Call it irony or just bad timing, but North Americans are waking up to the health benefits of eating seafood precisely when edible marine life is disappearing around the world.
Formerly fish-phobic Canadians and Americans are scarfing down record quantities of salmon filets and sushi, possibly enticed by the absence of heart-clogging saturated fats and the presence of omega-3 fatty acids believed to bolster the brain.
'As people become aware fish is this really amazing source of healthy protein, they're going to start asking more questions about where it comes from' -- Taras Grescoe
But this is happening as many of the fish and seafood species we've grown accustomed to seeing on menus or inside supermarket display cases are starting to vanish from the oceans.
Big ocean-going predators such as tuna, swordfish, marlin and sharks have been reduced to 10 per cent of their former numbers around the world, while bottom-dwelling species such as cod, monkfish and halibut have been scooped up to the point where they are seldom found in the Atlantic Ocean anymore -- along with entire sea floor ecosystems destroyed by bottom-trawling fishing boats.
Making matters more depressing is the fact farmed fish and seafood is often no better for the environment. For example, Indian tiger shrimp farms pollute mangroves and put fishermen out of work, while Atlantic salmon pens in coastal British Columbia waters spawn sea lice that attack vulnerable wild Pacific salmon stocks.
Navigating a simple restaurant menu or fish-market chalkboard has become an ethical minefield for consumers who want to chow down on a sustainable seafood meal.
And it's a tough task for Canadians and Americans, given the fact we have neither a strong connection to the oceans nor a tradition of grilling grocers and waiters about the origin of their scallops or scampi.
Taras Crescoe
"As people become aware fish is this really amazing source of healthy protein, they're going to start asking more questions about where it comes from," says Taras Grescoe, the Montreal-based author of a devastating new expose called Bottomfeeder: How To Eat Ethically In A World of Vanishing Seafood.
A food writer best known for sardonic travelogues, Grescoe travelled around the world searching for an ethical seafood meal, visiting French oyster farms and Portuguese sardine boats run by people trying to make a buck without taking too much protein out of the ocean.
But he also visited Japanese fish markets and Hong Kong restaurants where anything and everything in the ocean is for sale -- and encountered the same recklessness in high-end North American restaurants run by celebrity chefs.
"I blame this on the culture of food writing we have now. In the context of growing food riots around the world, the food writers have dropped the ball," Grescoe says in a telephone interview from his Montreal apartment.
"All they talk about is, you know -- 'I've had another to-die-for piece of bluefin tuna in some Manhattan sushi bar. All over the Western world, there are these amazing high-end sushi joints where all the food is carted in tens of thousands of miles.
"We're basically eating near-extinct species, like bluefin tuna."
While people in coastal cities and towns have witnessed a steady depletion of seafood stocks for decades, the worldwide nature of the phenomenon only made the government policy and academic radar about a decade ago.
Ordinary consumers really started paying attention in 2006, when 14 fisheries experts from around the world published a study predicting every edible fish and seafood stock in the world would disappear by 2048 if overfishing continues at current rates.
"The ocean is a big place, and we thought it would provide a seafood supply forever. For a long time, we took it for granted," says Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Halifax's Dalhousie University, who co-authored the ground-breaking study.
"There's a trend of depletion of species and fish stocks that needs to be reversed, and if we don't, we're endangering the world seafood supply."
Endangering the seafood supply also means potential starvation, as millions of coastal residents in developing nations rely on fish for their primary source of protein.
Astoundingly, in a practice that mirrors the diversion of edible grain crops toward the production of biofuels, fishing fleets around the world are actually grinding edible fish into fertilizer or fish-meal to feed captive fish bound for wealthier markets.
Worm and Grescoe say that practice has to stop, along with destructive fishing methods such as bottom-trawling, which has torn up seamounts scientists have never even studied, and long-lining, which tends to drown sea turtles and produce an unconscionable bycatch.
Another simple means of restoring seafood stocks involves establishing marine preserves. Underwater zones where fishing is not allowed -- such as Cape Canaveral, Fla., and much of the coast of New Zealand -- tend to experience remarkable success as nurseries for many species under pressure, Worm says.
But the best way to force fisheries and governments to care about the ocean is to make consumers demand more sustainable seafood. To that end, the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California began printing up wallet cards listing good, bad and terrible choices for people to take to restaurants and grocery stores.
Building on that decade-old initiative, the Vancouver Aquarium created a program called Ocean Wise, which certifies restaurant-menu items and fish-market offerings as sustainable.
Seafood lovers confused by the dizzying amount of information embedded in wallet cards -- for example, whether the fish in question was farmed or caught, how that was accomplished and where that actually took place -- can simply look at an Ocean Wise symbol on a menu and be confident the dish in question is a safe environmental choice.
"Even if you have a solid understanding of the information behind the cards, when you go into the restaurant and go into the marketplace and start asking the right questions -- where was this tuna caught? how was it caught? -- it's very rare the people serving you know the answers," says Mike McDermid, who co-ordinates the Ocean Wise program in Vancouver.
