154 “lobster glut ”: The recovery of lobsters in Maine is detailed in Melissa Clark, “Luxury on Sale: The Lobster Glut,” New York Times, Dec. 10, 2008, p. D3. Nevertheless some marine biologists have argued that the boom in lobsters (and snow crabs) owes itself not to good management of lobsters but rather to a dearth of predators like codfish that once preyed on juvenile lobsters. Ames disputes this point, arguing that accounts from colonial New England record massive amounts of cod and lobster being present in coastal fisheries.
157 fly the Nor wegian flag nearly as often as they do the Union Jack: Observations on the Shetland Islands economy and social structure are based on interviews I conducted in and around Lerwick in the early spring of 2007.
158 laws that required cod be granted the “five freedoms”: The five freedoms are detailed at http://www.fawc.org.uk/freedoms.htm.
159 This wild cod bacchanalia is an annual ritual: The information about the interplay between wild skrei cod and farmed cod comes from interviews I conducted in the spring of 2006 with officials from the Norwegian Seafood Export Council, Tromso, Norway. 166 Things at No Catch started going downhill in 2008: The implosion of No Catch’s farmed-cod attempt is detailed in Severin Carrell, “World’s First Organic Cod Farm Sinks into Administration with £40m Debt,” Guardian, Mar. 6, 2009.
169 But Unilever managed to pull off: An account of the relationship of Unilever, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Marine Stewardship Council appears in: Bob Burton, Inside Spin: The Dark Underbelly of the PR Industry (Sydney: Allen & Unwin Academic, 2008).
176 The fish that were in Mr. Khon’s pond: Most information about the Vietnamese Pangasius industry comes from a May 2008 research trip up the Mekong River. Particularly useful were the accounts of Flavio Corsin, an aquaculture scientist affiliated with the World Wildlife Fund’s Aquaculture Dialogues, who has been a resident in Vietnam throughout the explosion in Pangasius culture. Statistics on growth of Pangasius production can be found at http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/globalmarkets/aquaculture/dialogues-pangasius.html.
180 name for itself in the abundance arena: Information on tilapia reproduction and growth is derived from e-mail interviews with Ron Phelps, assistant professor, Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures, University of Alabama at Auburn.
181 opportunity to turn the fish into a moneymaker: Information about tilapia culture derives primarily from a session of the World Wildlife Fund’s Tilapia Aquaculture Dialogues I attended in December 2008.
181 off-flavor is one of the key reasons: Information on off-flavor came to me primarily through interviews with members of the catfish industry in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama in the summer of 2008, with a detailed contribution coming from Craig Tucker, director, National Warmwater Aquaculture Center, Mississippi State University.
185 the considerably less regulated coast of Russia: Alaska pollock’s drift into Russian waters was reported in Kenneth R. Weiss, “U.S. Fishing Fleet Pursues Pollock in Troubled Waters,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 19, 2008.
TUNA
192 Tuna in the western Atlantic follow the river of higher-temperature water: Background on tuna morphology, migratory patterns, and hunting behavior comes primarily from Carl Safina, Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World ’s Coasts and Beneath the Seas (New York: Henry Holt, 1998), and Richard Ellis, Tuna: A Love Story, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008).
194 an article called “The Holy Tuna Tablets” maintains: “The Holy Tuna Tablets” can be accessed at http://www.screamingreel.com/HolyTunaTablets.
199 Their range encompasses nearly the entirety of the ocean: Transoceanic migratory patterns of bluefin are still very much under research. In the Pacific, bluefin spawn on the western side of the ocean with a portion of juveniles migrating to the east. In the Atlantic, bluefin spawn in both the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean. Though the eastern Atlantic and western Atlantic bluefin are considered two different stocks, there is documented mixing of the population on both sides of the Atlantic and it is speculated that the mixing of the western and eastern stocks is an important factor in maintaining the overall health of the Atlantic bluefin population. For Pacific migratory patterns see Jeffrey J. Polovina, “Decadal variation in the trans-Pacific migration of northern bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) coherent with climate-induced change in prey abundance,” Fisheries Oceanography, vol. 5, no. 2 (Oct. 5, 2007). For Atlantic migratory patterns see Barbara A. Block et al., “Electronic Tagging and Population Structure of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna,” Nature, vol. 434128 (April 2005).
