Seafood Restaurants Cast a Wider Net for Sustainable Fish
Michael Chernow doesn’t want people to step inside Seamore’s, his fish-fixated restaurant on the rim of Little Italy, worrying that they’re about to get a heap of science homework dumped onto the table.“Our goal is not to say: ‘Welcome to Seamore’s School. We’re going to teach you all about sustainable fish,’” said Mr. Chernow, who is also one of the entrepreneurs behind the Meatball Shop chain.But there is a blackboard. Labeled “Daily Landings,” it covers a wall of the restaurant, operating as a shortcut syllabus for anyone who wants to learn not only what fish are being cooked in the kitchen at Seamore’s, but also what species have been deliciously available for human consumption for centuries: dogfish, tilefish, Acadian redfish, porgy, hake, cusk, striped black mullet.“Once they see the board, everybody gets pumped,” Mr. Chernow said. “‘Wow, look at all these fish, and I’ve never tasted them before.’”Over the last decade or so, restaurant diners in this country have become more sophisticated about, and open to, ingredients that used to throw them for a loop: bone marrow, pork belly, sunchokes, orange wine, the ubiquitous kale.But they’ve remained curiously conservative when it comes to seafood. Salmon, tuna, shrimp and cod, much of it endangered and the product of dubious (if not destructive) fishing practices, dominate one restaurant menu after another.That is changing, however. A growing cadre of chefs, restaurateurs and fishmongers in New York and around the country is taking on the mission of selling wild and local fish whose populations are not threatened with extinction — as well as the invasive species that do threaten them. And the group has enlisted a special fleet of allies to the cause: the fish themselves.The way these specialists see it, you can lecture diners about the fate of the oceans, or you can open their minds by stuffing some sea robin into a taco or frying up some crevalle jack for a sandwich, and watching their consciousness shift with each bite.“What we’ve been trying to do is to take the familiar and infuse it with unfamiliar species,” said Vinny Milburn, an owner and fishmonger at Greenpoint Fish & Lobster Company in Brooklyn, where you won’t find cod but will encounter lionfish, wild blue catfish and almaco jack. “If we put it in tacos, people will buy it and they’ll say: ‘That’s a great fish. I’ve never heard of it.’”There are fringe benefits for the chefs, too: When an ingredient is less popular, that usually means that it’s less expensive. And figuring out how to conjure up something irresistible out of, say, a bluefish collar helps break cooks out of culinary ruts. “Yeah, it’s a challenge,” the chef Tom Colicchio said. “What do you do with it? I actually like that: It just forces you to be creative.”Anyone who has taken a beach vacation knows that clam shacks have been frying up the local catch for ages. At the fancier end of things, elite chefs like Mr. Colicchio, Dan Barber, Eric Ripert, Dave Pasternack, David Chang and Kerry Heffernan have made a point of letting people know that bluefin tuna is not the only fish in the sea.But lately, the idea of casting a wider net has begun spreading to neighborhood spots, diners and national chains like Slapfish, a growing West Coast enterprise that hopes to open a New York City outpost in 2016.Louis Rozzo, the president of the F. Rozzo & Sons wholesale distributor in New York and a fourth-generation fishmonger, remembers the sort of comments his family used to hear from chefs: “Who’s going to come to an expensive restaurant and order porgy?” Now, porgy, as well as local tilefile and hake, is in high demand.“I sell more porgies now by far than I ever have, because people are interested in using something different,” Mr. Rozzo said.There are many different ways of thinking differently, and locally. At Beachcraft, Mr. Colicchio’s new spot in Miami Beach, the menu makes room for wahoo, cobia, queen snapper, Florida clams and Key West shrimp.Change is not always easy, especially when customers are in vacation-relaxation mode. “It’s hard because you’re in a hotel and people want the usual things,” said Mr. Colicchio, who has resisted suggestions from the owners of the hotel, 1 Hotel South Beach, that he make room on the menu for a safe bet like salmon.At Rose’s Fine Food in Detroit, the traditional Great Lakes fish fry is given its due with the Wild Man Breakfast, which pairs a pan-fried lobe of brook trout with a plate-blanketing blueberry pancake. Lucy de Parry, who owns the diner with a cousin, the chef Molly Mitchell, can’t imagine serving industrially harvested tuna or salmon or cod. “You can’t really eat that stuff anymore,” she said. “It’s destroying the environment.”Sticking to local traditions makes sense in the kitchen, since Rose’s Fine Food is meant to celebrate what is grown and fished around Michigan. “We grew up eating brook trout and bluegill and all these little lake fish that our grandpa would catch,” she said. “They’re just there. We kind of roll with what we’ve got.”Still, many people aren’t even aware that many of these fish exist, or that they are thoroughly edible. Shrimp, salmon and canned tuna alone make up 60 percent of the seafood Americans eat, according to the National Fisheries Institute. (Add the next four species on its list — all usual suspects like tilapia and pollock — and you hit 85 percent.)Even top chefs find themselves making discoveries that alter the way they think about cooking and nature.At N/naka, in Los Angeles, the chef Niki Nakayama dreamed of putting together an explicitly