Three hundred restaurants and 10 fish markets in B.C. and Alberta have been certified so far. But Ocean Wise is about to expand across Canada and hopes to sign up restaurants from coast to coast before the year is out.
The real challenge in making more Canadians aware of the problem is getting past the hostility some people display when you try to tell them what to eat, Grescoe says.
"Basically, you're the agent of doom at the table, ruining people's dinners," the Montrealer says, relating how people don't want to hear how their popcorn shrimp comes from pesticide-saturated ponds that give rashes to Indian aquaculture workers.
But if consumers get on board, it's not impossible for marine biologists such as Worm to revise their dire predictions.
"Some people think I'm predicting the end of fishing," he says.
"Quite the contrary -- I'd just like to make sure that 50 or 100 years from now, we still have fisheries around and they are thriving, possibly more so than they are today."
bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca
GOOD FISH
AND SEAFOOD CHOICES
. Arctic char: Sustainably farmed in
closed-containment tanks.
. Herring, mackerel and mullet: Stocks
are in good shape and caught without
much of a bycatch.
. Oysters and mussels: Sustainably
farmed around the world.
. Pacific halibut: Unlike Atlantic halibut,
Pacific stocks are in good shape.
. Pickerel and whitefish: Freshwater fish
from Manitoba lakes are plentiful and safe
to eat.
. Pollock: Stocks are in good shape.
. Sablefish (a.k.a. black cod): Sustainably
fished in the Pacific.
. Sardines: Low in mercury and sustainably
fished.
. Squid: Plentiful around the world and
caught without much of a bycatch.
. Trout and steelhead salmon: Sustainably
farmed, well away from any ocean.
NOT SO GOOD
BUT NOT ALWAYS BAD
. Anchovies: Excellent for your health, but becoming overfished.
. Catfish (a.k.a. basa): Farmed American catfish is safe to eat, but basa raised in Asia
may be grown in highly polluted ponds.
. Clams: Farmed littleneck, cherrystone and Manila clams are a great choice, but avoid
canned baby clams (which are dredged up destructively) and Atlantic surf clams.
. Crab: Most species are doing well due to disappearance of their predators. But avoid
king crab from Russia, where it's severely overfished.
. Lobster: Canadian lobster stocks are in great shape. Avoid clawless spiny lobster
from the Caribbean, where it's overfished.
. Mahi mahi (a.k.a. dorado or dolphin): A good choice from a hook -- the way it's
caught off coastal villages -- but most of the mahi mahi that makes its way here is
caught with longlines that kill too many other fish.
. Marlin: Considered a better choice than tuna and swordfish, but still overfished.
. Octopus: Best from Hawaiian waters. Destructively trawled almost everywhere else.
. Pacific cod: Stocks appear to be safe, but are sometimes caught via means that
waste a lot of bycatch.
. Salmon: A tough one. Wild Alaskan salmon is the best choice, while wild B.C. salmon
is starting to disappear. Avoid farmed Atlantic salmon, which is raised in coastal B.C.
pens that breed sea lice that go on to decimate wild stocks.
. Scallops: South American and Asian-farmed scallops are good choice. American
scallops may be dredged up.
. Shrimp: Be careful. Big B.C. spot prawns and tiny East Coast pink shrimp are good
choices, as are farmed shrimp from Central America. But Gulf of Mexico whites are
trawled and Asian tiger shrimp should be avoided at all costs -- they're saturated with
chemicals and farmed in polluted ponds that destroy mangroves and put subsistence
fishermen out of work.
. Snapper: Yellowtail snapper is safe, but red snapper is overfished.
. Swordfish: Overfished worldwide, but Canadian and American swordfish stocks are
in OK shape.
. Tilapia: Responsibly farmed in the U.S. and Latin America. Asian tilapia, however,
may be grown in ponds most charitably described as polluted and unsanitary.
. Tuna: Albacore tuna is in good shape but presents a potential mercury hazard.
Yellowfin tuna is on the decline. Avoid bluefin.
AVOID
AT ALL COSTS
. Atlantic cod: Most stocks have
collapsed and the remaining ones are
trawled up by pirate fishing vessels that
don't respect international laws.
. Atlantic halibut and sole: Both the
large and small flatfish are severely
overfished.
. Bluefin tuna: Coveted by sushi chefs,
but critically endangered due to overfishing.
. Chilean sea bass (a.k.a. toothfish):
Severely overfished, usually by pirate
vessels.
. Grouper: Severely overfished. Most
fish sold as "grouper" turn out to be other
species anyway.
. Monkfish: Severely overfished, using
bottom trawlers that destroy marine life
on seabeds.
. Orange roughy: Severely overfished,
using destructive bottom trawlers.
. Sharks: Catastrophically overfished
around the world to feed the Asian
sharkfin-soup craze. Populations are desperately
needed to rebound to keep other
species -- such as destructive cow-nose
rays -- in check.
. Tilefish: Unsafe concentrations of
mercury.
Sources: Bottomfeeder: How To Eat
Ethically In A World of Vanishing
Seafood; Monterey Bay Aquarium
Seafood Watch; Free Press files.
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