect. Overall stock levels have severely declined as well, taking the overall populations to levels only previously reached in the late 1970s — a time when the fishery was open to international fleets and was being heavily over-exploited.
Bycatch levels are also higher than one would like. An increase in overall CPUE (Catch Per Unit of Effort — a measurement of the amount of resources and manpower needed to produce a given amount of fish) has led to increased mortality among co-habiting salmon. Local sea birds and marine mammals are also being affected; strong links are being drawn between the pollock fishery and a downturn in northern fur seals and the endangered Stellar’s sea lion.
Trawl victims
Pollock trawls are impacting sensitive seabed habitats as well — new explorations in the Bering Sea have revealed rich areas of endemic corals. Unfortunately, these areas are not yet protected from fishing, and the pollock fleet is freely operating in coral beds which should ideally be listed as no-take zones.
Most troubling, however, is the reaction on the part of the Northern Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC), a federal body that is responsible for setting the yearly pollock quota. Rather than use the aforementioned concerns as justification to pare down the fishery and reign in some of its more worrisome aspects, the NPFMC instead did the exact opposite and increased the allowed amount of king salmon bycatch to 60,000 fish.
This is poor management from an environmental standpoint. The pollock fishery’s regulations are such that when the bycatch cap for salmon is reached, the fishery is immediately shut down for the year. This increase in tolerable bycatch numbers reflects the rising CPUE within today’s pollock fishery, but rather than move to rebuild the fishery, it simply allows for greater and more damaging exploitation.
Can you spot the pollock?
The pollock fishery is no longer what it once was. It is clear that federal management cannot be depended upon to make wise and environmentally sound decisions in the face of the economic and industrial short-term interests that dominate the pollock industry. Given the current situation, I have no choice but to urge readers to refrain from purchasing products that contain Alaska pollock. In the sushi industry, this means the California roll and other items that include kanikama (imitation crab).
This is by no means an irreversible situation. The Alaska pollock is an incredibly resilient and fecund fish that has the capability to bounce back. Proper management can restore the fishery to its former productive glory, just as was done in the early 1980s. The greater worry is for other impacted populations, primarily Stellar’s sea lions, Alaskan king salmon, coldwater corals, and northern fur seals. If the pollock fishery is to continue, it must reinvent itself to be more sensitive to these co-habiting species.
I have no doubt that other environmental organizations have this issue on their radar, and that we will in the very near future begin to see more criticism of the Alaska pollock fishery from groups much larger and more established than Sustainable Sushi.
Tags: Alaska, bycatch, coral, CPUE, kanikama, msc, no-take, NPFMC, pollock, sake, salmon, sea lion, seafood watch, seal, Stellar, surimi, trawl, Update
On Friday the 19th, I was invited to participate in a short Q&A session directly following the release of The End of the Line, a new documentary about the state of our oceans, at a movie theater in the East Village.
Even though Greenpeace has been engaging in rigorous cross-promotional efforts with the producers of this film, including campaigning against Nobu restaurant and taking to the water to expose the repugnant activities of bluefin tuna pirates, this was the first time I actually saw the movie in its entirety… and I’m now more convinced than ever that it merits our unconditional support.
The End of the Line is a masterful work that details one man’s crusade to save our world’s oceans. The author and subject of the documentary, Charles Clover, found his love of the ocean as many of us do: at the end of a line.
While fishing in Wales, Clover snagged a very lonely salmon – a salmon that turned out to be the last one ever caught in that river. Overfishing, rampant development, pollution, and habitat loss have combined forces to annihilate a population that once made annual pilgrimages to the Welsh highlands.
After witnessing the melancholy fade-out of this salmon run, Clover began to ask that simple question that so many of us are struggling so mightily to ignore: Why are our fish disappearing? His quest to find an answer became an odyssey that took him from Senegal to Tokyo and a thousand points in between.
You should see my older brother
The movie is replete with dazzling imagery; shots of Almadraba, a traditional bluefin tuna hunt undertaken by Spanish fishermen in the Strait of Gibraltar capture the true vitality and power of this regal animal. During the sequence, I overheard a woman in front of me convey her astonishment over the bluefin’s massive size to her companion in hushed expletives.
The irony is that the bluefin pictured in The End of the Line aren’t large at all… maybe 150 pounds. Just a short decade or two ago, there still were bluefin swimming about that had reached sizes closer to their true potential – upwards of 600 pounds. That’s three or four times larger than the “massive” fish in the movie.
