The Problem with Fish

[Broomstick]

For some reason, in the past week I've read a couple books that mentioned the current problems with fish, fish farming, and overfishing and then last night the spouse wound up watching a documentary on the subject. Which got me thinking about fish, eating fish, not eating fish, and so on.

For those going WTF is this person talking about, between pollution, overfishing, and so on the populations of certain fish are not just crashing, but crashing hard, and the world wide fish catch is dropping year by year.

Let's just say the ocean has changed in the past 50 years.

I remember the collapse of the Grand Banks Cod. It was news in 1992 when the Canadian government announced a complete moratorium on fishing the grand banks. The cod, once so plentiful that the Vikings and other Europeans used to hazard the Atlantic crossing to take advantage of it, one of the richest fishing grounds in history, had had the cod population drop to one percent of its prior levels. That is, we had eaten 99% of the Grand Banks cod. The ban caused all manner of havoc because of the numbers of people still dependent on cod for their livelihood. Things got ugly in Newfoundland, which was the area most dependent on the cod. It was hoped that the ban would be for only two years and the cod would recover.

They haven't. Twenty years, and the most optimistic surveys say the cod are maybe 10% of their historical numbers. Maybe. The Grand Banks Cod aren't coming back in our lifetimes.

Things haven't gotten much better for several other varieties of fish.

Shark numbers are dropping due to both eating them and the production of shark cartilage pills - an unproven bit of woo popularized by the book Sharks Don't Get Cancer which came out the same year the Grand Banks Cod crashed, 1992. (By the way - sharks do get cancer, it's been documented by researchers)

Then there are the bluefin tuna. Stocks have dropped by 72% in the eastern Atlantic, by 82% in the western Atlantic. Several groups recommend annual global catches of no more 10,000 to 15,000 tonnes - but it's estimated 60,000 tonnes are taken yearly. That's 4-6 times more than a sustainable harvest. The bluefin is being eaten to death, by human beings. The species has been recommended several times to the CITES list, which would institute an international ban on taking them or trading them, but it's been voted down. Why? Because a bluefin carcass is fucking valuable, and only getting more so as their numbers dwindle.

OK, that's the problem - what can be done about it?

Well, as individuals we can make some choices. Now, no one should be under the illusion that simply choosing, say, tilapia over bluefin is going to Save the World, or even just Save the Fish. It's not, but as individuals we can make choices taking ethics into account. There's bunches of other stuff to do, like supporting change and organizations and so forth, but really, the rest of this post is about eating.

(There is also the fact that a big part of the problem is that there are just too damn many people trying to live on the same planet. If, hypothetically, we only had 1/4 of the current world population a lot of our problems with dwindling resources would be greatly reduced, if not eliminated. However, anything that would eliminate that many humans in a short time frame would certainly result in other horrific problems so let's take that "solution" off the table, even if the long-term effects might be beneficial.)

You see, I like to eat fish. I really do. But I don't want to be part of rendering another species extinct if I can avoid it.

Since I've never been a big fan of cod anyway giving that up wasn't a hardship. Not that big a fan of some of the other whitefish, like haddock, that have come to replace cod internationally so avoiding them when there's signs of overfishing isn't a hardship for me.

I like to eat shark steaks, but given the way their numbers have been dropping for years I felt it wasn't ethical to keep eating them, so I stopped. I've never been a huge fan of bluefin tuna, so making sure what tuna we eat at home is NOT bluefin is, again, not a huge deal. I actually pay attention to where my fish comes from - I was tickled yesterday to not only find some tilapia at the store yesterday, but that it was clearly labeled as to point of origin (Costa Rica - not the ideal source but better than the China-origin at another store I regularly shop at). I'm quite fond of salmon, but I try to only eat wild-caught Alaska salmon, which is arguably one of the best-managed fisheries in the world at this point (numbers of boats, seasons, and catches are strongly limited, and the US Coast Guard backs up the rules) and is considered sustainable. It's certainly not the cheapest salmon, but I feel better for making the choice.

I know I can't be the only person on this board who thinks about these things. And right now I have to go get some supplies for my garden (another nod to ecological responsibility on my part - I'm not a total organic locavore but come summer I grow most of my vegees rather than buy them). But, basically, anyone else with thoughts, choices, strategies, opinions (agreement or not) is welcome to chime in. Particularly, fish to eat or not eat and why.

[Thanas]

My own guideline is that Alaskan (Kodiak) salmon and hering are the only "safe" saltwater fish out there.

