fishing

Want a new way to teach your kids and students about farmed fish? Food & Water Watch  has just come out with a new animation, “Fishy Business,” available online
as a fun and easy-to-use resource for parents and educators to teach their children about the potential dangers of fish farming.

 The animation describes in detail the process of fish farming. Specifically, it shows the effects of pollution, overfishing, and the cramped and unhealthy conditions in fish farms, as well as how fish feed is altered with antibiotics and growth hormones. Parasites and disease that are present as a result of the farming can also be spread to wild fish. The animation describes a variety of other problems also caused by this practice, in a way that is comprehensive, without being overwhelming – making it an ideal educational tool.

Recently the National Organic Standards Board – a panel of the U.S. Department of Agriculture – passed a rule allowing farmed fish to be labeled as “organic” – despite the fish farming process being incompatible with organic standards. This goes to show that it is all the more pressing for parents and children alike to understand that some fish being sold in grocery stores, which may bear the seemingly safe label of “organic,” may actually be unsafe and unsustainable. 

Check out our website to learn more about the dangers of fish farming, or to sign a petition asking Congress to protect our health, oceans, and coastal economies.  You can also check out our seafood buying guide that recommends safe and healthy seafood choices.

– Sofía Baliño

The holiday season is approaching, which means that it’s time to look for new ways to spice up old traditions. And just in time for the holidays, Food & Water Watch is releasing its very own sustainable seafood recipe cookbook entitled “Fish & Tips.” The recipes featured are provided by fishermen, chefs, and some of our best submissions from our recent “Get Cookin’ Recipe Contest,” and are all meant to be cooked using sustainable seafood recommended from our Smart Seafood Guide.

While it may be hard to imagine the holidays with seafood, consider this: at the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims and the Native Americans actually ate seafood along with their turkey. Whole Foods is putting that concept into practice by having their very own “Shrimpsgiving” – a period of special prices on their seafood, specifically shrimp, so that consumers can have a variety of options for the holiday season. Keep in mind, however, that not all of the offerings at Whole Foods are fair game in terms of sustainability.

If you do choose to buy your seafood there, be sure to only buy those items listed as “safe” in our Smart Seafood Guide and the foods listed on it. For more information about Whole Foods and our concerns with some of their offerings, click here.

When in doubt – try to buy locally instead, and be sure to ask questions about how the fish were caught, treated, and raised. Be sure to choose wild-caught over farmed, and local over imported; choose those that have been exposed to little or no contaminants, and ideally fresh over frozen. If farmed, choose those that require fewer inputs. For more, click here.

Stay tuned for more information on the cookbook’s release and how to obtain your very own copy for the holiday season!(Coming soon.)

Imagine a farm in the ocean that produces fish containing PCBs and other toxins, and dumps chemical-laden waste directly into surrounding waters. Does that sound organic to you? According to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) – a commission of the U.S. Department of Agriculture – fish from these “factory farms of the sea” should be able to carry the USDA Organic label. In fact, this week the board is meeting in Washington, DC to recommend allowing fish from open water aquaculture operations to be certified as organic.

But organizations within the organic, ocean conservation, consumer and food safety communities oppose this proposed decision because the principles and practices behind open water aquaculture –growing tens of thousands of fish in cages anchored to the seafloor - are simply incompatible with basic organic standards.

What exactly are these organic standards? Ecological balance and conserving biodiversity. So now let’s take a look at aquaculture and see if it meets these guidelines. While some day certain carefully controlled aquaculture practices may fit this description, currently, open water aquaculture does not. The farming of carnivorous finfish – like salmon, cobia, Atlantic cod and halibut - in open net pens using wild fish in feed threatens wild fish populations and the marine environment.

In addition to dumping pollution and producing contaminated fish, these ocean fish farms release genetically inferior fish that might mate with wild fish and use massive amounts of fishmeal made from depleted wild fish stocks. In this system, inputs, outputs, health and animal welfare cannot be monitored and controlled, completely contradicting organic principles such as promoting biodiversity and minimizing environmental impact.

Food & Water Watch is making sure these problems are taken seriously. Today we hosted an event where Consumers Union, Center for Food Safety and Alaska Trollers Association spoke out against NOSB’s plan. You can even listen to the speeches from the groups’ representatives here.  

And just to make sure we drove the point home, we served fresh, wild-caught Alaskan salmon  - which will NOT be considered organic according to NOSB’s plan - and “swam” up the street in a “salmon run” in protest to the board’s meeting to deliver over 15,000 public comments. Just take a look at these great papier-mache salmon heads!