Our baselines have shifted. Aside from the wrinkled old seadogs that haunt the docks of towns like Gloucester, MA, no one remembers a truly gargantuan bluefin. No one remembers that there used to be alligators in Chesapeake Bay. No one remembers the true nature of a healthy ocean.
"When I was your age..."
A number of aging fishermen appear throughout the film, underscoring this issue by weaving an old salts’s lament into the story. With their greybeard perspective and sun-stroked skin, these old men of the sea decry the waste and rapacity of the modern fishing industry, citing our rampant overfishing as a glaring example of today’s generation cutting its own throat in search of a quick dollar.
Near the conclusion of the film, an unnamed woman sums up the problem when she smiles into the camera and candidly delivers the line, “I like to eat fish. To me, fish are food.”
Fish food
Those who have read some of my previous articles and blog entries on this subject know that I do not necessarily dispute this statement. I don’t have a problem with the concept of a human being feeding on a fish. The problem arises with the strange assumption that once an animal is relegated to the status of “food,” it no longer merits any kind of respectful treatment. It does not deserve to be treated as a living thing; rather, it exists for the lone purpose of one day graduating to the status of fish finger, salmon burger, or 2-piece nigiri plate.
Speaking to this issue (albeit somewhat indirectly) is Dr. Daniel Pauly, a UBC professor who is prominently featured throughout the movie. Pauly is one of the most well-known fisheries scientists in the world. He speaks at conferences and symposia in cities across the globe. The particularities of his theories are often disputed within academia, but no one would deny the man’s brilliance and devotion to the planet.
At one point during the film, Pauly offers a frighteningly simple answer to Clover’s overarching question about the fate of the world’s fish. When Clover asks, “Where are the fish going?, Pauly responds, “We are eating them!”
- ALL YOUR FISH ARE BELONG TO US
Fish may be food to some, but that does not mean that they are not still fish first and foremost, living organisms with which humans have a delicate and complex relationship. This relationship is being abused to a terrifying extreme. Factory trawlers, dynamite fishers, bluefin tuna pirates, absurdly greedy corporations (et tu, Mitsubishi?) and corrupt politicians have stretched the ability of our oceans to nurture healthy fish populations to the breaking point.
I beseech all those who read this message to make a point of seeing The End of the Line as soon as possible. It depicts the reality of the state of our oceans better than this blog ever could.
Tags: almadraba, baseline, bluefin, charles, clover, end, end of the line, film, gibraltar, gloucester, greenpeace, line, mitsubishi, movie, nobu, ocean, overfishing, pauly, pirate, salmon, wales
Alicia Escott: Artist, visionary, and trash collector
Most artists that use sushi imagery have purposefully selected the cuisine as something they want to incorporate into their artwork. Something unique to sushi piqued their interest and compelled them to explore it from their own unique perspective. Alicia Escott, however, began her interaction with the sushi world completely through happenstance.
A graduate of the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago, Escott began her art career as a plein air painter, but soon found herself unsatisfied. An activist at heart, Escott painted her pieces with an environmentalist bent, but didn’t feel that her viewers were interpreting it that way. Frustrated by this, Escott all but abandoned her painting and moved to San Francisco, intending to turn her back on her artistic side in favor of developing a career in sustainable business. This was not to be, however – perhaps the fates weren’t about to allow such a talented artist to rob us of a gift that we so desperately needed.
Looking for work and struggling to make ends meet, Escott found herself working at a grocery store that happened to house a sushi counter. At the end of the day, the sushi that hadn’t been sold was distributed to hungry workers or thrown out. This is the moment where Escott came face-to-face with her future medium – discarded plastic.
"Pitch" (oil on plastic)
Escott saw potential in incorporating this cast-off material into her work, and began to create energetic seascapes and vibrant animal imagery as her paint splayed across the matte black plastic cradle of someone’s rainbow roll. Over time, Escott hit her stride and her work blossomed, belting out undeniable messages about the not-so-disposable nature of all that which we dismiss as “disposable.” Her work drives home the staggering reality of the truth behind grocery sushi packaging: the fact that a hungry Safeway patron’s nigiri combo has a life expectancy of about 20 minutes, while the container holding it – whose ostensible purpose was solely to custodian the fish and rice to their grisly end – will likely persist for tens of thousands of years.