Californian rendition of a Japanese kaiseki menu. “The whole philosophy is about showcasing what is close to us,” she said. Much of the produce wound up coming from her own garden, but as she scouted around for seafood that embodied the region’s essence, she came up short. “I kept hitting dead ends,” she said.Eventually Ms. Nakayama joined forces with Dock to Dish, a coast-to-coast organization that helps local fishermen come to chefs with uncelebrated species that may not otherwise fetch top price in the marketplace — “things I hadn’t seen before,” as she put it. Suddenly, she had at her fingertips whelk-like turban snails and lingcod and ridgeback shrimp and spiny lobster.She remembers thinking, as the deliveries began to arrive, “Oh, my God, we just landed a treasure chest.”Arguably no chef in America is more passionate about seafood than Michael Cimarusti, whose flagship restaurant in Los Angeles, Providence, has drawn acclaim for its reverent approach to fish. He is preparing to open Cape Seafood and Provisions, a shop devoted to sustainable seafood. “I feel like the time is right to work on flipping the model,” he said.He, too, has become a Dock to Dish convert, and in conversation he gets fired up by the challenge of improvising with whatever lands in the kitchen. “I was not necessarily in the market for longspine thornyheads, but that’s what came in one day,” Mr. Cimarusti said, citing a Pacific Coast breed that is colloquially known as “idiot fish.” “We used every part of it. We made a bouillabaisse broth.”There can be misfires. “It’s sort of trial and error,” he said. “Every fish that we’ve been getting, you’ve got to treat them in different ways.”The process has changed his way of thinking. “To me there aren’t really many ‘trash fish,’” he said. “They’re just underappreciated, or unrecognized.” (Then again, he draws the line at hagfish. “That stuff’s nasty,” he said. “That comes up like a ball of slime on your hook.”)Indeed, changing minds sometimes requires a dash of crafty Trojan-horse-style marketing. At Slapfish, which the entrepreneur Andrew Gruel says he wants to turn into “the Chipotle of seafood,” customers come back for “the ultimate fish taco” even though the species of fish inside (hoki, blue catfish, California rockfish) constantly shifts, depending on supply.“What I do is I get people addicted to the dish and not the fish in the dish,” Mr. Gruel said. He’s also not averse to giving a fish a different name. If “hoki” sounds too obscure or confusing, call it “slapfish.” If people wince at the word “sardines,” may they be more open to his preferred nomenclature: “petite bass”?Some restaurants go even farther afield to introduce an American audience to species that seem to have been beamed in from other planets. Maiden Lane, in the East Village and in the Urbanspace Vanderbilt market in Midtown, ships in subtle conservas (some of the world’s most elegant canned foods, including stickleback) from countries like Spain, Portugal and Iceland. (A tin of delectable brined cockles from the Ramón Peña company is on the menu for $55.)At Chaya, in downtown Los Angeles, freakish-looking outliers from Japan like beltfish and red cornet are served to your table in a medley of ways, from sashimi to tempura. Flying them halfway around the world may not count as an eco-friendly gesture, but these oceanic oddities are a far cry from being decimated the way cod has. “Hopefully they’ll try something new and not just those fishes that are overfarmed and overcaught,” said Jenni Hwang, director of marketing for the Chaya Restaurant Group.At Norman’s Cay, an island-themed restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, an owner, Ryan Chadwick, hooks customers with a dramatic lure: The place specializes in lionfish, an invasive demon of the sea that is notorious for chowing its way through the Caribbean. Mr. Chadwick encountered lionfish in the Bahamas and got an idea.After removing the venomous spines, the crew at Norman’s Cay applies the simplest of treatments, cooking it on a grill or in hot oil. “We have people calling the restaurant and they’re waiting for the fish to come in,” he said. “Now we have a supply problem.”Ultimately, the new emphasis on serving different fish is not really about elbowing eaters out of their comfort zone; it’s about pulling them back into it. Making a delicious dinner from a fish that swims in nearby waters is a way of reconnecting with the region you’re in — and returning to an intimate relationship with the water that goes way back.Michael Psilakis, the chef whose modernized Greek cuisine can be found in and around New York at spots like MP Taverna and Kefi, looks back to the days in his Long Island childhood when he “spent a ridiculous amount of time on boats fishing with my dad.”Mr. Psilakis remembers pulling up to a beach and using nets to catch whitebait in the shallows. The tiny wrigglers would be kept in buckets with seawater and taken home to be dredged in flour and crisped in oil like piscine French fries. He remembers catching porgy and watching it cook on the grill.On certain days, Mr. Psilakis and his team still cook and serve porgy and whitebait just like that at various branches of MP Taverna. “Porgies are so cheap, man,” he said. “It used to be a fish that they would throw out. Nobody wanted to eat a porgy.”But he has learned that if you want more people to eat porgy, all you have to do is get them to try it.“When we sell those specials, that story is being told,” he said. “The story not only sells the fish, but the story brings an identity to the fish. Somehow it means something. There’s value to it.”
