Fish Food
by Susan Lumpkin
Most of us can forego imported caviar without much trouble. At $35 to $100 per ounce (equal to about 74 calories), no one is likely to get a significant chunk of his or her daily dietary needs filled by these fish eggs. Unfortunately, however, many of the fish and shellfish we eat regularly in North America are in varying degrees of danger, even as our consumption of fish is growing rapidly. In fact, Environmental Defense estimates that 70 percent of all commercially important fish are at or beyond the point at which fishing is not sustainable.
Among the best known is cod, once so common that they could be scooped out of the ocean in buckets. This most important food fish has been thoroughly overfished and mismanaged in the North Atlantic for many years. By 1992, the Canadian government imposed a moratorium on cod fishing in its maritime provinces, including on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland—once the most productive fishery in the world. A limited harvest was allowed beginning in 1997, but cod numbers still show no signs of recovery. Recently, the European Union reduced the year 2002 cod quota by 40 percent due to concern about overfishing in the North Sea, with a potentially devastating impact on Britain’s fish and chips market. Some scientists fear that cod might never recover; this species is among the few marine fish on the World Conservation Union’s Red Data List.
Swordfish is another species of concern. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and SeaWeb, the average swordfish caught today in the North Atlantic weighs 90 pounds, only one-third the weight of swordfish caught in the 1960s. This is significant because many of these smaller fish haven’t reached breeding age. Moreover, many young swordfish are caught in longlines—immense nets up to 80 miles long that sweep up everything in their paths—and then dumped because they are too small to harvest legally.
In 1998, NRDC and SeaWeb launched the Give Swordfish a Break campaign. At the urging of conservationists, 27 prominent chefs, including Washington, D.C.’s doyenne of organic cuisine, Nora Puillion, swore off serving swordfish. As the campaign progressed, this number grew to more than 700 chefs, as well as groceries, hotels, and other food purveyors. The campaign also lobbied for an international agreement to reduce the catch, which came in 1999, and new federal regulations, which came in August 2000. The U.S.’s seasonal closure of longline fishing in about 133,000 square miles of the Atlantic is expected to reduce the number of juvenile swordfish caught and killed by between 31 and 42 percent and thus give the fishery time to recover. The success of the campaign ended the formal boycott of swordfish, although conservation groups still recommend that chefs and consumers avoid this species.
Salmon also raises contentious issues. Most people would assume that farmed salmon is a better choice than wild salmon. In fact, it’s not. Conservation groups recommend wild Alaska salmon as the environmentally correct option because its harvest is carefully managed for sustainability. The Chefs Collaborative, which is devoted to sustainable cuisine in partnership with Environmental Defense, reports that wild Alaska coho salmon tastes far better as well. Farmed salmon is insipid, with a sort of chalkiness, compared to wild Copper River salmon, for instance. (After I tried this wild salmon a few years ago, I gave up eating farmed salmon, period.) Wild Alaska salmon is also higher in protein and lower in fat than farmed salmon.
Wild Atlantic salmon are severely threatened in North America, and no wild animals are in trade. But almost all farmed salmon is the Atlantic species and this threatens the remaining wild fish. Most of the eggs that stock the farms come from Scandinavia or Scotland. Biologists worry that escaped salmon might compete for food and habitat with the wild ones. Interbreeding would threaten the genetic integrity of the North American salmon population. Just last December, 100,000 farmed salmon escaped in Maine near three of the rivers in which the wild ones hang on, with as yet unknown consequences.
Further, the salmon are farmed in huge open-net pens at high densities that promote disease. Diseases can infect wild fish, and the drugs used to treat them enter the human food stream. Pollution is another problem: Chefs Collaborative reports that a large salmon farm produces as much sewage as a city of 10,000 people! Finally, raising salmon, which are carnivorous, is nutritionally expensive. It takes four to five pounds of fishmeal to produce one pound of farmed salmon. The fishmeal comes from anchovies and capelin, small prey species harvested off the coast of South America. The effects of removing so much prey aren’t known, but biologists fear they could be profound.
The websites of several environmental groups provide extensive information to guide both consumers and cooks on how to choose fish. The Monterey Bay Aquarium offers a chart that lists seafood in three categories. Best Choices include albacore tuna, squid, catfish, mahi-mahi, farmed mussels and oysters, and New Zealand cod. Under Proceed with Caution are species the aquarium is monitoring or are okay only from certain areas, such as American lobster, bay scallops, shrimp from Georgia, snow crab, and yellowfin tuna. Under Avoid are bluefin tuna, Chilean sea bass, monkfish, orange roughy, tropical shrimp, and sea scallops, among others.
But what’s a caviar-lover to do? Caviar Emptor: Let the Connoisseur Beware, a report from NRDC, SeaWeb, and the Wildlife Conservation Society, recommends paddlefish (a sturgeon relative) caviar from North Star Caviar in North Dakota or Yellowstone Caviar in Montana. Both of these non-profits return proceeds from caviar sales to community projects and to paddlefish research and conservation. Caviar from other farmed sturgeon, such as white sturgeon farmed in the U.S., is another option; this roe is said to compare favorably with Caspian osetra. But U.S. caviar production couldn’t safely meet current U.S. demand if, as conservationists hope, a trade ban halts import of beluga caviar or, as conservationists fear, Caspian sturgeon continue to decline. The only choice then may be abstinence.
Perhaps it’s best to just say no to roe.
ZooGoer 30(3) 2001. Copyright 2001 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.
