Eating our way toward sustainable seafood
In a single year at the port in Honolulu, 60,857 shark carcasses were off-loaded from fishing boats. All but 1 per cent of them had been killed for their fins. Once these were sliced off and sold to shark fin soup makers, the sharks’ bodies – that would be about 60,250 of them – were ground up for dog food.
Fifty years ago off the coast of Baja, California, divers could pick from about 4,000 abalone per acre. That number today is one per acre.
Throughout North America today, restaurant patrons still blithely order "Chilean sea bass", a mild-flavoured fish formerly known as the Patagonian toothfish that was renamed in a marketing debacle which transformed it from trash fish to gourmet sensation to endangered species in only 20 years. If current fishing rates continue, it will be extinct in five years.
Such depressing scenarios you’ll find at length in Richard Ellis’s book, The Empty Oceans, Plundering the World’s Marine Life . It really makes you wonder. We all know better than bringing home a little trinket box carved from an African elephant tusk. We cheered when Carmanah Valley was set aside. Heck, we even know better than driving SUVs – and maybe this last analogy squeaks in a little too close for comfort. For when it comes to fish, we similarly seem to suffer from some kind of deluded colonial mentality, in this case that the oceans are teaming with endless bounty. If we only could lower a basket over the side of a boat, surely hundreds of dinner entrées would jump right in.
What a delusion that calm sea surface provides.
Just say no to snapper
The reality is that 90 per cent of the world’s large fish – including tuna, swordfish, marlin, cod, skate and flounder – are gone – gone to over-fishing, gone to bycatch, gone to pollution, gone to dog food.
Maybe you don’t eat shark fin soup, or even own a dog. Either way, none of us has good reason to sit, in our SUVs or elsewhere, and feel smug about our fish stocks or the way we consume them in the Pacific Northwest.
Currently our most shameful example of marine mismanagement is B.C.’s rockfish family, which includes red snapper.
"Rockfish live to be 100 years old. They are the marine equivalent of old growth ecosystems," says Keith Symington, marine program co-ordinator for the B.C. chapter of the Sierra Club of Canada. "So if you can imagine one of those satellite images Sierra Club and others put out about the loss of ancient temperate rainforest, it would picture just 5 per cent of their (rockfish) biomass remaining in the Strait of Georgia.
"I don’t think we’ve ever even seen anything that bad in the forest analogy in terms of taking away that much."
Learning to be a good seafoodie
We all know about the health benefits of eating fish and seafood (mercury, PCB and dioxin contamination aside). And surely no one wants to see an end to the fishing economy and culture woven into our B.C. identity. So simply not eating fish and seafood is not a viable option. But given the harsh reality of marine life conditions worldwide, how do we decide what to vote for with our dollars, and eat – and, more important, what not to?
Simple answer, takes some effort: educate thyself.
You could do far worse than starting with the Sierra Club of Canada’s new Citizen’s Guide to Seafood, launched only days before the big World Fisheries Congress.
This huge international event, held for the first time in Vancouver May 2-6, attracted some 1,500 delegates from 80 countries, including top marine scientists who presented their latest findings on fish stocks, which can’t help but add to better management. I can’t help but add that, amazingly, the congress was not to be graced by the presence of our federal Fisheries Minister Geoff Regan. He announced way back in January that he had other more pressing engagements. I’m not sure what could be more pressing, given that this year’s theme is reconciling fisheries with conservation. No wonder Canada is no longer respected for its fisheries management.
But if you didn’t make it to the congress either, or the day-long session on sustainable seafood choices, at least get in touch with the B.C. chapter of the Sierra Club or the David Suzuki Foundation and get yourself a copy of Citizen’s Guide to Seafood. It comes in a handy wallet-sized card (download at http://bc.sierraclub.ca/programs/marine/seafoodguide.shtml).
This is not the first consumers’ seafood guide to be had. The Fish List (thefishlist.org) is a popular one produced by Blue Ocean Institute, Environmental Defense, and Monterey Bay Aquarium together with the Seafood Choices Alliance. And The National Audubon Society’s Living Oceans Program has its Seafood Lover’s Guide. But the Sierra Club’s is uniquely Canadian- and B.C.-centric. Also, with B.C.’s well-regarded conservationist and writer, Terry Glavin, providing key input as the Sierra Club’s marine conservation advisor, I think you can feel comfortable with its veracity and rationale.
