Seafood
jjacquet | October 16, 2007I just passed this seafood restaurant in London called The Sea Cow. Business must be good because The Sea Cow's interior is being remodeled, which meant that I could not stop in to inquire why they would name a fish bar after the only vegetarian mammal in the sea.
jjacquet | October 10, 2007
If you're headed to Paris anytime before January 13, 2008, be sure to check out the Giuseppe Arcimboldo exhibition at the Musee du Luxembourg. The 16th century painter is famous for his portraits from mosaics of fruit and, in this painting (Water, 1566), aquatic animals (Arcimboldo looks to have been a low trophic feeder).
jjacquet | September 27, 2007This week, Canadian wildlife officials caught three men smuggling large amounts of Queen conch shellfish, an endangered species, before exporting some of it to the U.S. The smugglers imported an estimated 263,958 pounds (!) of conches, with a value of $2.6 million, from the Caribbean and South America between late 2003 and the end of 2006. The mollusk is protected by an international treaty but used in Asian and Caribbean cooking. The shipments were mislabeled as whelk, another large shellfish that is not endangered. This conch case is a reminder to never doubt the power of an individual (or…
jjacquet | September 25, 2007The contentious certification of New Zealand hoki by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) just got a little more dubious. Yesterday, according to news from Intrafish, New Zealand cut its hoki catch quota 10% from 101,040 metric tons to 91,040 metric tons. The fishery was certified by the MSC back in 2001 for a yearly catch of 250,000 tons. Since then, the government has continuously curtailed the quota because the fishery continuously shows signs of decline. Hoki is New Zealand's most valuable commercial fish.
The large amount of bycatch in the hoki fishery has also been a point of…
jjacquet | September 20, 2007Yesterday, the E.U. announced its decision to close the bluefin tuna fishery in the Mediterranean (that once vibrant, now empty) Sea for the remainder of the year. The decision is not particularly surprising because the fishers had already reached their quoto of 17000 tonnes and the Atlantic bluefin tuna has been in big trouble for a while. But the EU is not known for putting strict regulations on the tuna fishery and estimated upwards of 35 percent of the bluefin caught in 2006 was illegal.
While Japan accounts for 80 percent of bluefin tuna sales, there is a growing demand for bluefin in…
jjacquet | September 17, 2007I suppose one could look at it in two ways: 1) Tilapia is quickly becoming one of the most successful fish species in terms of offspring. One day, tilapia might be the first fish from Earth to colonize a new planet. 2) Tilapia is crammed into what can only be called an industrial feedlot of fishes. It now also has the joy of being worn as swimsuits and might soon be living underground in Arizona. Let's discuss.
Tilapia is one hot fish: it's healthy, inexpensive, and has flaky white flesh fancied by U.S. consumers. In the U.S. alone, the demand for tilapia has skyrocketed in recent years…
jjacquet | September 14, 2007It takes about 15 bodies of tilapia dried and dyed to make this bikini (the size for a supermodel). The flesh of the fish is eaten and the skin is turned into leather, adding significant value to the farmed fish and in the end, setting a fishkini consumer back about $75. The appetite is now joined by the fashion industry as another source of demand for fish. And p.s., you'll have to suffer some advertising from this clip before getting to see the blue and red fishkini.
jjacquet | September 14, 2007A Lebonese restaurant in Dubai launched these ads earlier this year as a way to get fashion conscious consumers (who in Dubai isn't?) to eat their new Friday seafood lunch. Any coincidence the lunch is on Friday (think Friday Fish Fry)? In the midst of the marine fisheries crisis, demand for fish globally continues to grow.
jjacquet | September 5, 2007Daniel Pauly gave me a copy of the February issue of Eurofish magazine, which at first had me raise my eyebrows in skepticism. But the magazine was filled with delights, particularly an article about the Estonian seafood manufacturer Kriskal.
From the Kriskal website: Due to growing popularity of shrimp and crab imitation products during the '90s, a favorable situation occurred for introducing analogous products, close to natural products, to the market.
Kriskal's financial bread and butter is pulverized fish--our old friend surimi turned into 'crabsticks'. An interesting element of…
jjacquet | September 3, 2007Then this book might sit well on your coffee table. Ocean Treasure: Commercial Fishing in Alaska is a nice overview of Alaska's fisheries. My favorite parts of the book are the drawings of different fishing gears (ever wondered how a gillnetter worked?) and the chapter on subsistence fishing, particularly the bit on spears and hooks. There are great photos of old carved halibut hooks and how they were rigged with floats to catch the big groundfish. I substitute a photo of a Haida halibut hook from UBC's Museum of Anthropology (below).
