Sharing The Fish
This guest column in the New York Times ranks as the best article I’ve read in that publication in 10 years of near daily perusal. A quote:
It is the last evening of the marine ecology course my wife and I teach each year at a field station in Bahía de Los Ángeles, a small fishing village on the Gulf of California. We’ve invited four local fishermen to join us for dinner, and they sit now in plastic chairs on our patio — the guests of honor, with a dozen college kids gathered before them like disciples.
The eldest of the fishermen, Memo, rubs his grizzled chin in somber recollection, for one of our students has just asked a pointed and painful question: Which species have disappeared in his lifetime?
Solemnly, as though he’s reciting the names of his own deceased ancestors, Memo begins: the sea cucumbers, the fan clam, the lion’s paw scallop . . . . He’s working his way back in time, I think, moving from the most recently vanished toward the creatures that disappeared when he was a child.
The ocean, managed properly could have been a resource for all. It still can to some extent, but not without proper management. That management can start with you, if you make the choice to eat less seafood:
- Go to the sushi bar one less time a month, (that shouldn’t be hard to do in this economy.)
- Be careful about the fish you order.
- Don’t eat shrimp unless they are farm raised
- Eat only vegetables and grains two nights a week or more.
- Try to make those vegetables organic, they create less pesticide run-off into the streams, into the ocean.
It’s not difficult, it saves you money, and it could save many species for Memo for you and for me.
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February 5th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Or, just quit the whole sorry mess and go Vegan. Do the research, and make the change.
February 5th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
… or, for my American friends, serve smaller portions!!! I know it’s a cliche but I was in New York in May and had some fantastic yellowtail in some great sushi spots…
… but after a day or so of dining out, my wife and I just ordered 1 starter and main and shared. The huge plates of food were incredible. Nobody needs that much food at one sitting? We were well and truly supersized at most eateries…
February 5th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Can’t say I’m reading anything wrong here… Keep it going, ’cause I like it… that’s some serious eco friendly surf mentality…
February 7th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Some farm raised shrimp are not the best either because a lot of aquaculture outfits use the natural environment as pens for the shrimp, simply clearing a swath of mangroves and putting up nets. Mangroves are where the larval forms of the shrimp are found, so that habitat is lost. Habitat can not be regained for recruitment because the nature of monocultures is such that unnaturally dense populations exist in these pens in order to make a profit (aquaculture is relatively expensive, and many individuals die), leaving the substrate severely polluted with antibiotic tainted excrement (antibiotics are also used to treat shrimp/fish in large monocultures because of the constant threat of disease in dense populations). Knowing where they are farmed is just as important as knowing where they are caught; Latin America and South East Asia employ these methods.
February 17th, 2009 at 1:47 am
While commercial fishing only reduces a species population to point where it is not economically viable to fish any more. the species still persists, just a lower density than prior to exploitation. The important factor in reducing such species abundance is the effect that it has on the ecosystem as a whole.
Through rigorous scientific observations, the effects of fishing (commercial, aquaculture, recreational and aquarium collectively) have been documented to be felt throughout whole ecosystems. It is commonly accepted that the removal of keystone species (import spp. that maintain ecosystem balance) from a system that is in a steady state of diversity and biomass, results in a phase shift that changes the systems balance. Commonly resulting a loss of biodiversity and increase in introduced species due to a decrease in the systems resilience to withstand change. This change is very difficult to restore to its pre-exploited state, no systems have been documented to have been restored to a healthy state due to the scale at which the changes occur over. These cases have all been a result of human influence on systems.
With an increase in the influence of climatic change to due the Greenhouse effect, it is likely that both climate driven change and fishing pressure will compound to change systems. So any personal contribution to reducing our (human) impact on the ocean is great. The more the better and as iam sure we are all aware we can individually make a big difference….
February 20th, 2009 at 1:53 am
I have to agree that it’s important to preserve the country and sea, but what a lot of people forget about organic food is that huge nature areas in third world countries are destroyed to create farms serving the needs of western countries destroying unique living spaces of plenty of creatures. The best way to shop is to go local and support places that create food next to you.