Sustainability

   One only has to look at your local market to feel that there are still a lot of fish in the sea; daily offerings at your restaurant or sushi outlet seem to always have "fresh" tuna, causing my friend to ask, "how can tuna be endangered if Costco always has it?"  And indeed, it would seem to be the case.  Wondering around coastal markets in Mexico and other areas there would appear to be an abundance of fish every single day...or is there?  I've been watching the 2012 New Zealand series, Sachie's Kitchen on Netflix, the opening episode showing the tuna auction held at the old Tsujiki Fish Market (the market has since moved to the man-made island of Toyosu) and it's rather visible to view the dwindling offerings of the highly-prized bluefin tuna now being offered as compared to what was there just seven years ago when the series was filmed.  Couple this with the announcement from Science Advances that most high-seas fishing wouldn't be profitable without government subsidies with one comment being: It is remarkable that in these cases, the subsidies far exceed fishing profits, with the extreme being Japan, where subsidies represent more than four times our estimate of their high-seas profits (a more readable piece on this appeared last year in National Geographic).  Fish in the ocean, it would seem, are growing a bit more difficult to find.

Seine net example, EuroCBC

    Part of the reason of declining fish stocks might be partially due to the number of  large factory ships (numbering about 3600 boats as of 2016).  To compensate for areas fished-out or not providing enough catch, such boats have to go further and further out (China fishing off the coast of Africa is one example) but can remain out for months or even years as they are refueled by other boats, much as military vessels are.  In some cases indentured or slave labor is used to keep costs low as boats must go beyond a country's EEZ (or Exclusive Economic Zone), an area 200 miles from the country's coast.  But today's factory boats are indeed factories which catch, process, freeze and store hundreds of tons of fish (as one can witness by the many packages of frozen fish which now read "flash-frozen at sea").  And while the boats vary in their type and function (and what specific ocean life they're seeking to catch), the factory boats are indeed big as evidenced by some of the nets on the larger purse seine boats which can hold the equivalent of a dozen 747 jets.  The ships employ help from drones and satellites to track schools of fish, and prove fairly efficient and for the most part, are compliant with maritime laws regarding what fish they can and cannot catch (but not always, as evidenced by the recent forced docking in Peru of the Damanzaihao).  Said a report in Physorg: Researchers from the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of Western Australia and the University of British Columbia mapped the growth and spread of industrial fisheries since 1950 and found that global trends were dominated by the heavily subsidized fleets of a small number of countries, increasing the total area fished from 60 per cent to 90 per cent of the world's oceans...the catch rates of these fleets—as well as those of the other top 20 fishing countries—have declined dramatically from over 25 tonnes per 1000 kilometres travelled in the early 1950s to approximately 7 tonnes per 1000 kilometres travelled by 2014.  Overall, these 20 countries are responsible for 60 million tonnes or 80 per cent of the global industrial fishing catch.  How this affects the average smaller commercial fisheries was better shown in the graph below from the Daily Mail in the U.K. regarding just their catches of cod (when my wife and I were there last year, we discovered that finding cod in such shops was indeed a bit more difficult than even a few years ago).

   So there's that end...the pirated and illegal catches, the high percentage of by-catch being thrown back overboard, the destruction of coral beds and ocean beds from bottom trawlers, thedead turtles and sharks and birds caught in nets, the oceans rapidly approaching the limit to the amount of CO2 that they can absorb, the "dead zones" happening because of agriculture nitrogen runoff; basically all the issues which are continually in the news.  But a quick glance shows another side of what turns out to be a complex issue.  For one thing, one has to separate the massive factory boats from the average commercial fishing operation, as well as the sport fishing group which goes out Hemingway-like to line-catch individual fish.  Lumped together, none of the smaller operators want to see the ocean fished out or fished illegally and in general are not fans of the large factory boats which can quickly sweep through an area and decimate stock, often being less interested in separating the juvenile and spawning fish from the adult fish they catch.  And for most of the smaller operations by-catch is wasteful, damages their nets, and costs them more in labor to sort out from the fish they sell, so if simple things such as LED lights or small pieces of plastic banners can do the job of reducing bycatch with minimal cost then they tend to quickly utilize them in their efforts.  And on top of all of this one has to keep in mind that working on a small or large fishing boat is difficult and risky work, one that often comes with rough seas and cold waters and with pay that is generally below the starting pay of a security screener at the airport.

   But on the consumer side, one is left puzzled by the conflicting reports of cod being depleted when other reports show that cod is sustainable?  Here's just one example from the excellent, if somewhat confusing, seafood watch guide from the Monterrey Bay Aquarium.  Atlantic cod is fished out (avoid) and the cod stocks of Russia and Japan are greatly diminished (avoid) but Pacific cod from Alaska is plentiful.  Spiny lobsters from Belize, Brazil, Honduras & Nicaragua are few and far between (avoid) but other lobsters are okay.  And best to check out where that Mahi Mahi came from, even that salmon and shrimp if imported.  And tuna, well, are you talking about albacore, bluefin, yellowfin or skipjack and if so, how were they caught (troll, pole line, long line, seine net)?  Atlantic and Pacific species? How is one to tell the difference?  And what of country of origin (the U.S. Congress has fought for years to prevent consumers from knowing what country their fish, meat and produce comes from).  Even for me, when I viewed the box of battered tilapia at Costco which read "processed in the U.S." there was no listing of country of origin (it took me quite a number of calls to finally have one of the company's representatives tell me that the fish came "from Asia" with no further explanation).  A quick peek at the Seafood Watch guide linked here might cause you to wonder if any fish should be eaten?  Should we expect our butcher or grocery buyer to know the origins of our seafood or to even ask?  One would hope so, except that now comes a report from Canada that many of the fish appearing in our markets is simply mislabeled or mis-identified anyway.

   As with so much of today's world, it boils down to each of us to make our own decisions.  Do we simply trust the store and their labels?  Or do we just want a piece of fish and will take our chances that it was, and is, part of a sustainable catch and isn't filled with chemicals or antibiotics from a poorly-run farming operation?  Or do we even care?...just order that orange roughy (one of the most misidentified fish) and just enjoy its flavor while at the restaurant.   One would hope that we as a group can make the correct choices and induce changes in our quest for ethical decisions and answers.  But news from the recent issue of Barron's was leaning the other way with tobacco, gambling, and alcohol stocks appearing to defy the overall stock market with their gains (it also mentioned that the pornography site PornHub --a privately held company based out of Luxembourg-- receives more views than Ebay).  Pleasure at any cost?  Wealth at any cost?  Satisfaction at any cost?

   Perhaps such questions were similar to what faced Aristotle.  In the new book by author Edith Hall, Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life, the New York Times review of her book ended this way:  In the end, according to Hall, Stoicism “is a rather pessimistic and grim affair...It recommends the resigned acceptance of misfortune rather than active, practical engagement with the fascinating fine-grained business of everyday living and problem solving.”  In short, an Aristotelian life is not solely about bearing the inevitable, but about identifying the particular talents or natural proclivities that each of us has, and then pursuing a path, consistently and deliberately, over the course of a life.  This will make one deeply happy.  For some of us, eating a nice piece of fish makes us happy; but knowing where or how that fish came to be there might be an entirely different question, one which we may or may not want to ask ourselves.



*While the show only ran for one season, Sachie Nomura has grown her business and continues to offer cooking classes and advice on cooking and making Asian food (those of you always puzzled by sushi, her show demonstrates an easy traditional way...and you'll also learn how rice is both planted and harvested in the process).