I do not think anybody should eat any other fish right now, especially not any tuna (there is one fishery that is ocologically viable and it only produces a small catch so you only find it in specialized stores costing a fortune. The problem is not limited to bluefin alone) or eels (not sustainable as they take decades to grow).

At the very least, everybody should obey the Greenpeace red list.

This one in German, but should be usable for English users as well also shows the exceptions to the rule in green, aka where you can still get the fish in a correct manner if it is on the red list link, or in red if there is an exception to the otherwise permitted fish.

Still, I found it easier to stick to my rule of no seawater fish except for alaskan salmon and atlantic hering from the european fisheries (not canadian or american as they prey upon them while they have not had their young).

[Dave]

I never really thought about it much, and we never ate fish much as a family, but now that I'm on my own and have a job that involves sitting and staring at a computer for >8 hours a day, I have to eat healthier, and I'm told fish is one way to do that.

Conceptually, I care about overfishing, but in practice I don't know anything about it, so I'm not sure what to get. I figure that 'farm raised' probably means the population being caught is isolated from the rest of the food chain, so that's what I would want, right? I don't particularly care for tuna-in-a-can. I picked up some cod once from the fishmonger in the grocery store, and lately my fish has been small frozen talapias out of a plastic bag from Aldi's. (And this is about the extent of my knowledge about fish.)

I also have two quick and easy recipes for 'fish' (we never really discussed what kind of fish they were at home); if anyone is interested I can post them -- though that might be contrary to the spirit of the thread.

[Thanas]

I never really thought about it much, and we never ate fish much as a family, but now that I'm on my own and have a job that involves sitting and staring at a computer for >8 hours a day, I have to eat healthier, and I'm told fish is one way to do that.

Conceptually, I care about overfishing, but in practice I don't know anything about it, so I'm not sure what to get. I figure that 'farm raised' probably means the population being caught is isolated from the rest of the food chain, so that's what I would want, right?

No. It depends. Some farms use other fish as feeding fish, including protected species. Your best bet for farm raised fish is norwegian raised salmon.

I don't particularly care for tuna-in-a-can. I picked up some cod once from the fishmonger in the grocery store, and lately my fish has been small frozen talapias out of a plastic bag from Aldi's. (And this is about the extent of my knowledge about fish.)

I'd suggest not eating those any longer.

[Sea Skimmer]

The Grand Banks were not just fished to death, the use of bottom trawls destroyed the ocean floor habitat which is why numbers are recovering so slowly and most likely will never return to former strength without another ice age to push rocks onto the ocean floor. That's the scary thing, we may, and indeed almost certainly are disrupting the entire ocean food chain in a manner that could defy recover in less than multiple centuries. Killing off so many whales may have actually been the start of it, as whale poo is a way for the energy of the sun to fertilize the deep ocean, and some fish populations may be now declining beyond the levels directly caused by over fishing. But since we know so little about the deep ocean, we don't know how much this has really hurt matters.

One big problem with farm raised fish is the fish farms tend to cause dead zones down current which wipe out even more of the ocean fish population in prime coastal habitat. This is less of an issue with freshwater farms, that tend to be much smaller in scale and can filter out some amount of fish waste to avoid dead zones. Farm raised salmon are pretty pointless since they eat more feeder fish than they produce salmon mass. Fish raised on grain are meanwhile far more efficient than chickens at producing meat mass, IIRC chickens are the best common farm animal on land for efficiency, and around eight times better than beef cattle, but its the grain fed mega farms that produce the worst dead zones. The best solution to this would be to build the farms well offshore with deeper water and stronger currents than coastal zones thus dispersing the waste and even simulating whales in theory; but while a few such farms exist they are more expensive and vulnerable to damage and weather. This idea is gaining ground though as we have ever stronger materials to build them out of. Course, this does not address the issue of dead zones caused by fertilizer run off in the first place, but that's its own subject and still better than raising chickens ect.

On the sort of plus side, some radioactive tuna were just caught off California, meaning we can now assume the entire Pacific ocean is contaminated to some degree by migrating fish, so maybe we can scare people into reducing purchases that way.

[Erik von Nein]

Interestingly, I just read a blog post about this very thing: Southern Fried Science is mostly about making informed food choices and the difficulty inherent in that, they mention something I think most people should at least be made nominally aware of. Dave mentioned buying cod from someone, but it's likely whatever white fish he purchased wasn't even cod to begin with, as most tested samples of fish purchased turned out to be mislabeled. It makes making informed decisions, if not impossible, then incredibly difficult.