NOSB will be making its decision about organic fish as early as Wednesday, November 19th, so make sure to check back within the next few days about this important decision!

- Erin Greenfield
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Food & Water Watch's fish team is currently in the Gulf of Mexico region, working to bring out a variety of local voices to the Gulf Council's public hearings on aquaculture. Marianne and Sascha, two of our fishy fighters, send dispatches from their work in the north Gulf region.

We hit the ground running on Wednesday, having meetings with various local allies in Mississippi to plan our week. In the evening, we were invited as guest speakers for the local Mississippi Sierra Club chapter. We had a great discussion about ocean fish farming, and in particular concerns with use of wild fish in feed for farmed fish. About 1 billion pounds of Gulf Menhaden are already taken annually from the Gulf of Mexico – and these fish are important in the wild as food for larger wild fish, birds and other marine wildlife. The chapter is very interested in Gulf of Mexico issues, and a group of people from the meeting agreed to attend the Gulf Council public hearing Monday night! They plan to carpool down to Mobile. We also had an interview with a reporter from the Associated Press by phone. That night, we headed up to New Orleans to stay with friends.

Thursday, we spent the day hanging flyers announcing the meeting at New Orleans colleges, including Loyola and Tulane, two schools with well-known environmental programs. We contacted some professors to get the students up on the Gulf fish farming issue. A number of students have already committed to attend the Council’s comment session Monday night, so we have arranged free transportation to and from the meeting for them, and are hoping more will join us. We also spoke to a Times-Picayune reporter who expects to come to the Council meeting in Mobile from New Orleans.

Friday was a very busy day! We headed out early to drive down to the bayou – through Galliano, La Rose, Cut Off and more to meet up with some of our local fishermen friends.  We had an hour at radio station KLRZ with Ken Friedlander, the “Rajun’ Cajun,” on Talk on the Bayou, to let people know about the upcoming Council meeting and the final decision on fish farms for the Gulf. Margaret Curole from Commercial Fishermen of America joined us to talk about how ocean fish farming in the Gulf can hurt Louisiana’s coastal communities. She also detailed the horrible conditions she’s seen in fish farms while traveling internationally. We had a number of callers tell us they are very worried about fish farms in the Gulf and that they are planning to come to the Council meeting to voice their concerns. It’s sounding like the Council meeting is going to be very interesting with the various types of people planning to attend.

Early on Saturday, we met up for breakfast with some of our local allies in Gretna, a historic community on the outskirts of New Orleans. We then went downtown to catch up with our fish team colleagues Christina and Justine, who had been working in the southern Gulf. They came north for VooDoo Fest, a local music event. Our fish mascot is going to VooDoo to tell people about the Gulf Council’s plan to permit offshore aquaculture in the Gulf and collect signatures on a petition. We had a quick collective chat, then split up again – our team headed back to Biloxi, and Justine and Christina to VooDoo Fest. Our plan for Biloxi was to stop at the various docks and bait shops to tell people about the Council meeting. We hung a number of flyers and handed out many packets of information. Some people told us they hadn’t heard anything about the fish farming plan, and were very concerned.

The Gulf coast seems to be slowly rebuilding from the storms in recent years. There were a number of new houses and docks, and there were noticeably more boats in the marinas than last year at this time. One area we stopped still had no parking lot – just some gravel and sand. We learned that in such cases, we should park the car elsewhere and walk to the docks – we got the car stuck in the sand for a while, until some of the fishermen noticed and came to help push us out (it was a great ice-breaker!).  We stopped at the local TV and radio stations, then at the Sun-Herald newspaper office. We had a late dinner at a local seafood restaurant, then drove back to New Orleans. We are going to VooDoo tomorrow!

– Marianne Cufone and Sascha Bollag

Food & Water Watch held the Get Cookin'! sustainable seafood recipe contest to gather the best recipes for the variety of seafood choices we recommend in our Smart Seafood Guide. Over the past several weeks, we received a multitude of recipes from seafood lovers all over the place. We were so excited to see how many people out there care about what they eat and have so many creative ideas for serving it.

