Taras Grescoe - Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood

[sparkchaser]

A friend of mine showed me this book she was reading and given that salmon season has been canceled in California and Oregon it seems to be a timely read.

Blurb from Amazon:

Dividing his sensibilities between Epicureanism and ethics, Taras Grescoe set out on a nine-month, worldwide search for a delicious—and humane—plate of seafood. What he discovered shocked him. From North American Red Lobsters to fish farms and research centers in China, Bottomfeeder takes readers on an illuminating tour through the $55-billion-dollar-a-year seafood industry. Grescoe examines how out-of-control pollution, unregulated fishing practices, and climate change affect what ends up on our plate. More than a screed against a multibillion-dollar industry, however, this is also a balanced and practical guide to eating, as Grescoe explains to readers which fish are best for our environment, our seas, and our bodies.

I went ahead and ordered a copy.

 

[Eva]

With this kind of book, I like to cut to the practical part. I get it about overfishing, bycatches, and polluted ponds; but I want to know what I as a consumer can do about it.

To save the purchase price or a trip to the library, I tried to use the preview feature at Amazon, but the concluding chapter was excluded. Pretty tricky.

I could tell, however, that it had tantalizing fragments like this:

I’ve come to my own conclusions about what is sustainable. The following list…

A little manipulating revealed a few items on the list: sardines, herring, and so forth. That gave me enough clues to find a fuller version of the list:

winnipegfreepress.com/life/story/4171803p-4759871c.html

Trip to the library saved after all. (Not that a trip to the library is a bad thing.)

 

[sparkchaser]

I'm inclined to agree but it's nice to have facts and numbers to throw out at folks that think there's nothing wrong with Atlantic farmed salmon and no danger from GM farmed fish. I figure that if I can change the mind of one or two people then my $17 purchase is justified.

I just checked your link. That's a really great list at the bottom of the article and here it is clickable: Winnipeg Free Press

 

[beer good]

Yeah, thanks for that list.

Having more or less grown up on cod, it feels weird to suddenly have to adjust to it being endangered. I like it, coddamnit. Pollock is a pretty good substitute, but I keep getting the feeling that 20 years from now that will go the same way and we'll have to find yet another species to kill off...

Thank cod herring is still plentiful.

 

[sparkchaser]

Having more or less grown up on cod, it feels weird to suddenly have to adjust to it being endangered. I like it, coddamnit. Pollock is a pretty good substitute, but I keep getting the feeling that 20 years from now that will go the same way and we'll have to find yet another species to kill off...

Thank cod herring is still plentiful.

Poor beer good has cod on the brain.

What are prices for cod like over there? Is it still readily available?

 

[beer good]

Poor beer good has cod on the brain.

What are prices for cod like over there? Is it still readily available?

It's still available, though some stores refuse to stock it, and the prices are... well, it's not like it's extremely expensive, but it's gotten a lot more expensive. Which is probably a good thing, supply and demand and all that.

More importantly, a lot of the fish products that always used cod in the past - fish sticks and so on - have switched to pollock or other whitefish.

 

[sparkchaser]

Is there a plan to help with the recovery of the cod population?

 

[Litany]

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel!

A lot of stuff labelled generically as 'fish' is eel. I like eel. Especially jellied eel. One of my happy memories is of when my mum bought an eel that wasn't quite as dead as she thought it was.

My 'ethical' food decision is to shop at Waitrose. I can't buy locally because local round here is frigging miles away. All the independents shut down. So, Waitrose deliver to me and they only let me buy responsibly. They refuse to stock fish that they feel are getting iffy.

A woman at work printed out a list of all the fish we were still allowed to eat and where they had to come from, but seriously, shopping is traumatic enough already. It's a handy thing to have for restaurants though.

 

[sparkchaser]

I like eel! Too bad it's so hard to find here.

 

[sparkchaser]

I finished this the other day and here is my long winded review...

When ecologists warn that if current exploitation continues, all of the ocean's major fish stocks will collapse around 2048, what is a seafood lover to do? Taras Grescoe, a self-proclaimed piscavore sets out to find out if it's possible to eat responsibly in a world of short-sighted overfishing. Grescoe says:

I began writing this book knowing that ours might be among the last generations in history able to enjoy the down-to-earth luxury of freshly caught wild fish. If that was the case, there were a few seafood experiences I wanted to have before I died...When I started planning my voyage, a decade of fish eating habits left me half-educated about some of the crucial issues surrounding seafood...Though I had stuffed my wallet with the cards issued by the Monteray Bay Aquarium and other seafood choice organizations, I was vague about the details of nourishing myself according to these principles. I had heard all the talk about sustainable seafood, but I still was not sure how to walk the walk.