201 Catches from the high seas have doubled: Data on high-seas catch trends were obtained from Wilf Swartz, a researcher at the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre.
201 tuna sushi is a relatively new invention: Trevor Corson, the author of the highly entertaining and informative The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), provided information on the history of tuna and sushi in Japan, as well as some of the biochemical explanations as to why sushi is appealing to those who usually eschew cooked fish. In answering my questions about Japanese sushi habits, Corson drew on several sources from the Japanese translated by Corson and Sakiko Kajino. They are: Nihonjin wa sushi no koto o nani mo shiranai [The Japanese Know Nothing About Sushi], ed. Mitsuru Nakamura (Tokyo: Gakken, 2003); Morihiko Sakaguchi, Michiyo Murata, Satoshi Mochitzuki, and Yoshihiro Yokoyama, Sakana hakase ga oshieru sakana no oishisa no [Fish Experts Teach the Secrets of the Deliciousness of Fish] (Tokyo: Hamano Shuppan, 1999); Shinzo Satomi, Sukiyabashi Jirō shun o nigiru [Jirō of Sukiyabashi Makes Sushi with the Seasons] (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 1997); and Masuo Yoshino, Sushi, Sushi, Sushi: Sushi no Jiten [Sushi, Sushi, Sushi: The Encyclopedia of Sushi] (Tokyo: Asahiya Shuppan, 1990).
202 sportfishing of giant, thousand-pound Atlantic bluefin tuna: A full account of the bluefin fishery in Canada and the Japanese businessmen who brought Canadian bluefin to Japan can be found in Sasha Issenberg, The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the making of a Modern Delicacy (New York: Gotham, 2007).
205 “. . . I’d catch all of them if I could”: Steven Weiner, a bluefin harpooner, is quoted in John Seabrook, “Death of a Giant,” Harper’s, June 1994.
212 “. . . orderly development of the whaling industry”: My summaries of the history of whale taxonomy and portions of the history of the whale-conservation movement were drawn primarily from interviews with D. Graham Burnett and his book Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
212 “. . . directly related to problems that I, as a biologist ”: Quotes from Roger S. Payne came from: Amy Standen, “Roger S. Payne,” Salon, Oct. 30, 2001, http://www.salon.com/people/bc/2001/10/30/roger_payne.
216 research subjects end up in restaurants as whale carpaccio: Background on the Norwegian whaling trade was obtained through interviews with Phillip Clapham, research fisheries biologist and vice president, Center for Cetacean Research & Conservation.
217 total number of giant bluefin spawners: My reference for the current status of the western Atlantic bluefin tuna stock is Carl Safina and Dane H. Klinger, “Collapse of Bluefin Tuna in the Western Atlantic,” Conservation Biology, vol. 22, no. 2 (April 2008), pp. 243-46. Fishermen, of course, dispute Safina’s and others’ grim bluefin assessments, but Safina is quick to point out that fishermen in the United States were only able to catch 10 percent of their allowable quota in 2006. Either bluefin were too smart to get caught (highly unlikely), or there simply weren’t enough of them to justify the allowable catch.
217 “. . . further reduction in spawning stock biomass”: ICCAT’s assessment of bluefin tuna stocks can be found in “Stock Status Report 2008: Northern Bluefin Tuna—East Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea,” http://firms.fao.org/firms/resource/10014/en.