Read the original post: http://www.nytimes.com
New Report Shows Value of US Fish Landings Strong - Fisheries of the United States 2014
October 29, 2015
Greetings!As we close out National Seafood Month this week, NOAA Fisheries released the Fisheries of the U.S. Report for 2014 today.Each year, we compile key fisheries statistics from the previous year into an annual snapshot documenting fishing's importance to the nation. Inside the 2014 report, you'll find landings totals for both domestic commercial and recreational fishing by species. This information allows us to track important indicators such as annual seafood consumption and the productivity of top fishing ports.Here are a few highlights from the report:• U.S. commercial fishermen landed 9.5 billion pounds of seafood valued at $5.4 billion in 2014.• There were strong landings of 3.1 billion pounds for the nation's largest commercial fishery, walleye pollock, valued at $400 million.• Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, continue to dominate the list of top ports driven by landings of pollock for Alaska and sea scallops in Massachusetts.• U.S. marine and freshwater aquaculture production was valued at $1.4 billion, about one-quarter the value of the nation's commercial wild catch.• The five highest value commercial species categories were crabs ($686 million), shrimp ($681 million), lobster ($625 million), salmon ($617 million), and scallops ($428 million).In our recreational fisheries:• 10.4 million anglers took 68 million trips in 2014.• These recreational anglers caught 392 million fish, and released sixty percent of those caught.• The total harvest was estimated at 155 million fish weighing 186 million pounds.• The top five U.S. species ranked by pounds landed were striped bass, bluefish, yellowfin tuna, mahi mahi, and summer flounder.We have also posted Fisheries Economics of the United States for 2013. The report highlights the positive far-reaching economic impact of the seafood and recreational fisheries industries on the U.S. economy. The 2014 version of Fisheries Economics of the United States will be released within the next few months.Fisheries of the United States 2014 and Fisheries Economics of the United States 2013 are available on our website.Warm Regards,Laurel BryantChief, External AffairsNOAA Fisheries CommunicationsLaurel.Bryant@noaa.govwww.nmfs.noaa.gov
El Niño: When will it start raining in California?
Frankie Frost — Marin Independent Journal
One of the strongest El Niño winters ever recorded since modern records first began in 1950 continues to grow in the Pacific Ocean, federal scientists reported Thursday.
