Written by Keiko Ohnuma
Publications and chefs warn lovers of ocean fish that their taste is taxing various species
Remote Southeast Asian islanders who survive by fishing refuse to believe reports that certain species are going extinct, a researcher tells me, even as they watch their catch plummet every year. The same is probably true of sushi lovers who don’t recognize the explosive growth in hamachi consumption worldwide. After all, “fish in the sea†is a metaphor for abundance, right? The oceans are big and fish grow back.
Problem is, where sushi is concerned, everyone is trolling for the same dozen species, and those elegant little squares of nigiri make it easy to overlook the obvious: No resource can be harvested in ever-increasing numbers indefinitely. At some point you are plucking tuna bellies from the sea faster than they have time to develop, leading to industrial fish farming, which many consider a highly profitable nightmare.
Warnings about collapsing fisheries have been floating around for more than a decade, but when the alarmists turned their gaze last year to sushi bars, they hooked West Coast foodies midbite. Two chefs have recently opened “sustainable†sushi bars to high acclaim, in Portland, Ore., and
And three marine organizations, led by the Monterey Bay Aquarium (publisher of the “Seafood Watch†guide), have just published free pocket sushi guides for consumers.
By boiling down reams of biological data and analysis, the guides help ocean lovers to do the right thing by just thumbing their wallet-sized guide. That’s the good news.
The bad news is, they won't be doing it over a lunch set of hamachi, ahi or unagi.