sustainable seafood
Unsustainable Seafood Dinner Makes a Splash
While some of you may be sticking to New Year’s resolutions to make sustainable seafood choices in 2011, not everyone is following suit.
Namely, Legal Sea Foods CEO Roger Berkowitz, who is hosting a dinner later this month with the New England Culinary Guild featuring what he calls “blacklisted” seafood, such as black tiger shrimp, Atlantic cod and Atlantic hake, which are all on the Monterey Bay Aquarium guide’s “avoid” list.
This provocative stab at sustainable seafood designations has taken some heat, not surprisingly. Jacqueline Church and Miriam at Deep Sea News both did some digging into the company’s claims and the science that Legal is trumpeting as “outdated.”
Fish: the Next Local Food
This is the last in a series of four guest posts by Paul Greenberg, author of Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food.
A sanitized version of an old Yiddish proverb advises: "don't excrete where you eat." An incredibly obvious and comprehensible point. And yet, we Americans have been doing pretty much exactly the opposite for much of our history.
Millions of tons of human sewage, not to mention excretion, from various shore-based factories and power plants and now the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, have fouled our local waterways and made much of the seafood that is at our coastal doorsteps either rare or inedible.
Combine that with agricultural runoff and the habitat destruction caused by the dredging of harbors and you have an obvious result: Americans now get around 80% of their seafood from abroad and the seafood that is caught within our borders is often brought to us from distant offshore fishing grounds or from still relatively untainted places like Alaska.
Which is why I feel strongly that the next "local food" movement should be one of reclaiming local seafood and bringing regional fish back onto the menus of our coastal cities.
Sustainably Heckled in Chicago
This is the third in a series of four guest posts by Paul Greenberg, author of the bestselling book, Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food.
One of the more enjoyable things I've done during the Four Fish book tour is to host sustainable seafood dinners at some of America's better restaurants. I've done this at Fork in Philadelphia, Savoy in New York City, Ammo in Los Angeles and most recently at North Pond in Chicago (Blue Hill at Stone Barnes and Lumiere in Boston are upcoming).
At each dinner the chef and I reviewed the principles of eating sustainably from the ocean and then put together a four-course menu. Bruce Sherman at Chicago's North Pond, for example, did a dinner with an oyster/clam/gulf shrimp/spot prawn starter, a seared mackerel intermediate and then main courses of a farmed arctic char and a wild local lake whitefish.
Each course represented a different potential solution: clams, oysters, shrimp and prawns are low trophic level feeders and have relatively small energy demands from the planet. The clams and oysters can be farmed with pretty much no damage to the environment and oyster beds are useful bottom habitat for many wild fish. The mackerel is lower on the food chain and quicker to reproduce than say, bluefin tuna, and still has plenty of omega threes. 
Kate Walsh on Access Hollywood
Kate Walsh was on Access Hollywood yesterday to announce the winner of her sushi dress giveaway on Twitter -- and she again gave Oceana a shout-out, check it out:
And congrats to Ariel B from Ithaca, NY, whose tweet was chosen from many to win the dress!
Whole Foods Adopts Seafood Rating System
As you’ve probably heard, Whole Foods Market announced last week that it is partnering with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program and Blue Ocean Institute to label all the wild-caught seafood in its North American stores according to their sustainability criteria.
A green label means the fish is relatively abundant and the fishing method causes little damage, yellow indicates that some problems exist with abundance or fishing method, and red means the fish is overfished or the fishing method seriously harms other wildlife or natural habitats. The company has also pledged to eliminate all red-list seafood by Earth Day 2013.
I wanted to see this new rating system for myself, so I headed to the nearest Whole Foods store around lunchtime yesterday. In addition to having a mercury warning clearly posted, the seafood counter’s new stoplight-color rating system appeared prominent and easy to understand.
Loblaw's Displays Empty Fish Trays
Loblaw Companies, Canada’s largest food distributor, is making a splash for sustainable seafood.
In a bold marketing move, Loblaw’s has begun displaying empty fish trays at seafood counters where at-risk fish were once displayed. (Pictured here.)
The public awareness campaign is part of the company’s efforts to source 100 percent of seafood sold in its stores from sustainable sources by the end of 2013.
The Spring Oceana Magazine is Here!
The new issue of the Oceana Magazine has arrived!
This issue features news from the Gulf, including an in-depth look at the dangers of offshore drilling. The magazine also explores offshore wind as a source of clean, safe, sustainable energy.
Also included: updated news on the status of loggerhead sea turtles, and the latest happenings in our newest office in Belize, plus a profile of "Top Chef" finalist Bryan Voltaggio. Chef Voltaggio even gave us the recipe for one of his favorite sustainable fish dinners so you can make it at home!
Check out the magazine for more Oceana goodies.
Last Day to Vote for Ocean Heroes!
It’s the last day to vote for your favorite finalist to receive this year’s Ocean Hero award!
All of this year’s adult and junior finalists are stellar -- if you checked out any of the profiles I wrote on the blog this month I’m sure you agree. From young shark and sea turtle activists to a sustainable seafood power couple and an ocean trash blogger, all of our finalists deserve plaudits.
We’ll announce the winners on the fast-approaching World Oceans Day, June 8.
This year’s winners (one adult and one junior) will each receive a $200 gift card and Raiatea binoculars from West Marine, a $500 gift card from Nautica, and a trip to the World Oceans Day with Nautica and GQ party in Los Angeles on June 8.
Ocean Hero Finalists: Cindy and Ted Walter
This is the fourth in a series of posts about this year’s Ocean Heroes finalists.
Today’s finalists are helping the oceans through one of my favorite things -- food. Chef Ted Walter and his wife, Cindy Walter, co-own Passionfish restaurant in Pacific Grove, CA, and the name is fitting -- they share a passion for sustainable seafood.
The Walters, who have strict policies for their seafood purchases, use their restaurant as a forum for discussion, education, and exploration of topics in sustainability.
At Passionfish, which was declared Monterey County's first "green" restaurant, Chef Ted Walter incorporates local, sustainable seafood and fresh, local, organic produce. Ted trained as a classic French chef in restaurants across the country before returning to his native Monterey County to open Passionfish in 1997.