I could go on at length about fisheries management and the atrocious lack of oversight.

[Erik von Nein]

As far as farm raised goes it certainly depends on the species. In addition to waste management issues (even fresh water can decimate whatever lakes they use for raising their fish) and disease vector problems (a bunch of farm raise salmon escaped the west coast relatively recently and infected large parts of the wild populations) there's also habitat destruction where large sections of, say, mangrove stands are being removed for farming, especially with farm raised shrimp. Though, generally speaking, tilapia and most southern USA farmed-raised shrimp are okay to eat, nothing especially bad with their practices. If it comes from somewhere in southeast Asia it's something you should likely avoid.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program is one of the better resources for finding out which seafood is okay to eat and which is not. The problem, again, is that mislabeling is so rampant even knowing which species are okay can lead to accidentally making the wrong choice.

[Spectre_nz]

I've lived within a stones throw of the ocean my whole life, and its' really quite distressing to know how the much the local onshore stocks have dwindled. I mean everything. Small fish, big fish, shellfish. you name it.
One 'common' species starts to vanish and people begin to target another.
There are old Maori middens from pre-European times a bar around from where I regularly holiday, one that may be one of the first human settlements in New Zealand. Starting at the bottom it's full of large marine mammal bones. Then small ones, then none and the midden layers are now large fish bones and some shell fish. Then small fish and large shellfish. Then shell fish and the size fish we have today.

Now in modern times, shellfish dredges are screwing up the sea-floor in the places where scallops spawn, so the fry don't settle any more, and day tourists pick the rocks clean of mussels. No shellfish on the rocks means less habitat for young fish, means fewer fish replacing the one's we're catching. Then there are developers and town councils removing 'unsightly' mangroves, another juvenile fish habitat.

Good news is fish stocks around here seem to bounce back very quickly when you stick a marine reserve down and ban all fishing. The slower growing pelagic fish however, don't bounce back as quick. Especially given international fishing fleets come down here to target them and don't always obey NZ fishing restrictions.

I'd like to think New Zealand does a good job regulating its fisheries, but things still look pretty fucked up.

Better get used to the new flavours of the sea; Jellyfish and squid.

Alas, it also looks like the removal of whales and top level predators will reduce the overall turn-over of nutrients in the oceans and ultimately, make all the worlds oceans less productive, without even considering the drop in productivity you're likely to get if global warming screws up the very productive polar oceans. If a continually declining ocean productivity hits a continued increase in world population; yikes.

[Broomstick]

Conceptually, I care about overfishing, but in practice I don't know anything about it, so I'm not sure what to get.

Thanas' "eat Alaska salmon and herring" as a rule of thumb for salt water fish is actually a pretty good one. There are still issues with labeling, but no one should be expected to be an expert overnight. Improvement is a good thing, even if it's incremental.

The downside to salmon, if not herring as well, is that it's fairly strongly flavored and thus, if you don't like the taste it's kind of an issue. Also as a general rule for food is eat lower on the food chain. This helps reduce the amount of environmental contaminants you get in fish - and you always get bioaccumulation in any ecosystem. There are fish that are toxic not because of man-made pollution but due to eating natural toxins in their natural diet.

By that reckoning, salmon isn't ideal because it's a predator, but it's a fast-growing one with a short lifespan. They don't (usually) live long enough to accumulate dangerous levels. A big fish like a tuna or shark will always have some sort of contaminants in its flesh because they eat at the top of the food chain and live fairly long lives. In the case of tuna, which need to eat about 20 units (pounds, kg, grams, stone, whatever unit you care to use) of other fish to make one unit of tuna, they bioaccumulate faster than the average fish, and they're long lived, so they have more time to do this.

Don't forget - this stuff bioaccumulates in people, too. We're an apex predator, and we eat other predators. People have turned up with things like mercury poisoning from excessive consumption of predator fish. It's not that any one fish they ate had a dangerous level, it's also the quantity of fish they ate in a given time period. No matter how much you love fish you shouldn't eat it every day, at least not a predator fish, it's not healthy.

I figure that 'farm raised' probably means the population being caught is isolated from the rest of the food chain, so that's what I would want, right?

Farmed tilapia - which is a freshwater fish, by the way - can be a good choice. Tilapia are actually well suited to farm life in a sense because they tolerate crowding, eat almost anything (and under ideal conditions can convert 1.6 units of feed into 1 unit of fish, which is better than anything warm-blooded we eat), can survive in low oxygen environments, and tolerate a wide range of water chemistry. The downside is that they'll survive conditions that would result in unhealthy fish-flesh for people. Historically, tilapia were raised in stagnant ponds in primitive agricultural regions, and, being scavengers, will happily eat literal shit. This will not, however, result in good-tasting fish and can pose health problems for people.