So, with the likelihood for a wet winter increasing across drought-parched California, residents staring at empty reservoirs and dead lawns are asking: "When will it start pouring?"The answer, experts said Thursday, is that winter storms in strong El Niño years typically bring more rain to California than normal, but they don't do it any earlier.An analysis of the five winters back to 1950 in which strong El Niño conditions similar to this year have occurred shows that in the Bay Area during those years, October has been only slightly wetter than the historic average. November has been nearly twice as wet in most. December has been oddly drier than normal in all five strong El Niño winters. And the bulk of the rain -- the real downpours with high risk of floods and mudslides -- have occurred in January and February."For the most part, our rainy season really gets going in November, and El Niño is an add-on to our regular rainy season," said Jan Null, a meteorologist formerly with the National Weather Service who runs Golden Gate Weather Services in Saratoga.Using San Francisco rainfall as a baseline for the Bay Area, in four of the five strong El Niño years -- 1957-58, 1972-73, 1982-83 and 1997-98 -- the overall annual rainfall totals have exceeded the historical average of 23.9 inches. In the wettest, 1997-98, the rainfall was double the average, at 47.22, with relentless rainfall in January and February that soaked the state and caused flooding and mudslides. Other Bay Area cities showed similar patterns."If we don't see a lot of rain in December, we should realize that's not a big deal; it's happened before in strong El Niño years," said Null, who compiled the data. "January and February have been big months."Only once, in 1965-66, when the annual rainfall totaled 15.84 inches, was there a drier-than-normal year in the Bay Area during a strong El Niño.On average, 70 percent of the Bay Area's yearly rain total falls during just four months: November, December, January and February, a staple of Northern California's Mediterranean climate. Similarly, during the soaked winter of 1997-98, about 77 percent of the Bay Area's rain fell in those same four months. On Thursday, scientists at NOAA issued their monthly El Niño update. It reported very warm Pacific Ocean temperatures at the equator in a key area that indicates El Niño strength. The water there, off Peru, averaged 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the historic average in September, up from 3.72 degrees above average in August and slightly above September 1997, when it was 4 degrees warmer."This El Niño continues to be a strong event, and we have every expectation that it will remain this way through the winter," said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. "The ocean has gotten a little warmer. It continues to strengthen."NOAA scientists said there continues to be a 95 percent chance that El Niño conditions will continue through the end of this year -- up from 85 percent in June and 50 percent last spring.El Niño is a disruption in the weather patterns over the Pacific Ocean, when the ocean's surface warms more than normal. Those warm waters release heat, changing wind directions and the jet stream, which often brings more and wetter storms to California.Halpert agreed that this year, if big storms come, they aren't likely to come any earlier than in a normal winter.For Californians wishing for soaking rains, Halpert said it's important to remember that too much water too fast can also create major problems. He cited South Carolina, where 17 people have died this week in flooding related to Hurricane Joaquin, and at least 11 dams have breached. "If you get 15 or 20 inches of rain in a few days, nobody has the infrastructure to deal with that," he said. "I have expectations this winter when I turn on the news that I will see houses sliding into the Pacific Ocean. It's not a good thing, but it's almost a hallmark of these kinds of El Niño winters."However, Halpert noted that if storms aren't cool enough they won't build up the Sierra snowpack, a key water source for California. And with a significant rainfall deficit in most parts of the state, even a very wet winter might not end the drought in one year.Nevertheless, with the likelihood of strong storms growing, California residents have begun preparing. Roofing companies are booked solid. Cities and water districts are stockpiling sandbags and clearing clogged stream channels. Utilities are trimming dead trees from four years of drought away from power lines."We are taking the prospect of a wet winter very seriously," said Matt Nauman, a spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric, which provides electricity and natural gas to 16 million people from Bakersfield to Eureka. Nauman said the company has 350 arborists and foresters and 650 tree crews working to trim trees on 134,000 miles of overhead power lines to reduce the risk of blackouts when storms knock dead branches into power lines. Widespread blackouts happened during the 1997-98 and 1982-83 storms."We need to be ready whatever the weather ends up being," he said.
Original post: http://www.marinij.com/
Will El Niño ‘solve’ drought? Not if the rain falls in Southern California
We’re much better off if it rains in the north than in the south.
Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute
In all, California has 43 million acre-feet of reservoir storage space, almost three-quarters of it north of Fresno. The largest of these reservoirs, Shasta, Oroville and Trinity in far Northern California, account for almost a quarter of the state’s surface water supplies.Jay Lund is a civil and environmental engineering professor at UC Davis and heads the university’s Center for Watershed Sciences. During a recent interview, Lund held up a chart that showed a seemingly random scattering of points on a graph. The dots represented Sacramento River runoff during El Niño years, he said, underscoring the uncertainty of whether this year’s El Niño will substantially raise water levels in the northern reservoirs.“It looks like a shotgun blast,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to bet on this. Maybe we will get a lot of water. Maybe we won’t.”El Niño conditions occur when ocean temperatures warm along a stretch of the equatorial Pacific roughly twice the size of the United States. The warming leads to a shift in weather patterns that typically cause West Coast storm systems to move south.During weak or moderate El Niño events, in which Pacific water temperatures rise by a modest amount, it’s hard to find a consistent rain pattern in Sacramento, according to a Sacramento Bee review of data back to 1950. The average precipitation in those years was 18 inches – about normal for the city. Stronger El Niño years – when ocean temperatures rise by a significant amount as they have this year – are more encouraging. During those years, rainfall in Sacramento averaged 24 inches, roughly 130 percent of normal.If that happens, and El Niño douses central California as far north as Sacramento, it would substantially ease the burden on the state’s water supply – even if the storms don’t dump deep snow in the northern mountains, said Maury Roos, an hydrologist with the state Department of Water Resources.Roos said there are a number of smaller reservoirs south of Sacramento that help supply the state’s Central Valley farm belt. Crop irrigation, most of it in the Valley, accounts for about 80 percent of the “developed” water in California, meaning water that people put to use.
