Ran across an interesting story this morning regarding ocean fishery stocks – Aquacalypse Now. It’s worth a bit of your time today to ponder. Here’s how they opened the piece –
Our oceans have been the victims of a giant Ponzi scheme, waged with Bernie Madoff–like callousness by the world’s fisheries. Beginning in the 1950s, as their operations became increasingly industrialized–with onboard refrigeration, acoustic fish-finders, and, later, GPS–they first depleted stocks of cod, hake, flounder, sole, and halibut in the Northern Hemisphere. As those stocks disappeared, the fleets moved southward, to the coasts of developing nations and, ultimately, all the way to the shores of Antarctica, searching for icefishes and rockcods, and, more recently, for small, shrimplike krill. As the bounty of coastal waters dropped, fisheries moved further offshore, to deeper waters. And, finally, as the larger fish began to disappear, boats began to catch fish that were smaller and uglier–fish never before considered fit for human consumption. Many were renamed so that they could be marketed: The suspicious slimehead became the delicious orange roughy, while the worrisome Patagonian toothfish became the wholesome Chilean seabass. Others, like the homely hoki, were cut up so they could be sold sight-unseen as fish sticks and filets in fast-food restaurants and the frozen-food aisle.
The author, Daniel Pauly, carries the Madoff analogy a bit far for my tastes, but the there is no doubt some hard reality here that deserves attention. Pauly, born in France and raised in Switzerland, is a marine biologist (PhD) and project leader of the Sea Around Us Project at the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia; he’s probably best known for his work studying human impacts on global fisheries.
I don’t know about you, but the article does immediately bring to mind the disappearance of some of the salmon runs of late……
As a matter of full and honest disclosure, I must admit right off the bat that I’m not a consistent reader of The New Republic and often find their reporting to be biased, more emotional than factual and leaning toward rants as much as reporting. That said, there’s some important content here that fish lovers need to ponder…..
Art: From the magazine piece at The New Republic
Tags: Fish Stories
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“Hello, my name is Alex and I will be your server this evening. Tonight we have a few fish specials: We have a delicious slimehead, which is blackened and served with a salsa-butter, as well as a light and flaky toothfish with a macadamia crust topped with a lemon butter.” mmmm
I’ll have a slimehead, a side of fried oysters and two beers please.