In order to be healthy as food, tilapia need to be raised in ponds of a certain cleanliness, preferably on mostly vegetable-based feed. It's also important they be raised in clean water and over clean sediments. Which brings me to...

I don't particularly care for tuna-in-a-can. I picked up some cod once from the fishmonger in the grocery store, and lately my fish has been small frozen talapias out of a plastic bag from Aldi's. (And this is about the extent of my knowledge about fish.)

Around here, Aldi's tilapia filets are farm-raised in China. In recent years, China has had some... issues with food contamination. Also, China has some serious environmental problems right now and I'm not sure they're being attended to as well as they should be. I won't eat farm-raised fish from China right now because I don't trust it to be properly labeled, raised in a clean environment, or free of contaminants (ask me again in 10 years - I do hope for positive change at some point). Hence, my happiness at finding farm-raised tilapia from Costa Rica, which is yellow list on the Monterery Bay Aquarium list rather than red list (Chinese tilapia is red list).

The down side of all this is that ecologically/environmentally responsible low toxin fish is more expensive. At the store today farm raised Atlantic salmon (which is on many people's do not buy list) was $6.99 a pound. Copper River, Alaska wild-caught salmon (which has a three week season) was $21.99 a pound. On the upside, it also looks, smells, and tastes a hell of a lot better than the farm-raised variety, too. Unfortunately, that's out of my price range but there is Alaska salmon less exclusive and less expensive than that.

I also have two quick and easy recipes for 'fish' (we never really discussed what kind of fish they were at home); if anyone is interested I can post them -- though that might be contrary to the spirit of the thread.

No, go ahead and post them, either here or in the recipe thread.

I have noticed more and more fish is being labeled as to origin and method of capture these days. This is good, as it enables people to make choices.

[Broomstick]

On the sort of plus side, some radioactive tuna were just caught off California, meaning we can now assume the entire Pacific ocean is contaminated to some degree by migrating fish, so maybe we can scare people into reducing purchases that way.

Oh, really?

There's been radiation in Pacific fish since the atomic bomb tests back in the '50's and 60's. Bikini atoll is still uninhabitable due to high levels of radioactive cesium from bomb testing, as just one example. Fukishima might have bumped up the levels a bit, but it's not really something entirely new in the grand scheme of things.

The question isn't "is there radioactivity?" but "is there enough to worry about?" I mean, there are people having puppies over radiation in the fish, yet the granite countertop they're using to prepare the fish actually is more radioactive than what they're eating.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned - obviously, radiation is just one potential hazard among many we need to keep an eye on - but how much per unit of food is an important factor in the calculation.

Although, I agree - it might be a good thing if radiation concerns wound up relieving some of the pressure on fish stocks.

[Broomstick]

Good news is fish stocks around here seem to bounce back very quickly when you stick a marine reserve down and ban all fishing. The slower growing pelagic fish however, don't bounce back as quick. Especially given international fishing fleets come down here to target them and don't always obey NZ fishing restrictions.

The only reason that foreign nations respect the rules for fishing in US territorial waters is because the US military will enforce the border. Every year a certain number of skippers try sneaking in anyway and act all shocked when they get boarded and forced to turn around. No doubt a few actually get away with it from time to time because it's very hard to patrol the ocean 24/7.

The less strong a nation is the more its waters are fished by foreigners in factory trawlers. This is absolutely horrible for some folks - subsistence fishermen off the west coast of Africa, for example. Their catches are pathetic, their families are starving... I saw a quote by one of them saying "our fish our welcome in Europe, but our people aren't". It's not the subsistence fishermen that are causing the problem, even in areas where the local population is booming. It's the factory ships that destroy the whole foodchain when they cast their nets and scoop up everything.

Better get used to the new flavours of the sea; Jellyfish and squid.

Alas, it also looks like the removal of whales and top level predators will reduce the overall turn-over of nutrients in the oceans and ultimately, make all the worlds oceans less productive, without even considering the drop in productivity you're likely to get if global warming screws up the very productive polar oceans. If a continually declining ocean productivity hits a continued increase in world population; yikes.

Current extrapolations have that particular Armageddon hitting around 2040-2060 if present trends continue. I may not be around for that, but certainly some of our younger posters here have a good shot at seeing those decades.