“If it gets as far north as where we are, then it will help a lot more,” said Roos from his office in Sacramento. “Then you can help to refill some of the major reservoirs around the rim of the Valley.”If the bulk of the heaviest rains stay further south, a wetter Southern California will help, but not nearly as much.“We’re just not set up to handle the capacity, the total volume of water that we’re really dealing with,” said Garrison, the UCLA geologist. “A 1-inch rainstorm in L.A. can produce 10 billion gallons of runoff ... most of which ultimately will end up flowing down the L.A. River and out to the ocean. We don’t have capacity to capture large events like that and really put them to use yet.”Still, the situation has improved since the state’s last deep drought in the early 1990s. Several major Southern California cities and irrigation districts have made strides in recent years to capture more stormwater, reduce local use and make imported reserves last longer.Rich Atwater, executive director of the Southern California Water Committee, said the region, on average, now gets about 12 percent of its water supply from locally captured stormwater. Southern California is investing in infrastructure improvements that should increase this capacity 5 percent, he said.The region also gets about 10 percent of its water from recycled sewage, he said. He expects that figure to double in the next 25 years. That’s based, in part, on an ambitious plan for what would easily be the largest wastewater recycling effort in the state. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is discussing a project that would produce 168,000 acre-feet of potable water using treated sewage to replenish groundwater supplies.The water district, which serves 19 million customers, recently spent close to $3 billion on a reservoir and tunnel project at Diamond Valley Lake near Hemet in Riverside County. The reservoir can capture 800,000 acre-feet – or about 260 billion gallons – of water. But for now, there’s no ready infrastructure for funneling in storm runoff from around the region. The reservoir will capture rain that falls directly in its walls, but it is only plumbed to receive water piped from Northern California.
A 1-inch rainstorm in L.A. can produce 10 billion gallons of runoff ... most of which ultimately will end up flowing down the L.A. River and out to the ocean. We don’t have capacity to capture large events like that and really put them to use yet.
Noah Garrison, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability
The biggest benefit to Southern California from El Niño storms could be replenishment of groundwater supplies. In the drought, government surface deliveries have been slashed to a fraction of what they have been in average rainfall years. Central and Southern California cities and farms have been furiously pumping groundwater to make up for the loss.Over the decades, several Southern California water districts have invested in groundwater banks and groundwater recharging projects to offset the unreliability of imports from the north and the Colorado River. These projects make use of imported water or natural flows that are channeled into swampy or porous areas where the water can seep into the ground for later pumping.Kern County has created the state’s largest water bank, primarily to help irrigate its $7.5 billion agricultural industry. The storage network, spread across numerous irrigation districts, can hold 5.7 million acre-feet of water.In the drought, even this massive system has been depleted. Jon Parker, general manager of the Kern Water Bank Authority, said his district alone can store up to 1.5 million acre-feet. In the drought, pumping has lowered that level to 500,000 acre-feet.Robb Whitaker, general manager of the Water Replenishment District of Southern California, said drought-related pumping has similarly drained the groundwater stored under his district, which supplies about 40 percent of the water for 4 million people in southern Los Angeles County. He said a single wet El Niño year could put more than 150,000 acre-feet of water back into the ground.“The basins are very, very dry. ... They’re ready to capture water,” Whitaker said. “It’s like a dry sponge, and we’re hopeful we’d be able to get about twice the normal capture, if not more. In that case, we could be caught up in two or three wet seasons.”The challenge with water banks and groundwater recharging is that too much rain too fast can overwhelm the system. Unlike a traditional reservoir, the basins that capture groundwater need time for that water to seep in.“If the engineers and the water managers could control all the knobs like the great and powerful wizard of Oz, they would like it to come down at a moderate pace for a long time, so the system could sort of absorb it as it happens,” said Kelly Redmond, deputy director and regional climatologist for the federal government’s Western Regional Climate Center in Reno.“If you overwhelm the system, some of it will go into groundwater recharge, but a lot of it will just go out to the ocean, and I guess your perspective on whether that’s wasted water or not might depend on if you’re a water manager or a fish.”At the most basic level, a prolonged soaking would keep Southern California residential landscapes green longer without sprinklers. Some residents are hoping to extend that run with rain barrels, which while not widespread, have gained some traction through rebate programs.Geri Cicero, a retired administrative assistant from Costa Mesa, is ahead of the curve on that front. She said that even before the drought, she installed rain barrels and other water-catching devices around her property. She’s anxious for an El Niño to fill them up for later landscape use.“If you walked around my house, you’d see bucket after bucket and barrel after barrel,” she said. “It’s almost like a game for me. I really enjoy it.”Atwater, with the Southern California Water Committee, has rain barrels, too. While they’re helpful in getting people to think about how much water they use on their landscape, he said, they can only do so much in solving the state’s water storage needs. He said he uses larger rain barrels than most people, and they’re empty within a week or two after a storm.“A 50-gallon rain barrel doesn’t go very far,” he said.