- “A New Day” (oil on plastic)
Escott has utilized a number of different techniques in her work, including oils, pencil, and ink. Many of her pieces are composed on single pieces of plastic, while others, like her mind-boggling “A New Day,” are arranged on large grids — in this case, a rising sun and seascape splashing across thirty discarded sushi containers.
According to Escott, sushi has achieved an important place in her consciousness. “Fish really exemplify what I’m trying to communicate,” she says. “Consumers don’t know where they’re from, how they got here, or where they go… just like plastic.”
"Drawing of the last wild California grizzly bear. 'Spotted several times in 1923 in Sequoia National Park and then never seen again.' Drawn on plastic mattress bags from Cisco Home for Sustainable Living. 'Handcrafted Furniture made in LA since 1992.' This drawing is slowly fading into obscurity. The plastic is currently not locally recyclable." (ink on plastic)
That’s not to say that Escott’s expertise is limited to this little wasabi-and-soy universe. She has a repertoire that draws on plastic in a multitude of forms, from discarded plastic bags and disposable containers to entire heavy-duty plastic sheets, every scrap of which was thrown away by its original owner.
In fact, packaging in all forms, even beyond the tangible, intrigue her and draw from her imagination a myriad of poignant and groundbreaking pieces. “Our whole lives are packaged,” Escott laments. “Even a national park is ‘packaged’ in a way to make it accessible and appreciable… plastic is the epitome of this, you know? It’s at once the most hygienic and the most ‘dirty’ thing.”
"Salmon roll" (ink on plastic)
To express her perspective on the concepts of waste and packaging from a broader sense, Escott has created both massive and minuscule works, dwelling on detail and, most importantly, the ironic connection between her imagery and her material. She pours countless hours of work into the artistic amelioration of items that most people would leave crushed and forgotten in a garbage can or on a city sidewalk. In one of her pieces, several meticulously hand-rendered salmon struggle up a river that rushes along the creases of a crushed, discarded sushi lid. The plastic still bears a faded sticker that reads: “Salmon roll.” The salmon are frozen in time, rolling through whitewater that has been superimposed on the molted shell of one of their long-eaten relatives – a fish that, through the dubious miracle of plastic, has been frozen in time as well.
"Untitled" (ink on plastic)
The impact of this juxtaposition is redoubled by Escott’s masterful ability to convey a critical message: this plastic waste is a tremendous threat to the health of oceanic ecosystems. As discarded plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, it forms “nurdles” – tiny particles that are invisible to the naked eye but that have the potential to persist in our environment for thousands of years. Nurdles find their way into streams and rivers which bear then onward until they reach the ocean. These microscopic poison pellets then saturate our waters and are subsequently devoured by unsuspecting filter-feeders. Countless animals are killed by nurdles ever year, starving to death, unable to fit any digestible food into their full stomachs. They are packed to the gills, as it were, with plastic.
When confronted about the true purpose of her work, Escott gets a impish look and the corner of her mouth curls up mischeviously. “I want to confuse the viewer,” she confesses. “I want to bring home this cognitive dissonance between the disposable and the perpetual. We at once accept these containers as ‘disposable,’ but at the same time, we’re aware that they will be around for thousands of years.”
Well, I’m certainly confused. As I write this, I’m about 30,000 feet above the Nevada desert, and I’ve just finished eating. My food was, predictably, encased in a black-and-clear disposable plastic service, #1 PET plastic on #6 polystyrene, accompanied by the ubiquitous clear plastic airline cup. But now that I’m finished with my meal, what do I do with the plastic? I ponder my situation, turning the problem over and over in my head. Given the continual failure among domestic airlines to incorporate recycling programs into their policies, anything I hand to the flight attendant for disposal is a strong candidate for nurdle-dom. So how can I ensure that this anachronistic reminder of a fruit and cheese plate that I barely tasted doesn’t contribute to the demise of our planet? How can I put the incredible longevity and persistence of my food’s erstwhile shield to good use?
I guess I’ll give it to Alicia.
Tags: a new day, alicia, art, bear, chicago, culture, escott, foods, grocery, ink, lid, nurdle, oil, pencil, PET, pitch, plastic, plein air, polystyrene, roll, safeway, salmon, san francisco, whole
A simple truth of sushi is that it tends to involve fish. A second simple truth is that, before they were nigiri or maki, these fish were living, breathing creatures. Strangely, this latter axiom seems to pass unnoticed all too often.
