If you’ve been out to eat recently, you’ve probably seen Chilean sea bass on the menu.
“I think it’s on every upscale menu in the country,” says Peter Karolides, general manager of Florida’s Finest, a fish wholesaler.
Even Bon Appetit magazine listed sea bass as “dish of the year” in its January issue.
There are two types of fish known as Chilean sea bass in the United States: Patagonian toothfish and Antarctic toothfish. Both can live for half a century or more and don’t start breeding until they are about 8 years old. And therein lies the problem: Its newfound popularity as a food fish means that many are caught and eaten before they have a chance to reproduce. Unfortunately, scientists know little about the life cycle of these fish, including how often and how quickly they reproduce once they reach breeding age.
They both live in the southern parts of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.
The Antarctic variety tends to stay closer to Antarctica. Ships that go after that variety, and those Patagonian toothfish that live in the high seas surrounding Antarctica, require weeks to reach port, so they freeze all the fish they catch.
Fishermen on smaller South American boats go after the Patagonian toothfish that swim off the coasts of Chile, Argentina, Peru and Uruguay. These boats go out for short trips and bring the fish back fresh.
It is these fresh fish, because they are imported from Latin America, which are marketed in the United States as Chilean sea bass. And it’s these that are reaching many upscale restaurants.
What’s the attraction?
Chilean sea bass is not like striped bass, which is a temperate water fish. Nor is it a true sea bass, often called grouper. Instead, it lives in cold water, so it has a high fat content, making it a good source of omega-3 fatty acids. Its flesh has very big flakes and an ivory color.
The fat content makes it almost impossible to dry out from cooking, says Peter Boulukos, chef/co-owner of Himmarshee Bar and Grille in Ft. Lauderdale. He serves it with a sauce made from reducing veal stock and red wine with porcini mushrooms. “Sea bass can hold up to this meaty sauce,” he says. He also offers it steamed with an Asian-style broth or simply sauteed with lemon butter.
But if style-conscious, fish-loving Americans continue to eat Chilean sea bass at the present rate, there may not be any left toothfish left in a few years, according to Robin Tuttle, spokeswoman for the National Marine Fisheries Service with headquarters in Silver Springs, Md. A large illegal harvest has sprung up since the fish became popular.
As long as demand remains high, fishing vessels will continue the “gold rush” to harvest toothfish illegally. And this could drive the fish to extinction, she says.
Chefs began noticing a problem when the price of Chilean sea bass shot skyward. In fact, according to Karolides, the price has tripled in the last five years. Today it costs about $15 a pound retail.
And the size of the fish has decreased because many of the older fish, which can grow to 6 feet long, have been caught. Now about all that’s left are juveniles incapable of sustaining the population. If these are caught, there goes the breeding stock and the species will die out.
“It’s a cycle that’s hard to break,” Tuttle says.
But the Commission for Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources is working to save the toothfish while keeping it available to diners. The commission is an international organization that regulates the catch of Antarctic fish, krill and squid for its 23 member nations.
To prevent overfishing, the commission has set low catch levels for toothfish and is monitoring all these fish imported into member countries.
The United States is a member of the commission, but Canada has chosen not to require toothfish documents, even though Canadians are a major importer and re-exporter of toothfish. This could lead to Canada becoming a haven for the import of illegally caught fish.
During the past three years, 90,000 tons of toothfish were caught illegally. That’s more than twice the level of catches in regulated fisheries.
To stop the pirating, the commission requires fishermen who catch toothfish to fill out “catch documents” assuring that the fish were caught legally and that they haven’t exceeded catch limits. These conservation measures have been in force only since May 5.
But many chefs, fishmongers and wholesalers may be unaware that Chilean sea bass should come with catch documents to assure they’ve been caught legally.
Tuttle says that although National Marine Fisheries Service has tried to educate the public, there’s still a lot of work to be done. To begin with, she says, wholesalers and restaurateurs need to insist their importers get the proper documentation.
If chefs, fishmongers, brokers and importers are caught selling illegally caught toothfish, they can be fined $5,000, says Joel Labissonniere, an attorney for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
If they are aware of the need for the catch documents and still sell illegally caught fish, the penalty can rise to $10,000, he says.
“It’s a race to track and monitor trade in these toothfish while they are still a viable species,” Tuttle says. But she wants to make it clear that she and the commission are not discouraging the eating of toothfish.
“It is a good fish and we want to make it available and be sure it remains available. We can do that by being sure what is caught and sold is legal,” she says.