| Reservoir | Size (acre-feet) | Pct. full | Pct. of normal |
| Shasta Lake | 4,552,000 | 35% | 58% |
| Lake Oroville | 3,537,577 | 30 | 49 |
| Trinity Lake | 2,447,650 | 22 | 32 |
| New Melones Lake | 2,400,000 | 11 | 20 |
| San Luis Reservoir | 2,041,000 | 19 | 40 |
| Don Pedro Reservoir | 2,030,000 | 31 | 47 |
| Lake Berryessa | 1,602,000 | 52 | 70 |
| Lake Almanor | 1,308,000 | 55 | 96 |
| Lake McClure | 1,024,600 | 8 | 19 |
| Pine Flat | 1,000,000 | 12 | 35 |
| Folsom Lake | 977,000 | 18 | 31 |
Read the original post: http://www.sacbee.com/
In the same boat: Breaking bread and stereotypes with Monterey fishermen
From left, Sicilian fishermen Sal Tringali, Anthony Russo, Neil Guglielmo, Sam Mercurio and John Aliotti stand in front of Guglielmo’s boat, the Trionfo, at the Monterey Harbor. With them is Russo’s dog, Diesel. (David Royal — Monterey Herald)
Monterey >> When seven Sicilian fishermen invite me to lunch I happily accept, even when it’s clear they seem perturbed by media misrepresentation and daily threats to their livelihood.“Why do they want to have lunch with you?” asks my adoring wife, eyebrows arched.“It’s an offer I can’t refuse.”“If you’re not home in an hour I’m going to worry.”Three hours later we’re deep into our 10th course at Domenico’s on the Wharf, hosted by restaurateur and fisherman Sam Mercurio. At this point my bilge is full, and more than a few empty wine bottles stand as sentries to a ceremonial clearing of stereotypes.There is no anger here — perhaps exasperation. These men are intelligent, charismatic, hilariously witty, and care deeply about protecting the oceans for future generations. They fit none of our ignorant labels save a few: They love to talk and eat, often at the same time.Meet Neil Guglielmo. He’s widely known as The Anchovy King. For 57 years he’s fished the Pacific Ocean for everything from anchovies to barracuda. At the helm of his fishing vessel Trionfo, Guglielmo makes a living up and down our coast.Guglielmo has a weathered face brightened by lively eyes that reflect something deeper. He’s affable and funny and you aren’t surprised to discover he spent several years on Broadway performing in musicals such as “Mamma Mia” and “Phantom of the Opera.”We start our feast with fresh-caught anchovies, lightly floured and fried ... headless. I grab them by the tail and devour them like French fries. A mound disappears as Guglielmo recounts the record squid catch of last year.“There’s a lot of life on the bay right now,” he said. “The squid will come.”That’s debatable. The ocean is fickle, and under attack. Take the sardines. After record seasons over the last decade, the Pacific Fishery Management Council canceled the upcoming season due to declining populations.The fishermen agree with such management, and see the value in closing the sardine fishery this year. They just resent being blamed for the problem, especially when many scientists agree that the marine environment, predation and ocean temperatures lead to periodic sardine population fluctuations.What bothers these tablemates most (rounding out the group are Sal P. Tringali, Anthony Tringali and Sal M. Tringali, owners of Monterey Fish Co.) are the accusations made by groups they feel are threatening their livelihood and reputations.“Oceana said we overfished the sardines. That’s an outright lie, and irresponsible to report that in the paper,” said Anthony Russo, the outspoken captain of the vessel King Phillip.Table silence.