We judged the recipes on the basis of several criteria: first, they had to include a type of seafood that we recommend in our Smart Seafood Guide. Other criteria included healthfulness, ease of preparation, originality and of course—most importantly—deliciousness. This last factor might seem subjective, but we had a panel of dedicated judges from the Food & Water Watch staff, including our partner chef, Rocky Barnette, who gathered to cook and taste all the recipes. It took a few rounds of voting before we were able to come to final decisions on all our winners, but we finally did. Throughout the tastings, everyone’s response seemed to be the same: “yum!” According to Chef Rocky, all the recipes were well-written and very professional. All the staff judges had a lot of good things to say about every recipe.

So we’d like to congratulate all of our winners on their wonderful recipes, and thank everyone who entered for their participation and enthusiasm. Stay tuned for the winning recipes, to be featured in a forthcoming recipe booklet out in time for the holidays.

Here are our fabulous seafood chefs:

Elaine Sweet with Crazy Cajun Shrimp Etouffee Cream over Garlic Noodles
Joan Churchill with Curried Clams and Melon Salad
Clayton Jay Davis with “Idaho Meets the Sea”
Roxanne Chan with Lebanese Scallop Salad
Rosemary Johnson with Black Cod with Butter Pecan Sauce
Bev Jones with "Grillted" Pomegranate Shrimp Salad
Candy Barnhart with Puffed Golden Halibut over Zucchini "Pasta"
Francis Garland with Crab Pizzawich with Wine-Soaked Grapes
Ken Hulme with Hogfish Hoagie
Wolfgang Hanau with Alaskan Salmon and Indian Cornbread Pie
Peter Halferty with Squid Risotto

All of these winners will be receiving a copy of the recipe booklet and a snazzy Food & Water Watch chef’s apron (pictured here on several Food & Water Watch staff).

And our grand prize of $250 goes to Jane Ingraham for her San Francisco Fish Stew. Congratulations, Jane!  

To all other sustainable seafood enthusiasts—both chefs and eaters—keep your eyes peeled for recipes to come. You can also click here for more ways to get involved with sustainable seafood--help to protect our oceans from unsustainable fish farming and check out our Smart Seafood Guide for recommended buying and dining choices!

- Erica Schuetz
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In preparation for the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s upcoming public hearing on open ocean aquaculture, Food & Water Watch’s fish team has been traveling around the Gulf Region speaking with fishermen, students and others about the plan.

For the past couple days Christina and I have been driving around Mobile Bay – from Mobile through Bon Secour, Foley Beach and Gulf Shores. We started out the day stopping by a couple bait and tackle shops, where most people were surprised to hear about the plan and couldn’t believe that it was already coming up for vote. It’s shocking to imagine that a plan with so many negative ramifications for commercial fisherman, shrimpers, recreational fisherman, coastal communities and consumers in general hasn’t even been publicized.

Next, we made our way down to Pelican point where we found some people net fishing off the end of the road. One – the “mayor” and “dock master” told us he didn’t understand why anyone would talk about putting resources into building farms in the Gulf – which will add more pollution – when we need to spend our resources cleaning it up.

Traveling down the coast from there we made our way to four fish houses. The first specialized in Royal Red Shrimp  – a deep red, deep-water shrimp considered a local delicacy in Alabama. At the others we saw red snapper and brown shrimp. People there were concerned about having fishing grounds restricted by industrial fish farms and frustrated about being pushed out the decision making process for a plan that could make or break their livelihood. Sadly, fishery decisions being made behind closed doors isn’t anything new to them.  Various fishing regulations – combined with fuel prices and competition from imported products – have already pushed many men and women out of the fishing industry. Open ocean aquaculture could be the last straw for those who remain.

To keep the gulf waters open to fishermen – and to keep wild, clean, green, safe seafood on our plates – we need people to tell the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council not to move forward with the plan. For those of you in the Mobile, Alabama area, your chance is on Monday October 27th at the Renaissance Riverfront Hotel.

- Justine Williams

On October 11th , our fish team ate their way through Taste of Georgetown in Washington, DC, while promoting the new Smart Seafood Guide. We had a great time working with Sea Catch Restaurant & Raw Bar and Executive Chef Chris Sgro who prepared two gourmet dishes using Food & Water Watch’s seafood recommendations from the guide. 

Chef Sgro served jumbo Gulf Shrimp wrapped in pastry & bacon with boursin cheese, along with wild Alaskan salmon tartar – both huge hits with the crowd, making it easy to talk to people waiting in the long lines about clean, green and safe seafood. Just take a look at how these delicious dishes are a feast for the eyes!