Luckily, we have Gayle to remind us.
The gifted and lovely Gayle Wheatley.
Gayle Wheatley is a well-known artist based in the Los Angeles area. She is supremely talented and works in an impressive array of media, including oil on canvas, illustration, and graphic design. Her work is displayed in numerous exhibitions and galleries around the world, and much of it has been snapped up by art collectors who lamentably discovered her before I did.
Gayle spent two years living in Japan, and I’m guessing that this is at least part of what has inspired her to use sushi imagery in her work. What interests me about Gayle’s art is her uncanny ability to depict the connection between sushi and life.
I often find myself waxing on ad naseum about this subject: fish are alive. Until they die, that is. Or we kill them.
This in itself isn’t a problem for me; rather, I’m concerned by the dubious understanding that we have of this connection on a subconscious level. Consciously, sure, we know the sashimi on our plate is fish… but do we stop and think about how it was a fish, as well?
- We are hamachi.
Picture this: you walk into your favorite sushi restaurant. You order hamachi. You wait a few minutes, maybe savoring a steaming cup of green tea or sipping Sapporo from a pilsner glass. A moment passes and a modest but smiling server approaches your table, places a small wooden block before you, and vanishes. On the block, resting softly on a shizo leaf, are two loosely-molded lumps of rice topped with a couple of pieces of a rich, cream-colored flesh with light veins of red and pink streaking through it. It is a beautiful dish, rich in its simplicity, evoking thoughts of freshness, purity, and delight.
What it doesn’t make us think of is a fish.
- But I was hamachi first.
Hamachi is a staple in the US sushi industry, but it is exceedingly rare in other sectors of our seafood landscape. You won’t find hamachi at your local Safeway, WalMart, or Kroger; nor will you see one resting in the crushed ice of a high-end independent urban seafood market. In fact, outside of a sushi bar, most Americans will never encounter a hamachi at all.
Which means most sushi-goers have no idea what the living fish actually looks like.
I find that it’s difficult to connect with something of which I have no tangible or visual appreciation, and fish are no exception. These gaps between us and the animals that we consume allow us to feed upon them with less regard for what they once were. Harmful fishing practices, filthy farming conditions, and even the ugly faces and off-putting monikers of particular fish are hidden to foster our ability to purchase in blissful ignorance at the point of sale. Why else would merchants decide to change the name of the Patagonian toothfish to the Chilean seabass? Or market the slimehead as “orange roughy”?
(Speaking of that, have you ever seen a whole, head-on Chilean seabass displayed in a fish counter? No? Maybe it’s because they look like this.)
This is a point of concern for me. In my view, it is missing the point to work towards sustainability in the fish industry if we do not reconcile our eating habits with the fact that fish are living creatures, not an amorphous commodity. As long as we continue to to treat these animals as less than that (farming them in unsuitable conditions, filling them with drugs and dyes, devastating their habitat with destructive fishing gear, etc.), we will continually find ourselves struggling to reach sustainability.
Gayle has managed to use sushi to portray these undersea organisms as the vivacious, mysterious, beating-heart marvels that they are. Her vibrant, almost monstrous depictions of the animals “behind the sushi” strikes a chord with me. Salmon roe sport teeth, similar to those they would have developed had they been allowed to hatch and mature. A clutch of eels writhe and squirm against a nori yoke, struggling mightily to escape a hackneyed kabeyaki fate. Cold- or warm-blooded, exo- or endo-skeletal, shelled or scaled, pelagic or benthic… it makes no difference. Gayle’s work ably demonstrates that all of the ocean’s inhabitants merit our reverence, as does the amazingly complex ecosystem that they compose.
It’s not about refusing to eat fish. It’s about bringing our awareness of what we are actually eating to the table. Once the information is present, we can make defensible decisions as to what is right for us as individuals. We can clearly delineate for ourselves what we will and will not consume. This kind of consumption works in harmony with our own personal ethics, and I promise, fish tastes so much better that way.
Tags: amberjack, art, eel, gayle, gayle wheatley, hamachi, ikura, illustrations, maguro, octopus, salmon, salmon roe, sushi, Sushi culture, tako, tuna, unagi, wheatley