“And they said we’re responsible for sea lions dying off,” he said. “That’s wrong, too. People write whatever they want to write. We’re busy working. We’re tired of hearing that fishermen are outlaws raping the ocean. We live here. Raise families here. The ocean is our livelihood and we see value in protecting it. Of course we do.”They point to the rockfish fishery, which has made a comeback in large part because of fishermen who used their boats to work with scientists to monitor the fishery. Fishermen raised funds to purchase other boats and licenses to make the current fishery a limited entry. It proved that fishermen, government agencies and scientists could work together in an effective way.The bad vibes dissipate with the arrival of a gigantic antipasti platter, laden with lightly fried calamari, pickled celery and plump Sicilian olives. Another pulled cork. Another story, this one about sustainability.John Aliotti is practically the poster boy for the movement. He’s just finished the spot prawn season aboard his vessel Defense. His family helped start this fishery, creating special handmade traps that capture the spot prawns in the water column (around 800 feet deep off Carmel Canyon near Point Lobos). The pots allow smaller prawns to escape, limit by-catch and don’t destroy the sea bottom.“We are here to preserve the fishery, catch enough to make a living and make sure we protect it for the future,” he said, slurping sweet Fanny Bay oysters from the shell along with the rest of us.During the season Aliotti sets his pots six days a week at 2 a.m., and works through holidays and weekends. “If you have 30K worth of gear in the water, you can’t leave,” he said. “It’s your life.”The Japanese call spot prawns “amaebi,” meaning “sweet shrimp,” and Aliotti sells much of his haul to Asian markets in San Jose because they will buy in large quantities. Monterey restaurants stand second in line, but friends such as Mercurio get their share.“I haul them up in buckets right from the boat to the restaurant,” Mercurio said.No spot prawns on the menu this day, but Mercurio brings out sand dabs, breaded and sautéed, spritzed with fresh lemon. Simple. Bacon-wrapped scallops and long spears of asparagus share the plate.Next, oysters Rockefeller. This decadent spin on a classic includes spinach, pancetta, Parmesan and hollandaise, with a splash of Pernod in the mix, and a dollop of caviar on top.At this point I’m listing considerably, and fear an actual coma. The stories continue. They talk seasickness, dogs, poetry, falling asleep at the wheel, the rising cost of fuel and the many perils at sea.More food. Tiny pearls of acini de pepe pasta with Dungeness crab, roasted corn, garlic, lemon, tomatoes, scallions and Reggiano Parmigiano. Even a watchful pelican perched on a post outside the window seems impressed.Thankfully, a palate cleanser (housemade orange sorbet) primes us for the finale: enormous Alaskan king crab legs from the Bering Sea, caught by some other fishermen friends of Mercurio, Jonathan and Andy Hillstrand from the vessel Time Bandit (and the popular TV show “Deadliest Catch”).“Doesn’t need butter,” Mercurio said. “It’s so fresh you want to taste the crab.” He’s right.Someone pours a round of Averna, a Sicilian liqueur that aids digestion. I hear my chair groan. Maybe it’s me. My notebook is filled with hieroglyphics. I will have to interpret another day.I vaguely remember eating a few cannoli. Finally I rise with a wobble to excuse myself.I leave with a new appreciation for commercial fishermen, their lives and their daily conundrum: They live to fish, and fish to live, but if they catch them all then all is lost. No boat, no income, no seafood feasts with friends.“I’m the only one left, third generation from the old country,” Russo said. “It’s over after me. In the end we just want to be seen for who we are and what we stand for.”