Grescoe sets off eating his way around the world and exploring commercial fishing industry. Much like the culinary adventurers that came before him, such as Anthony Bourdain, he'll try anything once.

A word of warning for the squeamish: I am an adventurous eater. If it is in the name of research, I will try just about anything once. In my travels, I have picked up the habit of eating what the locals eat...This book is the education of a fish eater, and getting educated sometimes involves doing things you later regret.

Beginning in New York City, Grescoe introduces us to the monkfish and bottom trawling. Monkfish are bottom-dwellers who lie just under the sand and wait to ambush their prey. Short of being lucky and landing one with a hook and line like I did some 25 years ago (the ugly fish scared the bejeezus out of me and I traded it to a another fisherman for an eel he caught) the method used to harvest them is bottom trawling. Bottom trawls are cone shaped nets that rake the seabed between 2-6 knots. These trawls do not discriminate (bycatch on a monkfish bottom trawl is over 22%) and quickly reduce vast expanses of corals, sea fans, sponge gardens, and more to flat plains of nothingness. Bottom trawling has damaged 40% of Norway's cold water reefs and destroyed 90% of Florida's Oculina coral reefs. Thirty years ago the ugly, lowly monkfish was considered bycatch and thrown back as unsellable. Then Julia Child showed America how to poach a monkfish tail on her PBS show and the poor fish was never the same. As the fish's popularity grew, the catches began to drop. In 1999, monkfish was officially declared overfished and quotas set.

Grescoe's verdict on monkfish? Don't eat it because of the indiscriminate and destructive bottom trawling.

Next is the oyster. One of the major problems, if not the major problem, facing the Chesapeake Bay today is pollution (from golf courses, farms, the ever encroaching housing, etc.) and red tides. The good news is that a healthy oyster population can filter the entire bay in five days. The bad news is that there hasn't been a healthy oyster population in over 100 years. Oyster harvests in the Chesapeake Bay are around one tenth of one percent that they were in the nineteen century (Oyster exploitation and overfishing is not limited to the Chesapeake Bay. In 1755, the king of France issued a royal edict prohibiting oyster harvesting in Brittany for six years.). A combination of overfishing and disease outbreaks are to blame for the decline of the oyster. Each year less and less oysters are being caught, yet the oyster fishermen refuse to embrace oyster farming which net more profits than wild caught oysters and is completely sustainable.

Grescoe's verdict on oysters? 95% of the oysters harvested sold today are farmed. Feel free to eat them.

Next is cod which, as anyone who even remotely pays attention to the news or fish counter prices knows, is in the throes of collapse. The cod collapse of the North Atlantic in the 1990's cost Canada alone $1.75 billion. What happened to the cod?

As mysteries go, it's a good one. Some people will tell you the plankton upon which the cod ultimately depended drifted away. Others think the hole in the ozone increased the amount of ultraviolet light penetrating the ocean's surface,killing off fragile larvae. Many fishermen believe it was the seals and other marine mammals that took the cod. (And if not them, the bloody Spaniards.) There seems to be as many explanations for the collapse of the cod, and their failure to return, as there are popular accounts of who built Stonehenge.

The answer turns out to be much simpler.

For most of human history, our relationship with the sea has been predicated on the erroneous belief that, even if we wanted to, we could never make a dent in fish populations. If one species was temporarily overfished, the thinking went, another would take its place: nature, after all, abhored a vacuum. In 1883, the British scientific philosopher Thomas Huxley, writing in a time of “cod mountains” and endlessly self-renewing salmon rivers, could confidently claim: “I still believe the cod fishery...and probably all the great fisheries are inexhaustible; that is to say that nothing we do seriously affects the number of fish.” As leader of a commission on the state of the fisheries, he advised Parliament to ban all legislature governing fishermen, thereafter allowing “unrestricted freedom of fishing”.

It took a little over a century to show how gravely mistaken Huxley was. By the end of the millennium, fully two thirds of major fish stocks in Europe were considered overfished, and some estimates put fish populations at only five percent of their historic levels...Though fishing effort has increased, and more gallons of gas are being used to go further out to sea, fewer fish than ever are being caught. We now know that worldwide, total catches peaked at 78 million tonnes in 1998, and have been declining by about half a million tonnes a year since.

The sole benefit of the cod collapse, if one could even call this a benefit, is the now abundance of lobster and other crustaceans that were one the prey of the cod.

Grescoe's verdict on cod? Atlantic cod, don't even think about it. Pacific cod, yes as it's fishing methods are non destructive and produces very little bycatch.