"The public has been asking us for this kind of help for a long time," says Terry. "Educating consumers and raising the awareness of seafood businesses is paramount to ensuring a future for B.C.’s fisheries and marine ecosystems."
The guide lists more than 50 species of fish and seafood in three categories. Green is for stocks that are well-managed and in good supply – for now. To name a few: Pacific halibut, anchovies, farmed catfish (they’re in contained ponds), clams, Australian rock lobster, Dungeness crab and, for you sushi lovers, uni. These you can eat with impunity and a clear conscience.
Yellow indicates fish and seafood you can eat, albeit occasionally and with reservation. Examples include dolphin-fish (mahi-mahi), lingcod, sole, Atlantic lobster, oysters, farmed rainbow trout, geoduck and, sadly, our own wild B.C. salmon. (The Sierra Club, and Terry, had mixed feelings about this listing, which will no doubt be controversial. The club supports B.C.’s salmon fishing economy, and some wild stocks are extremely healthy. But others are not. So inform yourself, or at least find an informed, reliable source, and enjoy wild B.C. salmon discriminately.)
Red, of course, means "don’t eat." These include caviar (from sturgeon); those endangered Patagonian toothfish, otherwise known as Chilean sea bass; Atlantic cod, if you can find one; hake, better known as fake crab meat; orange roughy, which might be so loaded with mercury you won’t want to touch it anyway; and our beloved coastal red snapper and rockfish – the previously described old growth of the marine world.
To back up the list, the Sierra Club provides on-line links explaining the criteria for each fish’s designation, including stock status, management practices, impacts on endangered species, and habitat impact.
Ask before you eat
Author Richard Ellis figures that the circumstances surrounding today’s rapidly emptying oceans parallel those surrounding the destruction of forests and wildlands 30 years ago. A nasty business is brewing. This time it’s underwater, and we, as consumers, are just beginning to figure it out and what we can do about it.
Since ecologically certified seafood is still a ways off, it’s up to us to learn what we can to make sustainable choices. Ask before you eat. Ask your fish monger. Ask your restaurant server. If they don’t know where your fish or seafood is coming from and whether it’s sustainable, have them ask the manager or the owner or the fisher until you get an answer.
Better yet, in a month or so, you might be able to find restaurants at Whistler that support the Citizen’s Seafood Guide and you’ll be able to eat seafood there with impunity. Three restaurants in Vancouver have already adopted the guide’s standards – Bacchus Restaurant at the Wedgewood Hotel, Terminal City Restaurant, and C Restaurant.
Keith hopes that by Oceans Day, June 8, at least a few restaurants at Whistler will also be supporting the Sierra Club’s seafood guide. He’s probably right, since establishments like Araxi and Rim Rock Café have been saying no to compromised products like farmed salmon for years.
In fact, Araxi along with Jack Evrensel’s entire Top Table Group, which includes Cin-Cin, Blue Water Café and West in Vancouver, have for years only been serving sustainably harvested seafood. They’re currently reviewing the guide. Maybe by June 8 a few of us citizens will be honouring oceans on Oceans Day by supporting it, too.
Sustainable Seafood Resources
• Sierra Club of Canada’s Citizens’ Seafood Guide: http://bc.sierraclub.ca/programs/marine/seafoodguide.shtml
• The Fish List. Produced by Blue Ocean Institute, Environmental Defense, and Monterey Bay Aquarium: thefishlist.org
• National Audubon Society’s Living Oceans Program, Seafood Lover’s Guide: www.audubon.org/campaign/lo/seafood
• Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch: www.mbayaq.org/efc/efc_oc/dngr_food_watch.asp
For people who fish or sell fish
• Marine Stewardship Council. Learn about environmental standards developed by the MSC for sustainable and well-managed fisheries. The MSC uses a product label to reward environmentally responsible fishery management and practices. www.msc.org
Who’s wild and who isn’t when in comes to salmon in B.C.:
• Union of BC Indian Chiefs Web site. The list of restaurants is not completely up-to-date, but it does give you some idea of where to start. www.ubcic.bc.ca/fishfarms.html