Also on-site was our soon-to-be-named fish mascot (link) who was posing for pictures and getting people to sign the “Holy Mackerel! This Plan Stinks!” petition. What exactly “stinks”? The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council is voting on a plan in less than two weeks to allow industrial fish farming in Gulf waters. But their plan doesn't protect fishermen, consumers, coastal communities or the environment from the potential negative impacts of a new big industry. Our fish team is making its way down to the Gulf region to keep this bad plan from going through, and is arranging carpools to take people to the council meeting for a question and answer session for the public with the entire council.

So if you live in the Gulf, make sure to sign up and make sure your voice is heard! And for those of you who live in other parts of the country, you can still make a difference by signing the petition.

- Erin Greenfield
email • bio

For those of you who don’t know, one of our big Octoberfish events this month has been our Get Cookin'! sustainable seafood recipe contest, in which we had contestants send in recipes featuring a recommended fish. Other criteria for the recipes included that they used sustainable/local ingredients and were unique, flavorful, healthy, and easy to prepare.

As part of our “judging” process, we recently held a massive cooking extravaganza at the house of a Food & Water Watch staff member, with the brilliant Chef Joseph “Rocky” Barnette in charge of the operation. We split the cooking/tasting process over two evenings, trying out an array of dishes such as “Idaho Meets the Sea” and the “Hogfish Hoagie” – just to name a few!

While we don’t want to give anything away until the winners are announced, we do have three favorites in the running for the top prize, and overall we were immensely pleased with all of our submissions. They were well-written, easy to make, and showed inventiveness and creativity – all things that make a good recipe, according to Chef Rocky. We were able to buy most of our ingredients at a local market that had all the selections we wanted at very affordable prices, and they tasted incredible. We also put to work our Smart Seafood Guide, using only sustainable seafood in our cooking.

We’ll be voting on our favorite recipe over the next few days, and will notify the winner by October 31st. And for those interested in trying some of these amazing recipes, we will be choosing several to publish in our recipe booklet, which will be available in time for the holidays – as well as an online video of the cooking event, which includes a few tips from Chef Rocky. Stay tuned!

- Sofia Baliño

Chef Rocky Barnette reports from various exciting locations as he begins his seafood-savvy tour. First, he's stopped in New York.

September 4, 2008

    My first day in the city, I was fortunate enough to have lunch at restaurant WD-50, which is definitely a hot spot and a culinary destination for foodies and chefs alike.  The lunch menu had great variety of appetizers, main courses, and desserts.  I was pleased to see that there were delicious seafood choices available, including cod and scallops.  Finding out where these items were from came as a relief because the cod was from the Pacific, where cod is not overfished, and the scallops were diver-caught, which means they are collected in a way that’s much less damaging to the ecosystem.  They were sensational and I have included menu descriptions and pictures of both.
 
 Cod, smoked mashed potato, pickled mushrooms, red pepper oil

Scallops, hen o’ the wood mushrooms, cranberry, pecan, spice bread consommé

It's important to always ask where your seafood comes from. Though waiters or chefs may not be able to tell you right away, they can and should find out for you. It's good for restaurants to know that their customers are interested in the source of their seafood.

September 8, 2008

I had only been in the city for a few days and found myself on my way back to the country.  This was like no country I had ever seen: I was going to upstate New York.  I went to artist Peter Nadin’s farm in Greene County.  We were not going to see fish on this farm, but rather pigs.  I am currently designing a menu for a “Ceremonial Performance Dinner” in New Orleans on November 1st that opens the KK Projects Art installations and celebrates the New Orleans Art Biennial.  Peter is a premiere artist in the show.  Here is a little more about that:

Roots Menu will feature the highest-quality foods grown in this region, influenced by the offerings of Indian, French, African, and Spanish cuisines interpreted with delectable contemporary sensibility.

The evening is star-studded with celebrated Chef “Rocky” Barnette, former executive sous-chef at critically acclaimed restaurant The Inn at Little Washington. Artist Dawn DeDeaux, the dinner party queen of New Orleans, will be in charge of the setting, creating a magical, mystical evening through art and choreographed performances.

Barnett and DeDeaux have collaborated on a conceptual menu and presentation that deconstructs New Orleans gastronomical/historical traditions towards the creation of an indelible, highly original amalgamation of tastes synchronized with sights and sounds. 

Barnette – partner chef of the consumer advocacy organization Food & Water Watch, which promotes sustainable seafood in restaurants – will incorporate sustainable Gulf Coast fish together with indigenous grains and vegetables.  His culinary team will include the highly regarded New Orleans-based chefs, the que crawl boys, who have delighted guests for two previous KK Projects gala dinners. 