Next stop is a romp through the Mediterranean and how a combination of pollution, increasing water temperatures, and invasive species are destroying native fish populations. Example after example of invasive species are given, one the most famous being the American comb jellyfish that was introduced by ship ballast tanks into the Black Sea and gobbled up zooplankton including anchovy fry which led to an anchovy population crash and pushed dolphins, seals, and sturgeon to near extinction.

About half-way through the book, Grescoe offers a bit of good news from the small and tasty sardine. Sardines get the green light from Grescoe. They are low on the trophic level, rich in Omega-3 oils, and sustainably harvested. He even offers a bit of advice on buying canned sardines:

As a general rule, avoid fish packed in sauce: like the spice in spicy tuna rolls, tomatoes are used to hide damaged and not so fresh fish.

Perhaps the most distressing chapter was on shrimp farms which supply virtually all restaurants and grocery stores. 75% of all shrimp production comes from shrimp farms in Sri Lanka, India, Vietnam, China, Thailand, and Indonesia. Grescoe summarizes the problem with most of the shrimp farming operations in one sentence:

The simple fact is, if you are eating cheap shrimp today, it almost certainly comes from a turbid, pesticide-and-antibiotic filled, virus-ridden pond in the tropical climes of one of the world's poorest countries.

In India Grescoe describes shrimping ponds operating much too close to villages and lagoons where runoff from the ponds introduces pesticides, antibiotics, diseases, and organic waste into the local ecosystem that the villagers depend on for survival. Underground fresh water is replaced by salty water from the ponds and contaminates wells and rice paddies. Don't believe that natives half a world away are the only ones facing any risk.

Farmers, like the man Kumar and I met, naturally deny they use antibiotics, knowing full well they are banned in important export markets. When shrimp are tested, however – and the FDA checks less than two percent of seafood imported into the United States – prohibited chemicals are still found. In Louisiana, which does rigorous testing of its own, the antibiotic chloramphenicol, known to cause leukemia and aplastic anemia, was found in nine percent of all samples. In 2007, the European Union rejected shipments of Indian shrimp from six major exporters because they tested positive for chloramphenicol and nitrofurans, another powerful antibiotic and a suspected carcinogen; meanwhile, Japan insisted that all shrimp imported from India be certified by government labs after several consignments were found to be contaminated with nitrofurans. Food safety experts have discovered that some people who believe they have shellfish allergies are actually exhibiting reactions, like itching and swelling, to antibiotic residues in farmed species.

A good indicator of antibiotic use, even if the chemicals have already been eliminated from the tissue of the shrimp, is the presence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, such as typhoid and salmonella. Researchers at Mississippi State bought thirteen brands of imported ready-to-eat shrimp – some packaged with cocktail sauce – and found 162 separate species of bacteria, showing resistance to ten different antibiotics, including chloramphenicol. Their conclusion: consumers, particularly those with depressed immune systems, are probably better off cooking ready-to-eat shrimp.

Grescoe's verdict on shrimp is be careful eating imported shrimp and most wild caught shrimp are captured from bottom trawlers. Small wild-caught northern shrimp, pink shrimp, and spot prawns from Northern U.S. And Canadian waters are good because populations are booming (lack of cod to eat them) and the bycatch is fairly small.

The next animal is the shark and the infamous shark fin soup. Thanks to a rising middle class in China, all the foodstuffs once deemed only for the rich is finding its way onto the plates of more and more Chinese and at a horrific price. We all know by now how the fins from the shark are harvested and the rest of the shark thrown overboard to drown. Based on a survey of the Hong Kong shark fin market, it is estimated that 38 million sharks are killed a year for their fins. Despite pleas from Jackie Chan, Yoa Ming, and Taiwan President Chen to not eat shark fin soup, consumption of this status dish continues to grow.

Grescoe's verdict? Just say no to shark.

While in Japan, Grescoe examines Japan's insatiable taste for all things seafood, especially the rare blue fin tuna and that tasty, tasty bit of meat known as toro. I've eaten toro before and it's every bit as delicious (and expensive) as it is made out to be. Eighty percent of the world's bluefin tuna ends up Japan. The popularity of bluefin in Japan began after WWII when refrigeration allowed it to be kept longer. It's not the Japanese alone that get the blame for the declining tuna stocks; the finger also gets pointed at the hyper efficient fishing methods that utilize state-of-the-art equipment such as GPS, satellite imaging, and sonar that allow entire schools of bluefin tuna to be located and harvested and, of course, the worldwide craving for sushi.

Bluefin tuna is being farmed in some areas. The process involves netting 35 pound-ish juvenile tuna and fattening them up to an acceptable selling weight of around 70 pounds; however, this removes much needed breeding stock from the wild which further jeopardizes the wild population. It takes around 20 pounds of fish to yield one pound of tuna so it takes 700 pounds of fish to get a tuna to market weight. Farmed tuna lack the exercise of their wild brethren and consequently are fattier and slightly less desirable to the Japanese market.