Removal of top predators does cause a boom lower down the food chain. It's not just fish - trawlers kill species like sea turtles as "by catch" and sea turtles love eating jellyfish and help keep their numbers in check. It's tempting to say well, we'll just eat the squid and jellies, but if we sweep them up there will be less food for higher critters to eat, making it even harder to rebuild their populations.

Although eating some of the prey species might help... it's rather like the deer plague in North America, in that we removed the deer-eaters and now deer are enormously overpopulated and cause habitat destruction. Some predation can help restore the balance, but if deer meat becomes too popular we might wind up eating them all in a generation. Likewise, there are some areas where fish otherwise on the do not eat lists might because such a pest that eating from those particular populations might not only be OK, but might even help things from getting even more out of whack. As an example, rays are more or less taking over Chesapeake Bay and eating rays from there is probably OK (as long as the contaminants aren't excessive). Lobster populations off the US east coast are exploding, possibly due to so many fewer cod eating their juveniles. Then again, most of the lobstermen have bought into some conversation principles, including marking some of the big females as breeding stock and returning them to the ocean when trapped rather than sending them off to be eaten. This is unlike the situation with tuna, where the big fish - which are also likely the biggest breeders - are the most sought and none are returned once caught.

[Thanas]

The red list is IMO the best guideline out there. Easy to use, tells you why something is not good to eat and contains even more material.


As for the Herring taste....herring is actually a very adaptable fish to various tastes, easy to season etc. For example, there is a real difference between Bismarck herring and matjes, for example, or Brathering and normal herring (Wikipedia names if need be).

Seriously, it probably is one of my favorite fishes out there.

[Broomstick]

Personally, I like my herring pickled. But I'm willing to try new styles of it.

Squid... meh. I've had squid a dozen different ways and while it's not hideous (usually) it's not something I'd choose. Sure, put it in front of me I'll eat enough to be polite, and if I'm starving I'll certainly eat it, but really, I have come to the conclusion that I'm just not fond of eating things with tentacles, suckers, and beaks.

[Erik von Nein]

The red list is IMO the best guideline out there. Easy to use, tells you why something is not good to eat and contains even more material.

They're just using the Monterey Bay's Seafood Watch Guide and just using the red list they use, only they're not including the yellow and green lists, for some reason, and including more links than the Seafood Watch Guide (they're still the same resources, though). Because of that I'd say the Seafood Watch Guides are some the best resources you can use, especially since they also have region-specific guides, sushi guides, and some other miscellaneous tools for making informed seafood choices. It's also a lot more comprehensive then Greenpeace's excerpt. It's not enough just to say what's bad, but you also have to show what's an acceptable alternative.

I wouldn't start up my squid eating habits at all. We just don't know enough about their populations and what increasing fisheries pressures would do to them. They're listed under the yellow section largely for that reason.

Edit: For herring? Better keep an eye out. Guide listing

[Spectre_nz]

The only reason that foreign nations respect the rules for fishing in US territorial waters is because the US military will enforce the border. Every year a certain number of skippers try sneaking in anyway and act all shocked when they get boarded and forced to turn around. No doubt a few actually get away with it from time to time because it's very hard to patrol the ocean 24/7.

It's the same down here. We have a small navy that is almost totally geared towards enforcing our fisheries EEZ.
But that doesn't stop taxpayers from complaining whenever they hear about the Navy buying anything. "We're a peaceful country, we don't need warships"
Facepalm, please.

If the news is to be believed, they do interdict a few illegal fishers every year. But most of what customs and the navy keeps an eye out for is by-catch and miss-reported catch.

Current extrapolations have that particular Armageddon hitting around 2040-2060 if present trends continue. I may not be around for that, but certainly some of our younger posters here have a good shot at seeing those decades.

Yeah, I have a reasonable expectation of seeing those decades...

Removal of top predators does cause a boom lower down the food chain. It's not just fish - trawlers kill species like sea turtles as "by catch" and sea turtles love eating jellyfish and help keep their numbers in check. It's tempting to say well, we'll just eat the squid and jellies, but if we sweep them up there will be less food for higher critters to eat, making it even harder to rebuild their populations.

Yeah, cornerstone species are a minefield, especially when their importance is not obvious.
Like the discussion I saw on how whales and other large deep diving predators boost the productivity of the ocean as a whole by moving nutrients up from the depths to the surface, like a worm tilling the soil in your garden; both by eating at depth and crapping it out at the surface, and maybe even just by the water they displace as they surface and dive to feed.

It's a pity I don't like mussels. They get a good sustainability rating when farmed.