jjacquet | August 31, 2007And speaking of shrimp, Steven Levitt over at the New York Times blog Freakonomics has a great post analyzing different responses to his question: Why are we eating so much shrimp? He found, in conjunction with another hypothesis, that non-economists (i.e., anyone who didn't major in economics) mostly thought that we are eating more shrimp because of demand-based reasons (e.g. the movie Forrest Gump, a rise in the number of vegetarians who will eat shrimp, etc). Levitt, however, concludes that shrimp consumption has risen due to an increase in supply (and a subsequent decrease in price) due…
jjacquet | August 23, 2007I recently came across the 2005 Greenpeace report A Recipe for Disaster, which aims to improve seafood buying behavior by supermarkets in the UK. The report makes a few points worth noting here. First off, in regards to shifting baselines: nearly 90% of seafood sold in the UK is done so through supermarkets (such as Marks & Spencer or Sainsbury's). Compare this to 50 or 100 years ago when most people bought their Friday supper from a fishmonger (which means supermarkets now have extraordinary seafood buying power and influence).
I also like the three options the report gives for…
jjacquet | August 15, 2007Fish aren't caught how they used to be, but some say they should be. Of the many gear types to choose from, there is general concensus that family-owned hook and line is one of the best, especially when compared to other gears.
In 2000, hook and line fisherman Paul Parker gave a testimony before the U.S. Senate where he criticized trawling due to its high amounts of bycatch--fish caught incidentally and then discarded overboard: Our current management systems ignores bycatch and fails to perform full cost accounting of the bycatch impacts of fishing...A dead fish is a dead fish, whether it s…
jjacquet | July 30, 2007Though the paper Shifting gears: Assessing collateral impacts of fishing methods in U.S. waters is geriatric (2003) in blogosphere terms, I thought it might be worthwhile to post a couple of the paper's visual highlights. Below are the different types of fishing gears that scour U.S. waters (and beyond).
The article rates each gear according to habitat impacts and bycatch (amount of fish caught incidentallly and often wasted by being thrown overboard). Worst offenders: dredges, midwater gillnets, pelagic longlines, and the ever-indiscriminate bottom trawls. Best bets: hook and line,…
jjacquet | July 12, 2007Consumption of seafood in the U.S. is on the rise--having grown about 11 percent since 2001. U.S. shrimp consumption rose to a record 4.4 lbs per capita in 2006 (up 0.3 lbs from 2005). Shrimp is now even born and raised in Ohio--450 miles from the nearest ocean. (And though Americans are loving shrimp more and more, there is a group dedicated to raising awareness (ad absurdum) that God hates shrimp.)
But shrimp are a mainstay on every seafood wallet card red list. At Hollywood Ocean Night in 2004, Daniel Pauly prescribed a solution to the shrimp addiction: "Just look at them: they look…
jjacquet | July 10, 2007
Any takers? Winner gets hubris.
Yes, its name is Steve. Well, close. 'Pez espada' as it is known in Santa Rosa, Ecuador or the gallant swordfish. Fast work, Scott!
jjacquet | July 9, 2007One hundred years ago, this question was easier to answer because very often fish came from nearby. Dried and smoked fish was extensively traded, but not in a way that rivaled today's seafood mobility. The U.S. now imports 83 percent of its seafood. With the recent scare over contaminants in food imports from China, including the health of our fish and fisheries products, the media has been probing into our food's origin (see, for instance, this editorial in the New York Times).
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) requires the country of origin of all food…
jjacquet | June 15, 2007If you were looking for Nemo, you would be much more likely to find him in sushi (the raw fish movement that has spread from Japan to the remote reaches of the world, including landlocked Ohio) than a dentist's aquarium. Last weekend, Jay McInerney's review in the NYTimes, Raw, covered two books about sushi. Given that bluefin tuna populations are 20 percent of their 1970s levels (and that percentage would likely be smaller if we had older data to consider), understanding the sushi and sashimi movement is imperative to understanding where some of our fish has gone.
jjacquet | June 13, 2007The Galapagos National Park announced last week that the Ecuadorian government will open sea cucumber fishing in the Galapagos Islands beginning on June 25th for 50 days or two million sea cucumbers, whichever comes first. This news is a disappointment to many conservationists in the islands and means a lot more work for Dr. Idrovo and his treatment of decompressed fishermen.
One echinoderm (Stichopus fuscus) can cause a lot of excitement.
In 1991, after sea cucumbers had been depleted from the continental Ecuadorian coast, an uncontrolled sea cucumber fishery began in Galapagos. Harvest…
jjacquet | June 1, 2007Yesterday, I was part of a panel on sustainable seafood at the International Food Conference. The future for seafood security, especially in the developing world, was discussed as was the proliferation of salmon farming. Chile just oupaced Norway in terms of farmed salmon production and looks to double its output over the next several years...
By coincidence, this week's issue of Science also takes up the issue of the future of seafood in an intellectual defense of the Worm et al. study published in Science last year (a co-author of which was Shifting Baselines' own Jeremy Jackson). Press…