Safina's Blue Fin Blues

I've eaten blue fin tuna -- the last time was perhaps 3 years ago. No longer. I now know enough to understand this fish is in danger of collapse - as in disappearance - as this illuminating post by Carl Safina makes clear. He's author of Voyage of the Turtle and other books and co-founded Blue Ocean Institute (which like several others, has very useful information on sustainable seafood choices).

His post on the ineptitude of bureaucrats 'managing' the fishery is astute.

The largest remaining Atlantic bluefin population-which breeds in the Mediterranean-is now also endangered with collapse. The quota for fishing in the eastern half of the Atlantic and in the Med is more than double what the Commission’s own scientists recommend. Moreover, recent catches have exceeded the limit by more than 50%. Actual catches are about 230% higher than scientists recommend, meaning that for every one fish that can be sustainably caught, fishermen are killing more than three. The population has halved since the 1970’s, with most of the decline occurring in the last 5-6 years. It’s the familiar Bluefin story: Illegal fishing is rampant, too many fish are being caught, and the population is headed for collapse.

Image source: National Geographic

Chilean Salmon Juggernaught

Chilean farmed salmon has increased more than 10-fold in thepast 15 years, but it is not without problems. The World Wildlife Fund reports that the production is taking a toll on the nation's inland lakes, where salmon smolts, or juvenile fish, are produced. Oxygen-free dead zones in the lakes are growing, fish are escaping and invading rivers and lakes and pollution is mounting. WWF estimates that switching production to contained ponds would would cost around $43 million -- just 2 percent of the money the country makes from salmon exports each year. This is just one of the criticisms of farmed salmon, which also rely heavily on stocks of wild fish to feed salmon, depleting wild species.

The Big Blue

Today marks World Oceans Day, so we direct you to Blogfish, which has a "carnival of the blue" going on with a compendium of thoughtful posts from blogs everywhere on the subject.

Eastern Fish and Chips

Eastern cod has been a classic story of overfishing, with fish populations crashing and the fisherman along with it. That's why I found it curious that hook-caught Georges Bank cod off the eastern seaboard is going for certification by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) as a sustainable fishery.

Eric Brazer Jr., of the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association, told The Cape Codder that last fall the hook and line fishing sector off Cape Cod, Mass., passed the "first assessment to getting certified" under rigorous sustainable harvesting standards set by the MSC.

MSC, founded by World Wildlife Fund and Unilever, hasnow certified 21 other fisheries around the world as "sustainable."

The news on cod was reported by Sustainable Food News (requires subscription) in March and I have seen no follow-up anywhere else. Perhaps prospects for the fish have changed, if you consider this small item in a Green Guide story from 2003:

According to NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service), the cod population of New England’s Georges Bank has yet to recover, despite restrictions placed on its fishing since 1994. This year, Canada shut down all its cod fisheries to protect the species’ plummeting numbers. “We’ve seen species after species, such as the Georges Bank cod and Bocaccio rockfish on the Pacific Coast, that have collapsed under federal management,” says Susan Boa, program manager of the Seafood Choices Alliance (SCA). Lee Crockett, executive director of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, says that fisheries managers have allowed catches that were too large for too long, bringing about the collapse of these populations over the last decade or two.

Right now, Seafood Watch only recommends buying Pacific line-caught cod, because those fisheries have been managed sustainably. (Icelandic cod, not on this list, is also well-managed). But so far, the program advises to "avoid" Atlantic cod. Here's the current cod recommendations (click graphic to enlarge), but this may well change if Atlantic line-caught cod wins MSC certification. - Samuel Fromartz

Mulling Over Green Practices and Blue Oceans

By Samuel Fromartz

Chews Wise has been notably silent over the past few days. Such is the life of an itinerant blogger. A sustainability conference took me to the Monterey Bay Aquarium on the central coast of California and the talk – and the fish – were too engaging to otherwise post.

For those who haven't visited the aquarium, I highly recommend it. One evening, after the conference had concluded, and dinner was done, I sat upstairs in front of a giant glass wall (perhaps 60 feet wide and 20 feet high) staring into a blue expanse of water that faded into the distance. From the dark interior, giant blue fin tuna would appear suddenly and then circle around, occasionally flicking their fins and darting forward at incredible speed. Others swam around slowly amid the other species. The room was darkly lit, accentuated by quiet music to create a meditative mood.

Blue fin tuna at the aquarium

I sat there for a half-hour marveling at the blue fins, whose population in the oceans is fast dwindling. So much is being harvested so fast that prices are falling and frozen fish are being stockpiled even as the population collapses. So this is how the other 80 percent of the earth lives … or has lived. (For this reason, I also highly recommend the aquarium's Seafood Watch wallet card on smart choices in seafood.)

