Getting even fishier

And if you think that pun is bad, there are even more in this article on fraud in seafood sales:
http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2013/02/21/seafood-fraud-study/?hpt=hp_c2

Some learnings from this piece:
*  It's not just low end joints, like fast food places, which practice seafood fraud; sushi restaurants are among the worst offenders.
*  Mislabeling may affect health (allergies, mercury levels), environmental health (obviously), and the pocketbook (when cheaper species are substituted for and labeled as more expensive ones).
*  What's sold as snapper might be anyone of 33 different species of fish, though there is also abundant mislabeling of tuna and cod.

Legislation is needed to coordinate and render effective efforts to increase traceability (the magic word in food safety these days).

In the meantime, here's some good consumer advice from the last paragraph of the article: "[Beth Lowell of the ocean conservation group Oceana] recommends that consumers empower themselves by purchasing whole fish, which are easier to identify, and not trusting prices that seem too good to be true. She also encourages asking questions of fish vendors, such as what kind of fish it is, whether it was wild-caught or farm-raised and where, when and how the fish was caught. Even raising the question will alert the sales staff that consumers are interested in where their food comes from - and that they won’t settle for anything fishy."

O Cod, what's a person to do?

Three strands have come together here, causing my need to say something, though I am not sure just what.

Late last month I read an article in the NY Times about even more restrictions on cod fishing in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank.  The inexpensive fish of my youth (in Massachusetts) is on the verge of extinction.   Even the fishers who resist the new lower catch limits admit that they aren't coming close to catching the current limits. You can read that whole story here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/us/officials-back-deep-cuts-in-atlantic-cod-harvest-to-save-industry.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

Then a couple of days ago I saw a still ad on the corner of a web page for Carl's Jr Atlantic cod sandwich.   I don't eat at Carl's Jr. - well, I don't eat fast food, but even if I did the political history of this outlet's owner would keep me away.   But I wasn't surprised that they were promoting something from a threatened fishery.
I should have stopped there, but today I pursued more information, and turned up the ad campaign for this item - the basic simulated sex approach which this purveyor of fast food is famous for.  You can Google it yourself if you want you to see a model 5 lbs away from emaciation except for her breasts having sex with a sandwich.   I'm sure I am the only person who has looked at the sandwich, but the grilled cod is golden yellow - and frankly, all the cod I've ever cooked was white.  Hmmm.  Who even knows if this is cod?  And if it's Atlantic cod, why was the photo shoot done in Hawaii?  I suppose aging New England fisherman don't sell food to teenagers.
Another interesting twist - the print ad copy promotes the sandwich as a low calorie (the fish is grilled) treat for Lent.   Okay - why not kick off Lent with sex and fast food?

This morning NPR featured a story on the Marine Stewardship Council - and the unreliability of their ratings of seafood as from sustainable fisheries.  
http://www.npr.org/2013/02/12/171376617/conditions-allow-for-more-sustainable-labeled-seafood
I do wonder about this from time to time.  So I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch and looked up Atlantic cod.  It turns out that most of the Atlantic cod sold in the U.S. actually comes from the waters off Iceland and the Arctic Ocean off northern Norway and Russia.   Line caught cod from there is given the green "best choice" rating.  
But how do you know where the fish is from when you buy your sexy sandwich at Carl's Jr.?  Is the minimum wage clerk there going to tell you?  Does even a supervisor or somebody a few more rings up the corporate ladder know?   And how does a fast food joint, where price is everything, afford sustainably harvested fish when I rarely do?

And then, to top it all off, Seafood Watch cites the MSC as its authority.
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_factsheet.aspx?gid=14

The True Cost of Shrimp

Great information on "The Perils of Overfishing" from Fresh Air.

Part I:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120013107

Part II:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120049590

Daniel Pauly from UBC tells it like it is: grim.

Listening reminded me that Sylvia Earle was on the Colbert Report a few weeks back and kept repeating her mantra of tilapia, catfish, carp. Darn - I wish I found farmed freshwater bottom feeders tasty.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/252641/october-13-2009/sylvia-earle
The neon aquarium in the background is a particularly nice touch.

Fishy news on Sunday morning

Good News:

The sardine fishery is back in Monterey Bay.

Bad News:

90% of the catch goes to feed farmed tuna in Australia.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106468541&ft=1&f=102

Susatainable Fishing

A BBC story caught my eye, and led me to a new World Bank - FAO report on fishing.

The reality would seem to be simple - more and more effort, at greater and greater cost, for less and less fish - with the endpoint somewhere around mid century. We probably already knew this.

The antidote seems to be major reform - and the article suggests that if there is a move toward reducing the size of fleets and building up stocks, fishing could be profitable again worldwide.

The pull quote in the BBC story says it all:

"Sustainable fisheries require political will to replace incentives for overfishing with incentives for responsible stewardship. " Kieran Kelleher, World Bank fisheries team leader.

Ah - political will. With the opposite of political will being short term gain (or supposed short term gain) and greed, I think.

Reading the article I wondered how much of the resistance to a change to sustainability comes from the way of life of fishers - my sense, having known some, is that there is almost more emotional attachment to fishing as a way of life, generation to generation, than there is to farming. Turns out the report does have some things to say about this - and the need to invest in the transitions of persons who are displaced by increased management of fisheries. But what about beyond the economic considerations - to considering what such displacement does to people's sense of self, sense of place in creation?

Here's the report: "The Sunken Billions: the economic justification for fisheries reform"
http://www.donorplatform.org/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_view/gid,742/Itemid,98/

Fewer Fish

Well, let me complete this series of gloomy messages by mentioning a UN Environment Progamme report issued a couple of weeks ago titled Dead Water.

Here's the article that introduces it:

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=528&ArticleID=5751&l=en

In a nutshell, global warming is expected both to raise the temperature of ocean waters and change circulation patterns in a way that will impact negatively the world's fisheries and the habitats that support the fecundity of the oceans (like coral reefs).

More carbon dioxide dissolved in ocean water will lower the pH (increase the acidity) and quite probably affect the ability of many marine creatures to form shells and similar structures.

Now throw in overfishing plus development and pollution of coastal areas and marginal wetlands - and well - it's a pretty ugly picture. Agricultural runoff and waste water discharge into the oceans in problematic, and depleted fishing stocks leave areas vulnerable to invasive marine species.

The prediction is that the worst impact will be on up to 15% of the world's oceans - and that fraction that includes the most significant fishing grounds.

Agriculture, energy use, water use, ocean health - and human poverty. Once again we see the interlaced complexities of planetary degradation.

And we aren't going to have much fish to eat.

I grew up in a coastal family where fish were an important part of our diet. This may have been even more true for my mother, her parents and their forebears. I recall stories about my grandfather feeding his family by digging a bucket of clams on his way home from work. We tried to take care when taking fish or shellfish, always mindful of our impact. But our individual or household acts of local conservation were not enough. Somehow this helps me to identify with poorer coastal peoples who find that their marine stocks are depleted, that a part of their subsistence and culture are gone, for reasons beyond the scope of their local stewardship.

We must reconceive what it means to be a neighbor.

salmon woes

Last week I read a couple of articles about problems with pink salmon parasites. Farming is impacting the wild populations as the young fish swim from their river nurseries through coastal areas where the farming pens are out to sea. In the words of one scientist, it's not a question of whether but when pink salmon, that staple of the canned fish world, will be extinct.

I found the BBC story somewhat more informative than the NY Times one, but I post both here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7142053.stm


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/science/earth/14salmon.html?ex=1355374800&en=44a804a72e815b68&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink