Why we need to expand our seafood repertoires.
WHY WE NEED TO GREATLY EXPAND ON THE TYPES OF SEAFOOD WE EAT
During the lunch rush at Sushi on Bloor, a no-frills sushi restaurant in Toronto’ s Annex neighbourhood, the line for tables often spills out onto the sidewalk. Meanwhile, impatient office workers elbow their way to the front of a takeout counter stationed in the back. They are all here for the restaurant’s two main attractions: the generously portioned salmon maki and their signature spicy honour roll, a concoction of salmon and avocado topped with a smattering of scallions.
Compared to your average fast food takeout of burgers, fries or pizza, lunch at Sushi on Bloor seems relatively healthy. Not only are the sushi rolls low in fat, high in protein and gluten- free, but they also contain salmon. The famous pink fish has been celebrated for its impressive omega-3 fatty acid profile, which is believed to improve everything from cardiovascular health to arthritis. Because of these benefits, The American Heart Association recommends eating fatty fish, such as salmon, at least two times per week.
However, as salmon consumption has increased thanks to their health benefits going mainstream, salmon stocks have declined. A 2016 report from Fisheries and Oceans Canada found that wild salmon runs that totalled 30,000 to 40,000 in the mid 1980s fell to less than 200 in 2008. More recently, the report found that salmon has not been detected in nearly half of this fish’s historic spawning grounds.
All of this has led to the rise of farmed salmon, which is supposed to be a more sustainable alternative. But while salmon farming technologies are improving, farmed salmon meat has also been found to contain several pollutants. A study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found that farmed salmon can contain dioxin ( classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a group I carcinogen which means it’s known to cause cancer in humans), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), antibiotics and other unsafe contaminants. Collapsed and broken salmon pens, like the pen that broke near Washington’s Cypress Island earlier last year, can also pollute neighbouring sea life with viruses and parasites.
Salmon isn’t the only seemingly healthy fish that has been plagued by a series of environmental and health concerns. While bluefin tuna is listed as critically endangered by The International Union for Conservation of Nature ( IUCN), populations of yellowfin and albacore tuna are also in decline.
Meanwhile, after over a century of overfishing, pollution and disease, oyster populations are suffering a similarly troubled fate.
Not to be outdone, a six-month investigation by The Guardian found that shrimp farming is often the result of mangrove forest destruction, water pollution and slave labour.
Somewhat remarkably, none of this bad news has slowed us from eating salmon, oysters, tuna or shrimp. After examining the average restaurant menu of salmon filets, tuna steaks, shrimp cocktail and oysters on the half shell, a casual observer might think that the ocean is mostly made up of these four varieties of seafood. But this could not be further from the truth.
Our oceans are filled with an abundance of lesser- known fish that don’t have sustainability or farming problems. In his book American Seafood, chef and sustainable seafood advocate Barton Seaver claims that eating these lesser- known varieties can help improve our own health and the health of our oceans. In particular, Seaver recommends eating hake, skate and cusk — three species with sweet and buttery flavour profiles that have been overlooked for hundreds of years.
Beyond larger flake fish, there are also benefits to glean from eating more of the right kind of crustaceans. Unlike the damaging effects of farmed shrimp and salmon, farmed oysters, clams, mussels and scallops possess the unique ability to filter seawater of impurities, meaning the farms can actually improve ocean health.
But despite the benefits of expanding our seafood repertoires, it is unrealistic to expect anyone to change their dietary habits after reading a few sentences about a more sustainable type of fish. If it was that easy we would have all exchanged our orders of salmon maki for plates of anchovies — a fish that has long been celebrated for its health benefits and plentiful ocean supply — years ago.
Eating lesser- known varieties of seafood also isn’t as simple as picking up a box of frozen hake fillets the next time you’re at the grocery store.
To start, the fish are typically difficult to find at your average supermarket due to low demand. Also, we cannot expect to fix our oceans by simply flipping our overindulgence away from salmon and tuna and onto skate and hake.
Navigating the waters of sustainable seafood consumption, especially at your average sushi restaurant or grocery store, continues to seem like a treacherous and impossible task. But as a population of rabid sushi enthusiasts and fish aficionados, we have depended on the same three or four varieties of seafood for far too long.
No one wants to think of himself or herself as the type of person who is affected by advertising, but the truth is that most of us eat the varieties of seafood that have been the subjects of the largest marketing pushes. Salmon and tuna have benefited from countless advertising campaigns about their respective health benefits and gourmet flavours. Meanwhile, shrimp and oysters have been depicted as aspirational, luxury foods. Instead of asking questions about other types of seafood, we have followed the same monolithic messages, somewhat blindly, to the depths of a depleted ocean.
When we order sushi for lunch we have been taught to seek out salmon and tuna.
But the only thing we should be seeking is to ask about the fish of the day.