Remember at the beginning of Grescoe's journey when he said he was going to be adventurous in his eating? Enter the Kujiraya Restaurant where he told, upon entering, by the maitre d' that “This is a whale meat restaurant”. Although they're not fooling anyone, Japan is allowed to harpoon a thousand whales a year for “scientific purposes”, and despite the lack of a market for whale meat in Japan, the nation continues to campaign to have the whaling ban overthrown. He sits down to a meal of whale meat (which the restaurant bought from the government from the 1,000 whale harvest):

My dinner arrived: seven pieces of minke whale sashimi, cut into thin rectangles, and arranged on the round plate sugimori style – leaning against each other like sugi, or cedar trees. Spotlighted by recessed halogen, the meat was almost oxblood red, shot through with veins of white fat. I suppose, if I were a young vegan, this would be the ultimate horror, all the more so because of its impeccable presentation. But I am not as earnest as I used to be.

Whale was not what I expected. I had imagined myself chewing a hunk of gummy blubber, but the cut was lean, and the taste was closer to rare bloody beef than fish. Whale was a dense meat, reminiscent of venison, but with a slight aftertaste of liver. Frankly, though, it was nothing special – tuna tartare was tastier – and mine was still a little frozen in the middle.

As I chewed, I was already trying to rationalize my meal. After all, compared to ordering overfished bluefin, the caviar from sturgeons, or any of the endangered delicacies served in Michelin-starred restaurants in the West every night of the week, ordering minke whale from the vast stocks in Japan is no more than a minor transgression. Surely it is a venial rather than a mortal sin, the moral equivalent of buying a second-hand fur coat.

But I failed to convince myself. Pushing the plate away, I wondered if hell has a special media room for the overly curious writer.

The last fish on Grescoe's list is the salmon. The Atlantic salmon and the Pacific salmon. Most of the West Coast salmon fisheries have crashed, leading to seasons being closed. This is due to overfishing, destruction of spawning habitats by logging, and by salmon farms. Salmon farms are located near river mouths and are, unsurprisingly, hotbeds of disease and waste and antibiotics. Salmon farmed in the Pacific are actually Atlantic salmon that have been genetically bred for fast growth. When they escape, and escape they do, they breed with the native salmon populations and introduce this gene into the wild stock. Farmed salmon relies on coloring being added to the feed to get the salmon colored flesh we're all familiar with.

Grescoe's verdict on salmon is to get the sustainably fished wild Alaskan salmon or even wild caught Pacific and avoid the farmed salmon altogether.

All in all, Grescoe paints a fairly bleak future for seafood. The whole declining seafood fiasco is beast described as an aquatic tragedy of the commons. If future generations are going to enjoy seafood, what has to be done? Tighter regulation is an obvious must do. As are quotas and areas set aside as oceanic reserves where fishing is prohibited. Grescoe also proposes, and I really like this idea, the idea of slow fishing. Today's fishing fleet is efficient. Far too efficient and it's efficiency is driving the system to a collapse from which it may never recover. Limit ship sizes and net sizes and how long a ship can go out. Give the stock time to recuperate.

The final bit of the book has a list of fishes and shellfishes and whether eating them is ethical or not. Also included is a chapter by chapter list of references for further reading.

I give this book It should be required reading for anyone wishing to be more informed on where their food comes from.

 

[sparkchaser]

I didn't bother to write about it but he does talk about origin labeling. Europe and Japan require labeling but the U.S. is extremely lax in labeling laws. Apparently the Japanese have it down to an art: what it is, where it was caught, if it was frozen or not, and whether it's in season or not.

Also, I did the review a huge disservice by neglecting to mention the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). When you buy MSC branded fish, you are buying fish from sustainable stocks that are harvested in a sustainable way. Whole Foods and WalMart (*gasp* - I was shocked too) and other grocery stores sell MSC labeled seafood.

Monterey Bay Aquarium has a downloadable, wallet sized seafood guide that you can get here: Monterey Bay Aquarium: Seafood Watch Program - A Consumer's Guide to Sustainable Seafood.

And finally, here is the list from the link Eva posted in the first reply to this thread:

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.

 

[sparkchaser]

If anyone is interested, Powell's Books in Portland has signed copies available.

 

[sparkchaser]

Roger Ebert recently did a review on a movie called The End of the Line which is based on a book by the same name by Charles Clover.

I suspect there is much overlap between Grescoe and Clover but it might be worth checking out.