220 for the first time both the United States and the European Union backed a CITES
listing for bluefin: In addition to bluefin, conservationists also pushed for four species of threatened shark to be included in CITES Appendix II. Sharks are increasingly victim to “finning,” in which they are caught, stripped of their fins (for shark-fin soup), and dumped overboard. In the end three of the four sharks failed even to make it past the committee phase of the CITES process. One shark, the probeagle, was approved in committee by a single vote margin but then rejected by the end of the final plenary session. It is not just tuna that have a hard time being wildlife. It seems as if all fish suffer from the same discrimination.
222 a remarkable recovery for swordfish: A full account of the Atlantic swordfish rebuilding process can be found at John Pickrell, “North Atlantic Swordfish on Track to Strong Recovery,” National Geographic News, Nov. 1, 2002, http://news.national-geographic.com/news/2002/11/1101_021101_Swordfish.html.
224 Minimata disease: An account of the Minamata mercury poisoning can be found in: Masazumi Harada, “Environmental Contamination and Human Rights—Case of Minamata Disease,” Organization & Environment, vol. 8, no. 2 (1994), pp. 141-54.
225 mercury concentrations amplify in fish at higher levels on the food chain: As with PCBs, readers seeking a more detailed explanation of mercury contamination and contamination-level standards would once again benefit by referring to Marion Nestle’s excellent summary in What to Eat (San Francisco: North Point Press, 2007).
225 “Consumers should not be misled that a system of management ”: A detailed critique of seafood-choice campaigns and their effects on policy is: Jennifer L. Jacquet and Daniel Pauly, “The Rise of Seafood Awareness Campaigns in an Era of Collapsing Fisheries,” Marine Policy, vol. 31 (2007), pp. 308-13.
227 the first large-scale captive spawning of tuna: An exhaustive and fascinating description of the domestication of bluefin tuna can be found in Richard Ellis’s Tuna: A Love Story.
234 have decided to call the fish “Kona Kampachi”: Kahala / Kona Kampachi are one of several species of the family Seriolla under cultivation at the present time. Japan has a long tradition of growing yellowtail (hamachi in sushi parlance), but the industry is still based upon capture of animals from the wild. Australians are also growing yellowtail in large numbers. What stood out for me with Sims’s operation is his commitment to proper siting of his farms, his quest to find feeds that are low in fish oil and fish meal, and the use of a species that is in high abundance in the wild because there is no commercial value for its wild form.
234 “Kona Kampachi, that’s an artificial name”: The sushi chef quoted is the brilliant Naomichi Yasuda, the creator of Sushi Yasuda in Manhattan.
240 But the final gear in the system, the tuna, the part that interested me most, was missing: Those who follow the bluefin fishery closely will no doubt note that while bluefin fishing in 2009 was terrible, in the spring of 2010, shortly before this book went to press, an outstanding run of bluefin tuna occurred off North Carolina, the likes which had not been seen in many years. However, according to researchers with the Tag a Giant Foundation who have tagged and studied these fish for more than a decade, this burst of fish belongs to an unusually good year class of fish that is a spike in an otherwise downward population trend. In graphs of fisheries declines for many species, these sorts of spikes are common, occurring on a sometimes decade-long interval and attributable to a good year of spawing conditions or juvenile survival. But in a classic fisheries decline the population peaks get lower and lower, as do the valleys, and many a fisheries regulator has been duped by these false peaks. Nearly all the fish off Cape Hatteras in the spring of 2010 were “small” fish of two hundred pounds or less, just under the commercial-size limit. If this good year class is protected, they could indeed form the basis of a larger, species-wide recovery. But in just a few months these fish will be big enough for commerical boats to target, and should they be wiped out, successive peaks and valleys will go lower still.
241 “in the early days of the founding of the United States”: These words were spoken by Joseph Powers, former head of the scientific committee of ICCAT, and refer to the “three-fifths compromise” struck between Northern and Southern states whereby slaves would be counted at three-fifths of their numbers for representation purposes.
