Expecting a list of infallible rules for what to eat from the sea? There isn’t one.
Lots of guides though and lots of contradictions you have to sort through to arrive at a personal approach to sustainable seafood. That was the focus this weekend as we looked at three seafood contexts that allowed everyone to ask questions and form an opinion and an approach to what to eat from a dwindling ocean resource.
First, a visit on Saturday to a cutting edge fish hatchery that may point to the future of fishing. Scotian Halibut is a land based fish warehouse in Clark’s Harbour that grows tens of thousands of halibut for it’s own and other grow-out operations around the world. Plant Manager, Harry Murray took us through a labyrinth of gloomy rooms that house a series of huge tanks, some holding 200 pound brood stock and others, their offspring in various stages of growth.
Through some revolutionary science unique to Canada, the facility will soon be producing only female fish which grow faster and larger than the males. The potential economic impact is huge. Is this genetic engineering? Maybe, but none of the modified fish are released to the marketplace just their offspring who are normal females. Here is the process as described on a DFO webpage.
The tiny halibut are fed a very rich diet of brine shrimp called Artemia which are grown at the facility as well. However, the process of producing them involves the use of harsh chemicals and bleach which is highly diluted but nonetheless released back into the ocean.
Scotian Halibut has grow out operations down the road in Woods Harbour. But, it appears that the payoff for them will be supplying female stock to fish farms around the world who will grow the finished fish. European producers already seem to be anxious to become clients. Meanwhile, Alaskan halibut operations who fish the wild stock seem anxious too. A tidal wave of farmed Halibut could swamp their markets.
Sunday morning at Shelburne Harbour and fisherman Darren Dedrick is light years behind Scotian Halibut. He has rudimentary technology and an eye on the present, not the future, in his efforts to make money in the Halibut fishery.
Darren uses traditional hook and line gear which means just that…a string of hooks with bait on them tied to a line that can stretch a long way behind his boat. He is in competition with the big factory trawlers that scoop up large schools of fish and everything else in their path. He maintains the traditions and methods that seem to guarantee a sustainable ocean resource if he could just make enough money at it.
Darren is very articulate about the issues and how he fishes and why regulations and marketing procedures inhibit the small boats from making enough money. And even though Darren acknowledges that Scotian Halibut may be the future, he is firm in his belief that his fish is as good or better tasting than anything produced out of a warehouse up the road on Cape Sable Island. And, a consumer tip here, he would never eat a fish sold at a grocery store.
Finally off to Charlotte Lane Cafe up the street from the Shelburne wharf where Slow Food members Roland and Kathleen Glauser have prepared a bountiful tasting menu of local seafood.
The menu includes product from both Darren Dedrick and Scotian Halibut:
Eel Lake oyster with leek and Pernod sauce
Jonah Crab cake with mango salsa
Smoked haddock and saffron chowder
Pepper cured halibut with beet horseradish Chantilly
Indian point mussel tabbouleh
organic pickled beet and sweet pepper
Red lentil and flax crusted haddock with chipotle mayo
Scallops on the halve shell with pancetta beurre blanc
Organic jasmine rice and baby carrot
Roland and Kathleen spoke about how they approach seafood in their menu planning. They like to use local ingredients whenever they can and that includes seafood that is sustainable. But a reality is that customers demand salmon and the only source is farmed which is not on anyone’s sustainable list. What to do?
As we discovered this weekend there are no easy answers. Everyone came away with a lot of information to digest as they seek a personal answer to what seafood they will consume.
The one thing we can all agree on is that we ate a lot of fabulous seafood this weekend.