DeDeaux first utilized the dinner arena as art form in 1982 with Feasting with Panthers: The 100th Anniversary of Oscar Wilde's Visit to America, sponsored by the New Orleans Museum of Art.  Here again, she will work with local and international artists to produce a highly original theatrical experience – complete with customized dining utensils, table sculptural form, and choreographed live performances.

The dinner will feature sustainable Gulf Coast seafood and pork from Peter Nadin’s farm.  These pigs really have the life.  They live on a beautiful piece of land and, along with their normal diet, they are able to forage to their hearts’ desire.

I will also be doing a dinner in mid-October for the people attending Peter’s symposium and the first showing of his work since 1991.  We will be featuring one of his pigs and a sustainable fish that has yet to be determined.  I call it “operation porkfish.”

September 10, 2008

    I am back in the city and amazed (and disappointed) at the number of restaurants that don't know the origin of the fish they serve.  Often, they don’t even seem to care where they seafood comes from.  At the Fulton Fish Market, a chef or restaurant can buy any type of seafood, from anywhere in the world, with little thought of any ramifications for the environment or fishing communities.  It’s a big problem, and can seem overwhelming. But really, anyone who eats seafood has the power to help change this. If people start asking where their seafood comes from (and shopping accordingly), restaurants and grocery stores will have to change to meet the demand. This, in turn, will support fishermen whose practices are sustainable and good for human health and the environment, and ultimately can encourage other fishermen to transition to good practices. It’s common sense, really.

    I did have the wonderful opportunity to dine at a traditional English fish & chip shop called “A Salt & Battery.”  They had a sign posted at the register where orders are taken announcing their stand against Atlantic cod and informing diners that they are using haddock.  Hook-and-line caught haddock, in particular, is a good sustainable choice. The fish and chips were lovely and spot-on.

September 11, 2008

    I decided to find out what kind of fish people were buying when they were going to buy it themselves in a grocery store, rather than dining out.  I went to the local Whole Foods, where they “ensure that we only source farmed seafood from the world’s leaders in environmentally responsible aquaculture” and “know that we can trust our farmer partners because, like us, they’re committed to the healthiest, most environmentally friendly farmed seafood.”  I was really hoping this was not just environmental lip service.

  

On this day ALL the shrimp there were from Thailand.
 

There is no sustainable Chilean seabass.

 

Atlantic Salmon as far as the eye can see.
 

Russian Crab.

I am trying not to be overly critical of Whole Foods’ buying and selling practices, because I do realize that they often provide environmentally responsible choices for a variety of foods. Still, with all good things they do, they have the opportunity to be even better, and should be – especially with regards to seafood.

September 13, 2008

    My last day in New York, I met my best friend Rob Ramirez in Chinatown.  It was the day of the Chinese Moon festival and Rob’s wife is from Taiwan, so we decided to celebrate with a barbecue and cook some fish.  We went to Chinatown to find out what kinds of choices they had for whole fish in the market.  In Chinatown the celebration was already underway and I felt like I was swimming through an ocean of people.  We went to a few different stalls and finally decided on the one that was the cleanest and had the freshest-looking selections.  There were so many fish that I could not identify because I had never seen them before and I could not read the placards that were in Chinese.  We finally settled on a seven-pound bluefish and two three-pound Spanish mackerels. These aren’t the best choices out there, but for what was available that day, they were. (There are a number of questions you can ask a seafood provider to help lead you to the best choice available – check out our Smart Seafood Guide.)  I took the fish on a six-block tour of the city and a subway ride to Brooklyn.  There I turned one mackerel into ceviche with red onions, fresh lime juice and zest, poblano peppers, red pepper flakes, oregano from the garden, and salt, sugar, and cumin for seasoning.  The other mackerel was filleted, seared in a pan and coated with lemon juice and black soy sauce molasses.  With the big daddy bluefish I scored the skin and rubbed him down with a chunky peanut and chili oil paste and coarse salt.  We roasted him whole on a bed of Thai Basil from the garden over a charcoal fire.  The fish was a hit and there was nothing left but a mess of bones.  I realized after eating these fish that it was the first time that I had eaten or cooked either one.  People would do well to to lose their inhibitions and get out of whatever salmon/tuna/cod rut they are in and find out more about lesser-known and fish.