Once a year, Mary Smith and other employees of Chicago’s Plitt Co. take a group of chefs to Alaska for a sort of educational field trip.
Plitt, which sells seafood to restaurants and markets such as Whole Foods, works directly with salmon fisheries in the state, and the chefs get to observe how fish are caught in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way. The hands-on lessons from the salmon fishermen on Kodiak Island seem to make concrete the sometimes-abstract idea of sustainability, said Smith, the director of marketing for Plitt. “You can hear all about this thing, but seeing it, you really get it.”
Sustainability — fishing only stocks that can be replaced and indefinitely maintained and harvesting fish in a way that does not harm the environment or other species caught as bycatch — is a concept popping up more and more along the seafood chain. It’s being discussed by the chefs who cook fish and the companies that harvest and distribute it and the consumers who buy it. It’s a topic surfacing on restaurant menus and at seafood counters, in companies’ corporate responsibility reports and at Patagonia stores.
Even last year’s animated movie “Happy Feet” carried a message about needing to protect the world’s oceans from overfishing. And each “Happy Feet” DVD contains a seafood watch guide, produced by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, showing what types of fish and shellfish are best to eat and what types to avoid.
A movement on the move
The sustainable seafood movement is growing, say environmentalists involved in the issue, but much more needs to be done.
Reports about overfishing and the diminishing number of large fish such as bluefin tuna are sounding alarms. One widely reported study last year by an international group of scientists and economists estimated that the world’s seafood supply would be gone by 2048; a report last month by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to Congress said 20 percent of U.S. marine fish are subject to overfishing and 25 percent are overfished or depleted.
“Sustainable seafood is going to have to become the natural way we look at the industry,” said Nick Hall, the seafood program manager for Blue Ocean Institute, an environmental group based in New York that works with chefs and culinary schools to get more environmentally friendly fish on restaurant plates. “Sustainability has to become a mainstream concept. … The alarm bells are ringing. People have to pay attention.”
Businesses are taking notice. From a new all-sustainable seafood restaurant in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood to Wal-Mart, which pledged last year to source all its wild-caught fish from fisheries that meet the standards of the Marine Stewardship Council, companies in the seafood business are looking at the ways the fish they sell is harvested or caught.
Environmentalists, government agencies that regulate fishing and seafood industry experts say thinking about sustainability is increasingly important as demand increases for seafood in the United States.
Last year, Americans consumed 16.5 pounds per person, up from 16.2 pounds the year before, according to NOAA. In 1990, consumption was 15 pounds per person.
In the U.S., 81 percent of the seafood consumed is imported, with the rest caught or farmed here. According to the NOAA, 80 percent of the seafood consumed by Americans that is caught or farmed in the United States is sustainable. Howard Johnson, a seafood industry expert who publishes an annual report, says he considers most of the top 10 seafood items consumed by Americans sustainable.
But opinions on what is sustainable differ; fish that Johnson and NOAA say are sustainable are on “red alert” lists put out by conservation groups. NOAA says in August it is coming out with a Web site that will offer scientific data on various species so consumers using the seafood guides can make up their minds about the sustainability of a species.
“One of the hardest things to do is get good information that’s not commercially or competitively biased,” said Patrick McLaughlin, executive chef of Parkers’ Ocean Grill in Downers Grove.
McLaughlin said most customers at Parkers’ Ocean Grill aren’t requesting sustainable seafood, and diners won’t see mentions of “sustainable” on the menu. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t thinking about the sources of his food.
Parkers’ Ocean Grill has been working with the Shedd Aquarium’s Right Bite — an education program for consumers, restaurants and seafood sellers about the importance of choosing sustainable seafood — for about three years.
“We knew we had to do something,” McLaughlin said.
He also works with Plitt Co., his supplier, to find the best products. McLaughlin was one of five chefs who traveled to Alaska with Plitt last month to visit sustainable fisheries.
Going on the red list
Since returning, McLaughlin has taken Chilean sea bass off his menu (a captain he spoke to told him it was still being caught illegally) and removed grouper, which is on some red-watch lists.
For suppliers such as Plitt, refusing to stock certain species would most likely result in customers buying those products elsewhere, Plitt’s Smith said.
Among the red-listed seafood on the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s guide are farmed salmon and red snapper.
Instead of refusing to carry the products, Plitt is working with conservation groups to make sure that its snapper supplier is using the best fishing practices and that the farmed salmon meets the best aquaculture standards.
However, Sheila Bowman of the aquarium’s Seafood Watch program says the group is constantly updating its report and believes species on its red list have significant problems. If a species is listed, Seafood Watch does not recommend it as a sustainable choice, she said.
Dirk Fucik, who owns Dirk’s Fish and Gourmet Shop in Lincoln Park, says he consults multiple sources before deciding what to buy. He’s a member of the Seafood Choices Alliance, an organization that helps the seafood industry find sustainable solutions, but he says he doesn’t always agree with the recommendations of the Seafood Watch lists. He supplements the environmental group’s research with information from his suppliers, additional reading and from the Web site fishscam.com, which is run by the Center for Consumer Freedom.
“I take everything with a grain of salt, the government included,” said Fucik, who says he doesn’t stock products he believes are not sustainable. For example, Fucik stopped stocking bluefin tuna after reading a National Geographic article. He will stock farm-raised salmon and Chilean sea bass.
Consumers not biting
Fucik says he gets more questions about whether a product is sustainable from restaurants than from consumers, who appear more interested in taste and health benefits than the environmental impact of the fish they’re buying.
Customers shopping at the Maine Avenue outdoor seafood market in Washington last week where purveyors sell piles of shrimp, whole fish and live blue crabs for steaming, weren’t thinking in terms of sustainable seafood.
When asked, several shoppers said they chose seafood based on freshness and nutritional value.
Greta Dempsey, who lives in Washington, said she hadn’t heard about the concept of sustainable seafood.
Dempsey, who was buying salmon, shrimp, monkfish and blue crabs, said she chose seafood based largely on freshness.
“It’s really how it tastes and what it looks like,” she said.
Dempsey said she wasn’t overly concerned about where the fish came from — she wasn’t sure whether the salmon she bought was farm raised or wild. “It doesn’t matter to me,” she said.
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Top 5 fish species consumed in the U.S:
1 .Shrimp: Seafood Watch rates Oregon Pink shrimp best and shrimp from the U.S. and Canada good but says imported shrimp should be avoided.
2. Canned tuna: According to seafood analyst Howard Johnson, most tuna that goes into cans is generally considered sustainable.
3. Salmon: Wild-caught salmon is sustainable and farmed salmon is seeing improvements in environmental issues, Johnson says. Seafood Watch says farmed salmon should be avoided.
4. Pollock: Sustainable, Johnson says.
5. Catfish: Sustainable, Johnson says. Seafood Watch says U.S. farmed is best, imported is good.
Species conservationists say to avoid:
*Chilean sea bass
*Sharks
*Bluefin tuna
*Orange roughy
Source for the ranking: Howard Johnson of HM Johnson and Associates
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IN THE WEB EDITION: Watch as chefs prepare a meal for ecologically friendly dining at chicagotribune.com/seafood
