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
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
I want to take a few moments to acknowledge the journalists that have been doing so much to promote sustainable sushi in the past few weeks.
Some quick thank-yous:
To Clair Leschin for her wonderfully supportive piece on sustainable sushi in the Christian Science Monitor;
To the Seattle Times’ Nancy Leson for her flame-stoking article on Mashiko, the cooperative effort of chef Hajime Sato and myself to create Seattle’s first sustainable sushi restaurant;
To Katharine Mieszkowski of Salon.com for a powerful take on sushi and the current plight of the bluefin tuna;
To Laurel House for an insightful roster of ten steps we can all take to support sustainable sushi for Discovery.com’s Planet Green;
To the Seattle Weekly’s Jonathan Kauffman for his examination of sustainable sushi and consumer habits, as well as some pomp and circumstance for the Mashiko launch; and
To Sarah Barmak of NOW Magazine for her muck-raking exposé on the sushi industry and her quest to find sustainable fish in Toronto.
I, as well as the teams at Tataki Sushi Bar and Mashiko, are grateful or your time, interest, and passion. This movement will not succeed without interest and support from the media. Having determined and environmentally aware journalists on board with the sustainable sushi movement is absolutely imperative as we move forward. It has been a pleasure to work with each and every one of you; thank you all so much.
Tags: august 15, bluefin, christian science monitor, clair leschin, consumer habits, Hajime Sato, jonathan kauffman, Laurel House, mashiko, nancy leson, NOW magazine, pacific northwest, press, Salon.com, sarah barmak, seattle, seattle times, Seattle Weekly, sushi, sushi industry, sustainable sushi, toronto
