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
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
Well, by this time, the radio spot is already over. I should have probably posted this a few days ago, but hey, I’ll make the best of it.
Rachael Myrow of KQED sat down a couple of weeks back for an interview with Geoff Shester and Stephanie Danner of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, and invited me to tag along. It was a great experience. The piece was aired this morning (Feb 13th) on KQED in San Francisco, and KZOR in the Monterey Bay area.
I consider myself very fortunate to count both Geoff and Stephanie among my colleagues in the ocean conservation movement; they’re both brilliant scientists and have a great deal to teach.
But best of all… they’re huge Tataki fans!
I can’t express what an incredible thrill it is to hear representatives from the Monterey Bay Aquarium express their approval of what Kin, Raymond, Gretchen, and and the rest of the Tataki Sushi and Sake Bar family have done here in San Francisco. I mean, this is Seafood Watch — these are the gods and goddesses of sustainable seafood! So I’m a little humbled today… but I’ve also been strutting around down with a stupid grin on my face for the past several hours.
Anyhow, about the spot:
Rachael asked a lot of questions about bluefin tuna. In fact, I think the piece was originally intended to be mainly focused on bluefin. When it aired, though, it had transformed into something much broader.
Bluefin tuna is an extraordinarily important topic: an iconic fish that embodies both the awesome lifeforce of the ocean, as well as the heart-stopping peril in which our waters find themselves. That being said, Rachael veered from what would have been a concentrated piece on bluefin (similar to the excellent recent work of Alastair Bland in the Santa Cruz Metro) and broadened her focus considerably to discuss seafood sustainability in general.
I think it’s commendable for KQED to approach this issue from such a holistic perspective. It’s important to see the ocean not as a collection of individual fish and organisms, but as a living, interwoven fabric. All the animals and plants of the ocean are intermingled. The majestic bluefin tuna is incredibly important, sure, but the homely urchin, the tiny nudibranch, and even the drifting aquatic weeds of the Sargasso are equally integral to the health of our oceans.
Thanks, Rachael, for your interest, and for helping us put it all in perspective.
You can listen to the radio spot here.
Tags: bluefin, California report, KQED, NPR, rachael myrow, radio, seafood watch, Tataki Sushi and Sake Bar, toro
Aquaculture (a.k.a. fish farming) involves fish or shellfish that is taken from cultured populations rather than form the wild. Sustainable Sushi uses the methods developed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program to appraise these operations.
The methodology is based on the analysis of five criteria:
1) Use of marine resources: What kind of drain is the farm on our natural resources? Many fish farms use wild fish as food for their farmed product. How many pounds of fish go into the farm to get one pound of salable fish out? Is the food fish drawn from sustainable sources? Are endangered species being used as food?
2) Risk of escaped fish to wild stocks: Fish farms are always going to have some level of escapes. What is the likelihood that this could be a problem? Does the same species already exist in the waters around the farm? Could the fish thrive in the local area, and establish a population? Is there the potential for cross-breeding?
3) Risk of disease and parasite transfer to wild stocks: Is the farm acting as a disease or parasite incubator? Could these pathogens and parasites potentially transfer to local wild populations? How is the farm controlling the potential disease problems?
4) Risk of pollution and habitat effects: Many fish farms discharge effluent into the natural environmental around them. Is this being mitigated at all? What are the chemicals and particulates that are being discharged? Is they having a deleterious effect on the local environment? How is the farm effecting the environment as a whole?
5) Management effectiveness: Some farms are very well-managed, while others are slipshod operations that pose a severe threat to environment. This criterion examines the strength of the management protocols under which the farms are operating and evaluates the effectiveness of their precautionary measures.
These five criteria are appraised and averaged to generate an overall ranking.
Tags: aquaculture, farm, farming, seafood watch
Posted by Casson on Dec 24, 2008 in
Science and Rankings The Seafood Watch rankings are almost identical to the Sustainable Sushi rankings. Why is that?
The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program has been providing consumers with sound scientific advice on their seafood choices for over five years. While there are certainly limitations to using a wallet card for an information dissemination device, Seafood Watch does an excellent job of educating the public on the issues involved with many of the species integral to the American seafood complex.
I am fortunate enough to have had first-hand experience with the Seafood Watch methodology. During the formative years of the Sustainable Sushi project, I worked with the Monterey Bay Aquarium to research and draft several of the reports used by Seafood Watch on certain sushi-related species.
In general, Sustainable Sushi stands by the system used by Seafood Watch as a strong and precautionary system that honestly and accurately appraises the current seafood landscape. There are certainly issues that merit debate and room for improvement, but currently, I do not believe that a more comprehensive methodology for integrating environmentalism and science into the seafood industry exists. In fact, the great majority of the sustainability rankings used by Sustainable Sushi have been created by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program.
For more information on the criteria used by Seafood Watch and Sustainable Sushi, please visit the posts on wild fishery rankings and aquaculture rankings.
Tags: seafood watch
Wild fisheries (a.k.a. capture fisheries) involve fish or shellfish that are taken from wild stocks rather than raised in farming systems. Sustainable Sushi uses the methods developed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program to appraise wild fisheries.
The methodology is based on the analysis of five criteria:
1) Life history: This criterion examines the fish itself and whether or not it is the fish inherently vulnerable to fishing pressure. Questions include: Does it reproduce quickly, or slowly? How long does it live? How long does it take for the animal to reach sexual maturity? Does it migrate in ways that result in dangerous catch patterns?
2) Stock status: It’s important to look at the current population levels of the fishery. Is it currently being overfished? Has it historically been overfished? What is the general health of the stock?
3) Bycatch: A fishery often has deleterious impacts on co-habiting animals. This criterion examines whether or not the fishery causes undue harm by killing juveniles, endangered species, or other organisms in the area.
4) Habitat and ecosystem effects: Some fisheries can impact the very ecosystems around them through the removal of biomass or the destruction of habitat. This criterion attempts to identify these effects and to appraise whether they are damaging or relatively benign in the case of each individual fishery.
5) Management: Wild fisheries deal with common resources, and thus they require management to avoid over-exploitation. It’s important to identify if there is management governing a given fishery, and whether or not this management system has been effective in protecting the stock.
These five criteria are appraised and averaged to generate an overall ranking.
Tags: capture, rankings, seafood watch, wild
