There was a curious mix of enthusiasm and concern among participants in the Sustainable Seafood Expo, Oct. 1, at theCabrillo Marine Aquarium.
The enthusiasm was largely due to the fact that even skeptical parts of society have admitted the importance of ensuring a continuing supply of seafood. The worry is that the awakening may be too late to save some of the species that Americans most enjoy eating.
Members of several ecological organizations and seafood industry entrepreneurs rubbed shoulders at the event that featured cooking demonstrations, a panel discussion about the state of the oceans and food sampling. Simmering under the surface of the event were two questions: Who defines “sustainable?” How much are consumers willing to pay to ensure a continuing stream of seafood?
One might expect to be able to get a simple answer from a government organization, since the United States enacted laws against overfishing as early as the establishment of the National Marine Fisheries Service in 1870. The successor to that organization is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and representatives were staffing a booth by the entrance.
Some of them admitted that “sustainable” is a difficult concept to quantify because it depends which organization is saying something is sustainable. There isn’t always agreement between, for instance, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Seafood Watch and MSC Certification. The U.S. government does have an act in place with 10 standards of sustainability
and all of their actions in managing fish are focused upon following those national standards.
Anyone optimistic about the idea that capitalists will think long-term, might point out that it is in the best interest of businesses to maintain sustainability standards so they can sell fish for a long time.
Indeed it is, but seafood harvesters have a long history of focusing on short-term profit rather than long-term stability. The collapse of the Monterey Bay sardine industry memorialized in John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row is most famous, but you don’t have to have lived in our own Harbor Area very long to remember when thousands of people worked in the local
fishing and processing industry. The last of the tuna canneries on Terminal Island shuttered in 2001, a victim of decimated local fish stocks and cheap foreign labor.
Some see a future in local seafood harvesting thanks to careful management, among them Kelly Stromberg, marketing director of Catalina Sea Ranch — the first American aquaculture facility operating in deep offshore waters. The Sea Ranch project is pioneering programs to farm mussels, oysters, scallops, abalone and kelp. Stromberg is optimistic that new regulations on harvesting sea urchins can make a difference. Those urchins fetch good prices from Japanese and Italian restaurants, but indiscriminate harvesting is causing havoc in the ecology.
“There are different species of urchin, and some of the ones that are being wiped out actually help the kelp,” Stromberg said. “Also there are regions that have a good balance and shouldn’t be fished, so there are not enough urchins where they’re wanted and too many where they’re not.”
Catalina Sea Ranch sold its first batches of shellfish to local restaurants in July, and at this event their booth was across from another newcomer called Omega Blue. Representative James Smith explained that they have been raising almaco jacks — a fish similar to albacore tuna — in the Sea of Cortez to take advantage of the deep, pure water in the area. While posing proudly with a large whole fish, he mentioned that while the environment is important to the taste of seafood, there’s more to it than that.
“These were swimming 36 hours ago, but the quality of a fish isn’t all about how recently it was caught,” Smith said. “If you catch a fish on a line it was fighting and stressed, which releases a lot of lactic acid into its bloodstream … that degrades the quality of the meat. We put ours in an ice bath so that they literally fall asleep, so they’re never stressed. The shelf life of this fish far exceeds that of a line caught fish.”
The buyers at seafood restaurants who purchase Omega Blue’s fish pay a premium but know exactly what they’re getting. Marine biologist Sarah Rathbone suggested they may be in the minority. Rathbone is the cofounder of Dock to Dish, and she was eloquent about the problem with seafood fraud.
“Fish fraud is pervasive, a recognized problem in the industry and an unfortunate situation for consumers of seafood,” she commented. “The industrialization and globalization of the seafood market create this long chain of custody between the harvester and the place where people are buying or eating. One of the biggest problems is with fish labeled red snapper, a name that is slapped on every white fish with red skin. In California it’s usually some variety of rockfish, of which there are about 100 species.
“True red snapper are found only in the Atlantic. Any local menu that claims to offer local red snapper must be wrong. I’ve also seen local white seabass on a menu two weeks before the season opened. I asked the chef and he said it was too expensive to reprint the menus and they were serving corvina from Mexico. Somehow the price doesn’t come down when they switch to cheaper fish.”
Dock to Dish offered tastes of a smoked fish medley that included king salmon, Pacific mackerel and black cod. Rathbone was emphatic that they actually were what was advertised.
“I saw the salmon landed at midnight on Avila Beach three days ago,” she reminisced. “It was very exciting for me.”
There is less drama for Neil Radix of Selva Shrimp because reeling in shrimp isn’t terribly exciting, but he has the same enthusiasm for his crustaceans that are raised in mangrove swamps in Vietnam. These operations are rare good news in the often exploitative world of aquaculture, because they involve careful maintenance of a natural environment.
“This shrimp isn’t intensively raised – they’re released into mangrove channels, and those channels provide all the food the shrimp needs,” Radix said. “There is not only no artificial feed, there is no feed at all, because they’re raised in their native environment in their natural densities. We let Mother Nature do what Mother Nature does. We manage what nature does, put guardrails on it. The downside of that is that we do have an unpredictable return. Last year there were heavier rains than normal, which lowered the salinity, and that slows the growth rate of shrimp. It’s just one of the things we have to work around. We have 3600 farmers in designated zones, and we have a traceability program that helps us to verify
that our shrimp doesn’t get mixed in with intensively farmed shrimp.”
Radix was emphatic that any customer who has had the genuine article can tell the difference between counterfeit sustainable shrimp.
“There is a flavor difference between wild caught and farm raised shrimp, because the farm raised are usually fed a diet that is designed to maximize their growth rate,” Radix said. “You can see the difference in color [and] taste it. If you take a raw wild shrimp and squeeze it, it’s more firm because they’re swimming more, they have more space to move than they
would in a very tight pen. You taste that difference across the board, as sushi, ceviche, or cooked. This type of shrimp has been revered in the Japanese market for years, not because of the sustainability but because of the quality. The Japanese will pay anything for the best because they often prepare seafood with delicate seasonings, so you really taste the quality.”
Radix emphasized the natural texture and form of his ingredients, while Norah Eddy of Salty Girl spends her time concealing both. Her product is frozen discs of mixed salmon, broccoli and sweet potato and was conceived as a way to get children to eat seafood that isn’t fish sticks or some other highly processed product.
“It’s an answer to moms all over the country who want better options – they want things that are convenient that kids love,” Eddy said. “We’ve made this awesome product that families can keep on hand and cook up like a chicken nugget, but it’s wholesome pure wild Alaska salmon.”
Eddy didn’t bat an eye in answering whether this was the world’s most sneaky way to get children to eat broccoli and have a balanced diet.
“Yes, totally,” she said. “They don’t even notice that it’s in there and they love it. After they’ve tried it and like it families can start this conversation about where food comes from. It’s a great way to get kids engaged, get them eating food with integrity instead of dinosaur-shaped mystery meat.”
Though the product in this case was far from its natural form, it followed a theme I heard in almost every conversation. The people who know sustainable seafood believe that once people learn about its health advantages, flavor difference and ecological impact, they’ll stop buying intensively farmed junk fish. They probably don’t care why you’re doing so, as long as you do it. Past experience suggests that we aren’t particularly good at resisting the immediate bargain and focusing on the long view, but there are counter-examples of ecosystems and species brought
back from the brink. A trickle of seafood harvesting jobs is returning to the Harbor Area and if some of the local operations are successful the flow may increase.