Four Fish (36 page)

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.

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

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

fishery collapse

genome alteration

Georges Bank fishery

Grand Banks fishery

Gulf of Maine stock

historical Maine fisheries

human rate of consumption

as industrial fish

industrial replacement for

local stewardship model

market value

prey loss

range

recoverability

recovery of populations

spawning migration

sportfishing of

stock rebuilding goals

taste of wild versus farmed

texture

trawl fishing

unsuitability for farming

Cod
(Kurlansky)

Compleat Angler, The
(Walton)

Connecticut River

Conservation Wildlife Fund

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)

Cooke Aquaculture

Corson, Trevor

Divanach, Pascal

dolphins

domestication of animals.
See also
aquaculture;
specific types of fish

animals chosen for

feed-conversion ratio

Green Revolution

industrialization of food system

monoculture systems

principles of

selective breeding

Donaldson-strain king salmon

dynamite fishing

ecosystem management

Emmonak, Alaska

European sea bass

breeding and rearing technologies

deformity

disease and pollution from farming of

farm escapees

farming in Greece

farming in Israel

feed

feed-conversion ratio

goals in farming of

green-water effect

market value and profitability