The conference was engaging, focusing not just on seafood, but also agriculture, energy use in food systems, and the issues of scaling up sustainable practices (a panel I moderated), and punctuated by keynote talks. One by Fred Kirschenmann from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Iowa, stuck out for its cogency. Kirschenmann, a longtime organic grain farmer and philosopher, made the point that sustainability was more of an ideal than a set of procedures. Akin to Justice, say. And despite farming now for decades, he hasn't reached the ideal on his farm, but was always reaching for it. The point was well taken, for he's talking about an evolutionary process. In too many green endeavors, organics included, the focus has been on meeting the lowest-common denominator required by law. That bar is necessary to prevent some who would rather not meet it from passing off their products, fraudulently, as green. But what's forgotten is that the bar is a bare minimum to say, in effect, 'you're on the path.' It's a beginning, not an end.

That has certainly been the case with organic farming, which I've argued was envisioned as a post-industrial method of farming that progressed forward. It wasn't a return to some pre-industrial idyllic past. Innovation has been paramount and methods improved largely by pragmatic farmers trying to do it right. But the question that organic and other sustainable movements will face in the years ahead is whether they can move forward and simultaneously ratchet the bar higher. In this way, sustainability not only spreads, but is refined and improved. The worst-case scenario, of course, is something quite different – a lowering of standards or a fight against improvement – and there is a risk of that happening too. Some argue that has happened, but I am not so pessimistic. I don't think we need to throw out the entire regime and start from scratch.

Many farmers have eschewed the organic label, arguing they are more 'sustainable' or 'beyond organic.' But without knowing more about their individual methods and day-to-day choices, I'm not really certain what that means. As one moderator said at the conference, sustainability may mean putting two solar panels on the roof and nothing more. Although I'm sympathetic to the gripes about the cost of certification and the time involved in record-keeping, I still want to know what producers mean by the terms they use and whether their practices are recognized. Otherwise, I fear that their self-defined regime won't even meet an accepted base level. And without getting to the starting gate, there's no room to improve. As Kirschenmann said, sustainability is a process, an ideal, but it still needs a foundation to build upon.

Trawling for Real Shrimp

It doesn't take a PhD to realize that the price of shrimp has fallen dramatically over the past several years, so fast, in fact, that shrimp consumption has doubled in the past decade. So why is shrimp so cheap?

Gourmet has a good piece on this in its March issue (sadly, not online) by Barry Estabrook, "Do I Dare Eat a Shrimp?" What the article makes clear is that there are truly bad choices, when it comes to these little crustaceans, and less bad ones, but what's not clear is whether there is really a good choice.

First, the bad. Shrimp farms have proliferated in the developing world, created largely by ripping out mangrove swamps and putting in shrimp ponds. These farms kill native fish and pollute surrounding waters, leading to more forest destruction. Like much of factory farming, they are particularly prone to pests and disease, so they become a dumping ground for more than 20 antibiotics and pesticides. One of the most potent, the antibiotic chloramphenicol, can be toxic to humans and is banned for use in the U.S. Plus, these shrimp eat fish protein, which can lead to depletion of feeder stocks (one of the hidden costs of fish farming in many species).

Not surprisingly, the article asserts these shrimp don't taste very good either.

On the back of these operations, the price of shrimp has fallen dramatically, putting trawlers in U.S. waters out of business. But even these operations, which are catching real and tasty shrimp, are not benign. The problem, as with much of the fishing the world, is by-catch (that is, all the stuff that is killed and thrown overboard to catch the fish you want). Used to be it took 10 pounds of by-catch to get one pound of shrimp; now larger-holed nets have reduced that ratio to two-to-one.

But the wild catch amounts to only 200 million pounds a year, compared with the 1.4 billion pounds Americans eat each year. So it looks like farmed shrimp is here to stay, so the question becomes whether it can be done sustainably.

One company in Florida, OceanBoy Farms, is trying with closed inland pens. It recycles its water, grows Talapia feedstock fish, which are vegetarian (a good choice for people too), and also feeds the shrimp organic soybeans for protein. It avoids antibiotics and chemicals by having a superclean, bio-secure environment. Now fish farmers the world over are visiting the operation, since it does not depend on ripping out forests.

Only problem: the shrimp taste okay, not great, and are more expensive than the competition. (Recall that the competition doesn't spend the money to do things right -- it simply rips out more forest).

So what's a consumer to do? The clear choice is to buy a product that can be as close to sustainable as possible, either wild or farm-raised. Right now, that choice usually leads to U.S. suppliers. Or you could choose to stop eating shrimp and make your little dent in the 1.4 billion pounds consumed. Personally, I think it makes more sense to support those trying to do things right and create an alternative.

Now, enjoy your shrimp cocktail.