By Christopher Peake

For most of us, walking into a seafood store is an exercise in both ignorance and hope: we’re ignorant of what’s available but we hope we’ll leave with what we want. We all know fish come in two colors: the red one is salmon and the rest are white. Here is what you should know about fish:

Mark Musatto, a partner at Airline Seafood in Houston, says “There are three basic feelings I want every customer to have when they enter my store: they should feel, smell and see the freshness; notice that fresh fish has a sheen and a translucency and I want customers to tell me how they plan to cook their fish and we can talk about the best fish for that method.

“Some fish are better for grilling, others for sautéing, and others for frying.”

There are some basics to consider and ask about when you shop for fish:

• Do you know the store to be safe and reputable?

• Is the seafood fresh or “previously frozen”?

• Where was it caught — Is it local or shipped in from afar?

• How was it caught — is it from open waters or farm-raised?

• And, the increasingly vital question: Is the store selling varieties of seafood that are endangered?

A seafood store must have some basics that make it a good, safe place to shop. The smell should be clean, not too “fishy”; there should be constant filleting of fish so the fish is always fresh, not dry or brown from exposure to the air; fish must be left on the bone as long as possible and those handling the fish should be able to answer any questions you have.

A question to help separate the average shop from the superior one: Is this a store where restaurants buy their seafood? The answer must be “yes.”

How to tread lightly when dining on seafood

The word “seafood” doesn’t define only fish. Seafood includes scallops, lobster, oysters, clams, mussels, crawfish, crab, shrimp and other non-fish creatures. And among these are endangered varieties.

The Environmental Defense Fund has put together a Seafood Selector (available as a pocket guide) that will tell you everything you want or need to know about the status of fish and seafood stocks around the world. They have grouped seafood into three categories: Eco-Best, Eco-OK and Eco-Worst. But there is always a dispute among fishermen, governments and private organizations about which varieties of seafood fall into which category. And restaurants don’t always abide by the warnings about over-fished species.

For example, Chilean Sea Bass is on just about every Eco-Worst list but it’s still on many menus. Bluefin Tuna, the staple of sushi, is also on that list but every sushi bar in the world serves it.

Some Salmon are endangered, some not. Some trout are threatened, others not. Ask your fish-seller and your restaurant waiter if you have any doubts or questions. Don’t fall for something that is out of season (“wild” Alaska Salmon in winter) or is a substitute for the real deal (farmed White Bass or Catfish for Grouper).

(Note: Chilean Sea Bass, Bluefin Tuna and Atlantic Salmon are all considered in jeopardy, and they’re fish that tend to carry high mercury concentrations, so staying away from these varieties provides a double benefit.)

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a nifty program for your iPhone or iPod touch. Their Seafood Watch application enables you to go online and make sustainable seafood choices at a restaurant or a market by logging on and searching by name. And they have a regional guide that highlights the seafood that’s best in each area of the

country. That will allow you to “eat local” because local is fresher, and carries a lower carbon footprint.

Some species such as Pollock and Cod are making a comeback and New England Lobster was so plentiful in 2008 that its price was the lowest in many years. As in all of nature, some seasons are better or worse than others and result in a greater or lesser seasonal seafood harvest. We all know about Chesapeake Bay’s crab problems, the smaller oyster yields in the Gulf of Mexico and the once ubiquitous Sturgeon in the Great Lakes. But then on the other hand, Mark Musatto says that the Gulf of Mexico is the most biologically active body of water in the world and Gulf fishermen are pulling in fish not often seen!

The more common Gulf fish include Tarpon, Sea Trout, Amberjack, Dolphin and Swordfish. Gulf Grouper and Red Snapper are considered on or near the endangered level.

The status updates of fish and other seafood fluctuate; global warming, heavy rains, pesticides and fertilizer runoffs, and over-fishing can result in empty nets and traps while restrictions on fishing, clean water and the proliferation of algae yield more fish and other seafood. So due to the inconsistencies of today’s world we are increasingly relying on farmed (or farm-raised) seafood.

Alison Barratt, communications officer for the Seafood Watch Program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, discussed the status of some of the more common seafood: Shark, Pollock, Lobster, Shrimp and Oysters.

Shark “… are in a severe decline due to over-fishing. Shark mature sexually very slowly and they produce only one offspring at a time, so when a shark is killed there are no siblings to take its place. Sharks don’t reproduce quickly. Avoid (eating) shark.”

By contrast, she says, Pollock, the fish “you find in fish sticks and sometimes as as substitute for other fish. They are a big fishery, an abundant fish. They come from Alaskan waters.”

Lobster “is a good choice, they’re not endangered. They are abundant now in New England and Canada.”

Navigating choppy waters

Just yesterday, Robert Steneck, a marine biologist at the U of Maine said on public radio that the presence of abundant lobsters without many other species in the same waters and with diminishing stocks of predators amounts to a “socioeconomic time bomb.” He says extraordinarily high lobster density makes it susceptible to the spread of disease, which could ravage the lobster population.

Steneck said disease can be prevented by our support of biodiversity. In other words, we can help by tailoring our consumption to the ocean’s needs.

Take shrimp, for instance. Eating locally raised, farmed shrimp may help ease stress on wild shrimp populations.

Shrimp “are a complex story. The difficulty in catching wild shrimp is that when they are caught in the sea floor many other forms of sea life are also captured and these are destroyed, damaging the eco-system,” Steneck says. “Some are wild-caught but the majority are farmed and if they are farmed in the US then they are safe to eat. Foreign-farmed shrimp are not subject to our strict regulations. Both US wild and farmed shrimp are a good (healthy) choice.”

Oysters “are both wild-caught and farmed. Like shrimp, they are farmed in abundance so their growth and cleanliness can be monitored. The farms often have cleaner water than the ocean.”

Methods for catching fish vary: gillnetting, purse seining, longlining, trolling, longpoling, trawling/dragging and dredging are used by commercial fishermen. What these methods have in common is that they all catch a lot of seafood, fish they want and fish they don’t want (and often die as the result of being caught).

The future of commercial fishing in the US is fragile: it can perish or it can grow. Natalie Webster, a founder of the American Albacore Fishing Association and a third-generation family member of California Albacore fishermen, asks if “Americans want to be dependent on imported fish or do they want to buy American fish? Our albacore oil in tuna is higher than anywhere else in the world because of the rich bait they eat off our West Coast waters. If we (all commercial fishermen) don’t get the support from consumers to demand local seafood, US-harvested seafood as well as sustainably-harvested seafood, then the American fishing family will disappear.

“And if we don’t create a better future right now for our fishing families there will not be a “next generation” of American commercial fishermen.”

At that point we will have to rely on imported seafood.

(Photo credit: Men fishing, American Albacore Fishing Association)

Copyright © 2009-2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by GRN Network

Tags: American Albacore Fishing Association, bass, endangered fish, Environmental Defense Fund, lobster, local dining, Mercury, Monterey Bay Aquarium, oysters, pollock, Salmon, Seafood, Seawatch, shrimp, Sushi, tuna

Monday, January 11th, 2010 | Food, Social |