CONCLUSION
244 the Monterey Bay Aquarium . . . took the brave act of commissioning a survey of the program’s effects: The survey referred to is Quadra Planning Consultants Ltd. (2004) Seafood Watch Evaluation: Summary Report, Galiano Institute for the Environment, Salt Spring Island.
245 “gifts of the sea”: The Russian term for seafood is дары моря (dary morya), “gifts of the sea,” although the more technical Soviet term морепродукты (moryeprodukty), “sea products,” may also be used.
246 ocean acidification is a real and growing threat: According to a January 16, 2009, article in Science, fish have the ability to produce calcium carbonate, a substance that makes seawater pH more basic. As much as 15 percent of the ocean’s calcium carbonate may originate from fish wastes. See R. W. Wilson, “Contribution of Fish to the Marine Inorganic Carbon Cycle,” Science, Jan. 16, 2009.
246 The world fishing fleet is estimated by the United Nations: Statistics on fisheries subsidies can be found in Rolf Willmann and Kieran Kelleher, eds., The Sunken Billions: The Economic Justification for Fisheries Reform (Washington and Rome: World Bank and UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 2008).
247 no-catch areas: The concept of Marine Protected Areas is nearly universally loved by conservationists and reviled by fishermen. The “spillover” effect of no-catch areas is hotly debated, and many fishermen contend that there is not enough science to justify the closure of fishing grounds. I lay out my argument for marine protected areas in more detailed form in Paul Greenberg, “Ocean Blues,” New York Times Magazine, May 13, 2007. More recent data is just coming in. In February of 2010 a panel of scientists tracking the Great Barrier Reef’s no-catch areas over the last five years concluded that fish populations were usually double the level of those in nonfished areas of the reef.
253 fish should not be farmed too densely: In a fall 2009 interview, Dr. Paddy Gargan, senior research scientist with the Central Fisheries Board of Ireland, stressed repeatedly the negative impacts of sea lice on wild salmon populations. At the same time, Gargan noted that salmon farms sited in open sea areas away from the migration lanes could potentially have much less damaging effects on wild populations.
INDEX
Akvaforsk
Alaska. See Yukon River; Yupik nation
Alaska Department of Fish and Game
preservation of salmon genome
river stocking
subsistence and escapement goals
Alaska pollock
annual harvest
fishery management
population decline
range shifts
salmon bycatch
sustainability certification
trawler damage to seafloor
Alaska salmon. See salmon, wild
American striped bass. See striped bass
Ames, Ted
animal husbandry. See domestication of animals
AquaBounty
aquaculture. See also specific types of fish
ecological potential
food security
Green Revolution techniques and goals
net loss of marine protein
off-flavor
organic standards
polyculture systems
principles for
public perception of
recirculating system
selection of fish for
Aquaculture Dialogues
AquAdvantage Salmon
artemia
Association des Ligneurs de la Pointe de Bretagne
Atlantic bluefin tuna. See bluefin tuna
Atlantic salmon
At-Sea Processors Association
Bakewell, Robert
barramundi
&n
bsp; Barrows, Rick
bass. See European sea bass; sea bass; striped bass
Bianfishco
bluefin tuna
captive spawning
catch limits
commercial hook-and-line fishing
consumer demand for
endangered species status
feed-conversion ratio
flavor
market value
mercury contamination
population decline
quota negotiations
ranching of juveniles
replacement for, in consumer market
sportfishing of
unmanageability
branzino. See European sea bass
Brisson, Jacques
British Department of Health
Burnett, D. Graham
bycatch
California white sea bass
Canada
bluefin tuna sportfishing
cod fishery
salmon farming
wild salmon fishery
Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fisherman’s Association
Carpenter, David
carp farming
Carson, Rachel
Chile
Chilean sea bass
Chopin, Thierry
chum salmon
CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species)
Clean Seas
climate change
cod
abundance
domination of seafood market
Four Fish Page 27