There's a lot of media spin down here on how great and sustainable our agriculure is, though it can be hard to seperate the facts from the marketing circle jerk that frequently crops up.
I notice there aren't really any NZ fisheries listed in that guide Erik von Nein posted. Do you notice forign sea-food products at all in your area or is it all domesically caught?

[Broomstick]

With the caveat I'm speaking solely for myself....

I live in the middle of a continent, thousands of kilometers from any ocean. If it's a salt water fish it's imported into my area, even if technically it's caught in the same country I live in. Sure, we see foreign seafood all the time. I can't recall seeing New Zealand on a label lately, but I have seen various Southern Hemisphere nations on labels noting origin as well as things like European and Asian fish and seafood. Chicago may be landlocked but food from all over the world lands daily, nay, hourly at O'Hare and Midway in cargo planes. You can get seafood less than 24 hours out of the salt water with no problem in the greater Chicago area. Hell, probably less than 12 hours in some cases.

Which gets into another environmental issue, that of transporting food. When my parents were children they simply didn't get fresh ocean fish. Anything salt water was preserved for transport so things like canned, salted, dried, smoked, and pickled varieties were know and common but I don't think either ate a fresh ocean fish until they actually managed to travel seaside, and then only while they were seaside (my dad lost his desire to vacation in Florida when someone threw a Portugeuse man-o-war at him and it hit him on his bare chest. Suffice to say the siphonophore was NOT happy at the treatment within their limited means expressed themselves. Dad was pretty sick for a a few days, but obviously he recovered. We never went to Florida when I was a kid, or really anything seaside.)

Around here, local fish are freshwater fish. You'd think that living by the Great Lakes fish from those waters would be common.... but not really. Actually, when I was a kid every fish in the Great Lakes was the equivalent of "red list" due to environmental contaminants. Even for something like smelt, which is pretty low on the food chain and innocuous, we were advised that no woman of childbearing age should ever eat it, due to contaminant levels and fears that even a small amount could be sufficient to cause birth defects if a woman happened to be pregnant when consuming it. Lake Superior smelt was OK in small amounts, but really, anything east of Michigan just don't eat the fish. Was that exaggerated or not? Not sure, plenty of people said it was. Then again, at the time Lake Erie was all dead water, too. And the Cuyahoga River in Ohio used to catch fire, too. It was pretty bad, damn scary, Silent Spring type stuff.

Oh, and in the 1980's even in the "clean" lakes (ha ha) the smelt population crashed. The smelt runs used to look like the Grand Banks, people would stand on shore with dip nets and just shovel fish out of the water. Then one year the season started, people put their nets in the water and.... almost nothing. Just a fish or three where before there had been thousands. Lake smelt used to be a cheap fish eaten by starving college students (I know, I ate a lot myself) then, suddenly, it just disappeared from the stores and menus. When it came back, which it did, eventually, it cost a fuck of a lot more. Lake smelt at the store today was twice the cost of sirloin steak. The cheap prey fish known as Great Lakes smelt has suddenly become a valuable commodity, but really, the wonder is that it is there at all.

Although not as amazing as the fact that, not only are there fish in Lake Erie again, but there is a fishing industry there again, and the fish are relatively safe to eat. As long as no one is dredging or disturbing the bottom sediment.

Which shows, yet again, that fish populations do have remarkable recovery ability, at least some of them do.

That's one of the more frustrating things - we CAN stop the rape of the seas. We really do have the means to stop fishing sea food into extinction. The problem is desire to stop. For every person such as myself who will stop eating an endangered fish there's another who doesn't give a fuck and yet another figuring he'll get that last bite in while he can and yet another who figures that if, when species X is gone, he has a few hundred tons on ice he'll be able to make a killing on selling the flesh of an extinct species to those folks wanting that last bite.

[Zaune]

Quick point of clarification from someone who was born and raised quite literally as far from the sea as it's physically possible to be within the UK. (They're called the Midlands for a reason.) What do the boat skippers make of the restrictions? I know pretty much everyone hated the old rules in the UK, but that was because they imposed quotas of tonnage per fish species, which had the absurd effect of forcing them to toss fish back overboard (almost invariably dead) if they caught a load of the wrong sort by mistake. Is there much resentment of a limit on the general idea of restrictions, though?

[Dave]

Around here, Aldi's tilapia filets are farm-raised in China. In recent years, China has had some... issues with food contamination.

Ah, yes, it seems my fish are in fact farm raised in China. I suppose I'll throw them out. I have plenty of chicken.

