Surf or Turf? Part One

I have always had an intimate connection to the water, from my love of swimming in clean, fresh-water rivers and lakes to my long-term fascination with the intertidal zones of the rocky West coast.  I even wanted to be a marine biologist for a time, intent on understanding the lives of sea cucumbers, gumboot chitons, and anything else strange and squishy found in tidepools (sadly, a high-school teacher talked me out of this career, saying that there were "no jobs" in this field).  I have a tattoo on my back of a salmon, reminding me of my childhood in the Pacific Northwest, standing mouth-wide-open watching the giant adult salmon trying valiantly to propel their bodies over the locks on the Columbia River's numerous dams. I always remember these salmon looking like small dolphins to me because they were longer than I was tall- now you are lucky to see a 24 incher through the fish viewing windows at the dam.

I have friends who fish and sell seafood for a living.  I believe strongly in preserving the way of life of fisherfolk and the culture of the remaining fishing towns and tribes.  What I don't know is whether or not we humans can eat seafood anymore.  Should we instead be paying for these people and communities to perhaps do something else for a living, perhaps doing restoration, monitoring, and scientific studies?

I have a copy of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch guide that goes with me everywhere.  I attend the "Cooking for Solutions" gala event every year and hear chefs and fishmongers talking about their line-caught this or wild-version of that.  However, is ANY of this sustainable?  Should we pass up the "surf" and instead eat the "turf"?

Photo by Alexandra Morton via Watershed Watch

I was jarred into thinking about this last night as I was watching an excellent PBS show called Jean-Michel Cousteau Ocean Adventures that focused on Orca whales.  A segment of the show focused on the impacts of fish farms, particularly on wild salmon.  These fish farms are breeding grounds for all kinds of diseases, parasites, and pests, including the sea lice.  In the show they took samples of baby salmon at the mouths of rivers where they emptied into the ocean. Up to 60% of the wild salmon fry had sea lice on them, picked up as they passed by the fish farms that like to locate near river mouths. A fry with sea lice is a dead fish, eventually. They just don't have the defenses to sea lice before they have fully scaled out. To top off this potentially devastating problem, fish farms are now lacing their feed with a drug called "Slice" that somehow keeps the sea lice off the farmed fish.  The effects of this drug on other crustaceans in the ocean (lobster, crabs, etc.) is unknown but could create devastating reverberations in the food chain.  Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg for the problems in our seafood supply.  But if only 40% of the salmon fry don't have sea lice and maybe 5% of them make it to adulthood to reproduce, should we even be eating the so-called "sustainable" wild salmon?  What if everybody who nows eats farmed salmon switched to eating wild salmon- how long would it take to remove every last wild salmon from the ocean?

The ocean needs a break, and I for one am going to be part of that respite.  Sorry to my fisherfolk friends, but our family is abstaining from seafood consumption until science can prove otherwise that things are truly o.k.  So next time I am asked "Surf or Turf?" by my waiter, I shall stick to the "turf".  Next post, I will try to pull together some actual data to see if we could all move to a land-based diet. Thoughts?

Comments

[Carmelite]

The sad thing is that seafood could be sustainable, if it was properly managed. It's just that so little of it is, and that puts a heavy strain on the whole ecosystem, so that even the well managed fisheries are strained.

I still eat seafood, b/c it is just so damn good for the body, but I try not to eat too much of it. One oyster actually has as much zinc as you body needs for a month. If we all chose our seafood carefully for high nutrient content and minimal impact, I think we could eat less of it and still get some of the health without damaging the oceans.

I hope so, anyway.

[Frank Kim]

Great post. But can we not continue eating seafood by staying away from farmed fish and concentrating on the small fish like sardines and mackeral? I can definitely understand your concern though.

[Walter Jeffries]

We raise and sell pastured pigs (no commercial feeds, really pasture, not grain fed) in Vermont (in addition to sheep, chickens, ducks & geese for our own family). It is sustainable. Ocean fare is sustainable too. The question is not if but at what level and for what use we put the harvest to. Eat fish, eat meat, eat veggies, eat grains, eat fruit - all in moderation. A gentle omnivore diet is the most sustainable, especially in our northern climate. Eating a little fish a year isn't a threat to the ocean stocks.

[Throwback at Trapper Creek]

Like you. I grew up in the PNW right near the dams, wild salmon, and fishermen. While salmon was commonly on our plates as a child, no longer can we feel right about eating any type of seafood.

The environment has degraded in such a short time, it is shocking. The mountain streams I fished as child now have next to no wild fish. I know by fishing as a child, I helped hasten the demise of the fish, but many other polluting factors come into play also.

When we try to explain to people that our beef cows are the most sustainable meat, we are usually met with skepticism. The same old tired facts about feedlot beef have nothing to do with the way we raise our cows. They harvest their own feed for many months of the year, and because they are grazing green grass, they do not drink near the water of their feedlot friends who are fed only dry feed. They also are fertilizing the land as they go. A win-win situation. Our pastured poultry operation was not as transparent, with feed brought in from who-knows-where. We feel better stopping that part of our business, while the fertilzer benefits of the chickens was quickly realized, always in the back of our minds was the fact that industrial farming was going on somewhere to provide these grains that were not available locally. Not providing chicken to our customers was disappointing to them, and a relief to us.

I second the recommendation of Greg Judy's Comeback Farms. It makes perfect sense, that while I have been moving my cows every 24 hours, I was grazing the grass too soon, with a 45 day rest a longer rest is much better. It will take a while to get to 150 day rest, but any increase in the rest period will make a great difference.

Here is a link to Holistic Management, some great information on their site.
http://www.holisticmanagement.org/

Great post Rebecca, I am looking forward to the rest of the series.

[Bob T]

Well I can still eat farmed oysters according to: http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_factsheet.aspx?fid=82 . But that's about it.

I grew up eating brislings canned in sild oil from Norway--no longer available. Much missed.

The more I learn about global fish farming and ocean abuse the more outraged ... . The oceans' role in the Carbon cycle is overlooked. (Coral reefs are made of carbonates which are made from Carbon dioxide that was recently in the atmosphere. Of course the living biota in the oceans are also a sink of Carbon.)

[Anna]

I've had similar thoughts, particularly after reading the book Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, by Mark Kurlansky. I can wrap my head around the ramifications of consuming pasture based land animals, but the decision-making about seafood just makes my head hurt.

[bhdc]

Greg Judy has some excellent ideas for raising cows on grass with almost no inputs via high-density grazing in his book, 'Comeback Farms: Rejuvenating soils, pastures & profits with livestock grazing management.' Great way to provide good food and save the planet at the same time. A highly recommended book.