Whole Life Times: A Fine Kettle of Fish

Fishcabulary

To make an informed decision about your seafood choices, you must first understand the issues.

Biomass This refers to how many fish are in the ocean. Are there enough fish to propagate and exceed annual catches? At their respective rates of reproduction, can they withstand the annual fishing season? How many tons can be safely fished before there isn’t enough of the species left to propagate adequately before the next fishing season? Fears of this sort have actually prompted the complete shutdown of this year’s salmon season on the west coast of the U.S., likely prompting bears throughout the Pacific Northwest to rejoice.

Ecosystems While some scallops are farmed sustainably (set quotas aren’t exceeded and species adequately propagate each year) the methods used to harvest them are often not sustainable, i.e. machine dredging the seabed, ripping it apart and destroying the ecosystem. “Bycatch” is other sea life that’s caught up as nets attempt to pull in a catch of, say, tuna. Whole species — which we don’t eat and end up as waste — are decimated by the bycatching process. Much of the Canadian fish industry is culpable in the mass annual slaughter of harp seals in the Arctic and is supported (financially and politically) by Canada’s fishing industry, making Canadian fish significantly unsustainable. Forget blood diamonds: “Blood cod,” anyone?

Social impact Ruthless labor practices in Southeast Asia violate basic human rights, while overfishing in regions of South Africa (mostly by fishing boats from China and Japan) has destroyed the livelihoods of entire coastal towns and damaged the prosperity of entire nations. Fishermen and processors often lack safe, humane conditions as well as safe boats.

July 2008 | Healthy Living :: Tastebuds

A Fine Kettle of Fish

LA’s best spots to satisfy a seafood hankering with a clean conscience

By Lucinda Michele Knapp

Fish can be slippery little suckers, in every sense of the word. When it comes to figuring out what seafood’s safe and sustainable, the issue is infinitely complex.

Many commercial fishing practices and fish farming have a devastating environmental and social impact. From exploitative child labor practices in Bangladeshi shrimp farms to chain-dragging ocean habitats for rock shrimp, we’ve been abusing our seas and its species in much the same way we’ve been razing rainforests and melting polar icecaps. It’s just harder to see, because it’s, uh, underwater.

Unfortunately for eco-conscious seafood lovers, knowing this makes it difficult to enjoy the treasures of the sea sans guilty conscience. Eating out is particularly tricky: Ask your server if his menu’s seafood is sustainable and you may get a baffled expression, or worse, a hearty serving of greenwashing. It’s enough to make you wonder if you need a degree in marine biology to make sense of it all. Happily, sustainable seafood expert Patrick Glennon of Santa Monica Seafood comes to our rescue with these dining out tips:

• Always ask your server if the fish is sustainable. If it’s on Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch (check their printable pocket-sized guides at mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp), avoid it — unless the fish comes from a particular fishery with responsible practices. “Monterey Bay Aquarium is currently revamping its list,” explains Glennon. “Some of the data is 20 years old, and in some places it lists fish as unsafe when certain small producers are, in fact, using good practices. We want to encourage those practices.” So if it’s a forbidden fish but the chef can explain it’s sourced responsibly, give it a chance.

• For a finer-tuned resource than Monterey Bay Aquarium’s list, ask for fish that comes from Marine Stewardship Council-certified fisheries, processors and distributors. The MSC (eng.msc.org) is the international gold standard for sustainable fishing practices. They even certify entire restaurants, if those restaurants are fully in compliance with sustainability guidelines. By asking for MSC-certified fish, you send a message to restaurateurs that the public demands responsibly-sourced seafood.

• When a restaurant serves especially problematic fish — like bluefin tuna/toro (fished almost to the brink of extinction by Japanese fleets), Bangladeshi shrimp (processed using child labor) or rock shrimp, popular at many chic LA eateries but which are dredged from delicate, irreplaceable coral beds using nets weighted with chains (destroying the fragile ecosystem), explain that you won’t be ordering it and why. A good chef will respond to customers.

Wanna eat out without having an eco-anxiety attack of which fish is safe and which isn’t? Glennon pointed us toward a number of restaurants that really walk their sustainable talk. Here are a handful of them:

Ciudad, 445 S. Figueroa St. LA. 213.486.5171, ciudad-la.com

Superstar chefs and “Two Hot Tamales” Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger’s downtown restaurant represents some of the best LA has to offer in international food fusion. Tangy ceviche, striped bass with Meyer lemon and paella, and their Brazilian Seafood Moqueca with mussels, clams, and shrimp in a coconut lime broth are deliciously sustainable. Striped bass in particular is a success story, rebounding from severe lows in the 80s to a robust population under careful management. When superstars like the Tamales (who also own Border Grill in Santa Monica and Las Vegas) go sustainable, it puts much-needed pressure on suppliers to provide more sustainable fish.

Restaurant at the Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Dr. LA, 310.440.6810, getty.edu

Yep. Believe it or not, a museum restaurant is one of LA’s best destinations for sustainable seafood. Managed by the Bon Appétit restaurant group and helmed by executive chef Helen Kennan, their seared ahi tuna salad, smoked prawns with paprika, even iced platters of delicious Cape Neddick oysters with vodka mignonette are home runs. Oysters can pose a problem when they’re dredged from seabeds, but the Getty works with suppliers to ensure a minimal impact on the ecosystem. They order only what’s in season, try to stay as local as possible, and bend over backwards to make sure everything isn’t only sustainably fished, but sustainably processed and shipped as well.

Akasha Restaurant, 9543 Culver Blvd., Culver City, 310.845.1700, akasharestaurant.com

With a real commitment to sustainability and eco-friendliness, Akasha in Culver City is a shining example of how to make an entire restaurant green. “Our seafood is sourced from Clean Fish and other Marine Stewardship Council-certified fisheries,” chef Akasha Richmond says. Masala shrimp are procured from quality sources in Mexico (and not from Southeast Asia, where child labor is often used to shell and prepare the shrimp) and their salmon comes from Scotland-based Loch Duart, a company that has won numerous awards and designations for their sustainable practices.

Duke’s Restaurant

• 21150 Pacific Coast Hwy., Malibu, 310.317.0777, dukesmalibu.com

• 317 Pacific Coast Hwy., Huntington Beach, 714.374.6446, dukeshuntington.com

Fish expert Patrick Glennon raves about these fun, beachy eateries: “They are really in tune with what’s happening and making constant decisions to stay on track with sustainability issues.” When Hawaii had to halt fishing due to overfishing of mainstay items like mahi mahi and albacore, they also banned those particular fish company-wide from other sources around the globe, as they knew those areas would soon be affected by overfishing in coming years as well. It’s a brave step to take a global perspective and remove popular menu items in order to stick to their eco-principles.

Joe’s Restaurant, 1023 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, joesrestaurant.com (offers online reservations)

Since 1991, Joe Miller — who’s worked at Le Perroquet in Chicago, L’Orangerie here in Los Angeles, and with Michel Guérard in France at Eugenie-Les-Bains — has been a stalwart defender of sustainability and the Santa Monica Farmers Market, way before it was cool. As an example of how slippery the fish issue is, while most snapper is not sustainable, that fished in New Zealand and Thailand are MSC certified. Sustainable New Zealand red snapper, tuna tartare and smoked salmon with sliced cucumbers, tomatoes and lemon oil and more featured on his California-fusion menu.

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