Thanks for starting this thread and the rest of the info -- I'll post the fish recipes tomorrow.

[Simon_Jester]

I wouldn't advise throwing them out, since it's not like all food from China is poisonous. The vast majority of food from China won't seriously mess you up; if it did it really would be illegal because the FDA does, theoretically, still exist. More like "bear in mind that it could be contaminated" sort of thing.

[Sea Skimmer]

Quick point of clarification from someone who was born and raised quite literally as far from the sea as it's physically possible to be within the UK. (They're called the Midlands for a reason.) What do the boat skippers make of the restrictions? I know pretty much everyone hated the old rules in the UK, but that was because they imposed quotas of tonnage per fish species, which had the absurd effect of forcing them to toss fish back overboard (almost invariably dead) if they caught a load of the wrong sort by mistake. Is there much resentment of a limit on the general idea of restrictions, though?

It depends on the fishermen certainly, some exist who would only willingly accept solutions that are based on banning other people from fishing so they can fish to an unlimited degree or at least with major quotas (been done like for Alaskan crab), many lament about 'traditions' (I wonder how many use sonar) and decent numbers accept the need for quotas but always want them higher so they can live better. The impression I get from interviews over the years is that very few of them are blind to the problem, but most are just unwilling to accept how bad it is as far as ocean fishing goes. If they did they'd most likely go seek new jobs, so I guess we really shouldn't expect to hear from those sort of people anyway. Lots of them also seem not to like how unevenly regulation can be enforced, which is a fair complaint, and competition from foreign ships. Generalization is kind of hard on the subject, as you'd expect.

Its also a major problem that lots of fishing boats are operated by large corporations that send fleets around the world to grab whatever they can and target the waters of third world countries with no enforcement of law, as well as generally harvesting in the deep ocean any way they please. What's needed in global enforcement, and a global ban on bottom trawling at the least, banning long lines would also be really good. Otherwise no limits at all exist beyond 200nm EEZ limits, and given the size of the ocean the best hopes for enforcement of anything would have to be at dockside.

[Erik von Nein]

Depends on the area. Around here the local fishermen are very much interested in being part of any group dedicated to setting exceptions and limits on fishing and actively take part in the committees that decide that. I do believe including fishermen in the process is the best idea, since they're likely to be the most affected when any changes happen and disenfranchising them will likely just encourage them to ignore the rules or start targeting other species with similar recklessness.

Dave, I wouldn't toss any food you've already purchased. I mean, it's not as if one or two tilapia are really going to make any difference. You've likely consumed far more Chinese products then you're liable to remember, anyway. I know I'm pimping the hell out of the Seafood Watch Guide, but there's one for whatever region you happen to live in. Since you're stateside there are plenty of tilapia farms inside the US that aren't as terrible for the environment as Chinese farms would be. Also, if you're looking for environmentally friendly options factory chickens really aren't the best way to go.

Really, the blog link I posted earlier helps sum up why there's a huge problem with attempting to make informed decisions about food products. Not only is food production a complicated mess with no one-size-fits-all strategy that can apply to any given purchasing decision, but even when you try to learn what products are better and which are worse you could still end up purchasing something mislabeled as something else.

[Broomstick]

Yeah, I wouldn't panic over a couple Chinese fish filets, it's just that if you have a choice it's better to avoid them and choose something better.

One thing that makes Chinese filets attractive is that they're so damn cheap. Quality, green list seafood isn't cheap. Sure, I'd love to have some Copper River salmon but I can feed me and mine for two days for the cost of one meal's worth of Copper River. For a special occasion, sure, I'll splurge but I can't eat like that every day. For those not even as well off as myself, well, I understand why they'd buy the least expensive filets being offered.

That's one reason for the garden - by growing some of my own food I can afford to spend more on buying quality when I go to the store.

You're never going to achieve perfection with your choices. Sure, there are problems with factory-farmed chicken, but chicken aren't endangered. You can go with free range chicken, but that's more expensive and not always what you think it is, either. You have to decide what's the most important criteria to you and choose accordingly.

Oh, and I just heard an update on the radioactive fish issue - seems tuna landing in the US fished from the Pacific are showing cesium levels 10 times higher than before Fukushima. Not sure if that's a reason for concern or not, as I don't know what those earlier levels were and if "ten times" that is high enough to be of concern.

[Thanas]

Edit: For herring? Better keep an eye out. Guide listing

The guide is pretty bad for Europeans - but do take note that on the guide I linked to in German, these two fisheries (as for some reasons they only list american fisheries) are listed as "avoid".

[Broomstick]

Quick point of clarification from someone who was born and raised quite literally as far from the sea as it's physically possible to be within the UK. (They're called the Midlands for a reason.) What do the boat skippers make of the restrictions?

As noted, that varies a lot.

In some US fisheries there is buy-in on the part of the people fishing. It's not that the skippers don't want bigger catches, but they really do understand that if they overfish today they won't have a livelihood tomorrow. On the northeast coast, up around Maine, they've twice seen fishing industries crash - first when the whales became scarce, then when the Grand Banks crashed. They've learned the hard way what happens when you let greed rule. Hence the lobstermen being conscientious about throwing back lobsters under the legal size limit, and preserving a certain number of large ones for breeding stock.

Up in Alaska and on the northwest coast the rules are strictly enforced. The season is limited by both time and catch quantity - if the time for that type of fishing runs out and you haven't reached your limit, too bad, you still have to stop fishing. If everyone meets quota early then the season ends early. This does result in problems and hazards - too many boats (even with limited numbers of boats) in too small an area, insane work hours for the men, and so forth.

One issue that does infuriate many commercial fisherman is subsistence fishing by Natives. Natives in both the US and Canada are allowed to fish even out of season, and take normally off-limits animals like whales. However, they are not allowed to sell them for profit*. Subsistence fishing is just that, for subsistence, to feed oneself and family. Oh, a small amount of barter occurs, I have no doubt, but it's not the subsistence fishing that caused the problems and it's not sufficient to make a difference. While there are Natives who fish commercially, they can't use commercial boats and technology for their subsistence fishing. Catching a few fish and either smoking or freezing or otherwise preserving them is one thing, but you can't haul a ton of seafood out of the water in one night and call it "subsistence" even if you are a Native. Well, OK, maybe if you're going after a whale, but even for subsistence hunting I gather that there's a limit of one whale per village per year or something of the sort. There are some limits, even if they're different ones.

* There have been instances where Natives, instead of eating a captured whale, sell it to an aquarium. That's how the Shedd aquarium in Chicago obtained its beluga whales, they bought the annual whale of a couple Native villages. It's an exception to the no sell rule. It would be easy to get into an ethical debate about that, but whenever someone says "oh, those poor whales, they should have been left in the ocean" I feel an urge to remind them that if the Shedd hadn't bought and transported them those whales wouldn't be free, they'd have been someone's dinner.

Of course, there are those who argue subsistence hunting and fishing are obsolete in the modern world, but in the arctic, where it's still largely wilderness and the settlements are small and scattered, it's already an economic disaster and third world conditions. Removing the rights of these people to hunt and fish in an area minimally suited to agriculture (and these folks do utilize both wild plants and gardens when they can) will just fuck things up even further.

It's somewhat analogous to hunting on land. I don't know anywhere there aren't strict rules on what can be hunted, when, and where and what weapons you're permitted to use. A lot of hunters are on board with that, understanding the dangers of over hunting and accommodating the rules, but of course you have poachers. You have always had poachers and there will always be some. Not everyone obeys the law. The trick is to make outlaws so rare they don't fuck things up for everyone else. That's a problem with modern fishing since a single factory trawler can pull in soooo much, and pulls in everything indiscriminately, that just one does far more damage than any other form of poaching. The fact that some governments more or less support these boats - not just tolerate them, but support them - and their transgressions just makes it that much worse. We have thousands of years of the notion of someone controlling land and imposing rules on it but the notion of doing that to the high seas is not just new, but incomprehensible to many.

[Broomstick]

Edit: For herring? Better keep an eye out. Guide listing

The guide is pretty bad for Europeans - but do take note that on the guide I linked to in German, these two fisheries (as for some reasons they only list american fisheries) are listed as "avoid".

Well, a lot of guides seem based on the Monterrey Bay Aquarium one, and the MBA is a US west coast institution. They're going to pay more attention to North American concerns. I remember when their guide first came out it was criticized for being west-coast biased and neglecting freshwater fish entirely (I used to rely on Great Lakes region Departments of Natural Resources until MBA caught up). The sushi guide is very recent. If demand keeps growing I wouldn't be surprised if they keep expanding their database.

On the other hand, I'd like to see the Europeans develop their own ratings (if they haven't already - I confess to some provincialism in my knowledge). We shouldn't rely entirely on one institution for such important matters. Also, no one has more interest in rating European fisheries than the Europeans, right? I'd like to see the science on these issues double-checked.