Anthony Russo, left, and Neil Guglielmo talk about where the fish are while standing on a walkway at the Monterey Harbor. Russo owns the King Phillip and the Sea Wave, docked in Moss Landing Harbor. Guglielmo owns the Trionfo, docked in Monterey. (David Royal — Monterey Herald)
Oceana Encouraging Chefs to Serve More Small Fish as Conservation Measure
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Reuters] By Jorge Murcia - March 18, 2015 -Copyright © 2015 Seafoodnews.com | Published with permission
SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain, Top chefs from around the world gathered in the north of Spain on Tuesday to launch a campaign to eat more small fish such as anchovies in the interests of feeding more people and reducing pressure on the world's oceans.Eating fish such as sardines and herring directly rather than processing them as fish meal to feed farmed salmon, pigs and chickens is a more efficient way of using protein, says non-profit ocean conservation organization Oceana, which started the campaign.Chefs including Brett Graham of two-Michelin-starred The Ledbury in London and Peruvian celebrity chef Gaston Acurio attended the event in San Sebastian, the capital of the northeast Basque region and one of the cities in the world with the most Michelin stars.The chefs have committed to serve anchovies and other small fish at their restaurants starting on World Oceans' Day on June 8."We can feed tens of millions more people if we simply eat anchovies and other forage fish directly rather than in form of a farmed salmon or other animals raised on fish meal and fish oil," said Andy Sharpless, chief executive officer of Oceana.The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates 37 percent of all marine fish caught worldwide are processed into fish mean and fish oil.
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How Long Does Fresh Fish Last In The Fridge After You Buy It?
It's a simple question, but one many people don't know how to answer: How long does fresh fish last in the refrigerator after you buy it?Equally passionate about good seafood as we are afraid of fish that's gone bad, we at HuffPost Taste reached out to the experts to confirm the answer once and for all. After speaking with some fishmongers from around New York City, we found the consensus: Fresh fish lasts in the fridge for two to three days, at most.The folks over at Brooklyn's Fish Tales say that fish will keep for three days maximum. Of course, they buy fresh fish every morning and urge anyone to buy fish the same day they're going to cook it. If that's impossible, you should keep it on ice in the refrigerator. Never keep it in the freezer, they say.According to the fishmongers at The Lobster Place, which also buys fresh seafood every day and suggests you do your shopping as close to the time that you're planning to eat as possible, a whole fish will keep slightly longer than fillets. When you buy a whole fish, less of the area that you're planning to eat is exposed to oxygen. This means it will keep a little longer. They estimate a whole fish will last a maximum of three days, while fillets will last closer to two days.Certain fish will dry out faster than others, the folks at The Lobster Place say, and some will change color slightly as they age. Discoloration doesn't necessarily indicate that the fish has spoiled, however. Your best method of deciphering whether or not your fish is still fresh is "by giving it the old smell test," the fishmongers say. If it smells off, it probably is.To prolong the lifespan of seafood, you need to store it correctly. Village Fishmonger has a detailed list of instructions for the proper way to store various kinds of seafood. (The website also has great instructions for prepping and cooking different kinds of seafood.) Village Fishmonger recommends storing fish two ways. The first is to keep the fish in its packaging or to seal it in a bag and rest it on top of ice. The second is to unwrap the fish and place it on top of a layer of plastic that is set over the ice. Either way, the fish should not come in direct contact with the ice.Storing shellfish requires a different technique. Village Fishmonger suggests keeping clams and oysters covered with a damp paper towel in a container that will allow for drainage in case there's any excess moisture. Fish Tales confirms: store shellfish in a bowl, covered with a paper towel, in the fridge.The bottom line is that seafood is best eaten when it's as fresh as possible -- but with proper storage, it will last up to three days. Now that you know how long your fish will keep, check out the easy seafood recipes below. Just make sure to use the smell test before you get started.
Original article: The Huffington Post | By Alison Spiegel
The fish we don’t eat
It’s hard to imagine just how many edible fish there are until you see them arrayed in their multicolored, multi-finned glory. Lobster Place, a bustling seafood shop in the center of New York’s Chelsea Market, is a good place to start. The store’s open display cases hold live sea urchins that respond to the touch; fat, juicy chunks of Hawaiian Wahoo; gigantic, whole tilefish that stare, glassy-eyed at the curious consumer; and other offerings that, were they not labeled, you’d need a degree in marine biology to recognize.Some, like baby squid and octopi, razor clams, and fillets of specialty catch that retail for upward of $25 per pound, might intimidate the standard home chef in search of something to serve for dinner. This is intentional. Chelsea market draws tourists, upper-class gourmands and Food Network fans in search of weird fish that’s hard to find anywhere else.Other offerings, though, are just … different. There’s no reason to believe most of the fillets priced by the pound are less tasty or harder to cook than typical supermarket fare. Yet Davis Herron, Lobster Place’s director, says standard fillets of salmon, tuna, cod and halibut are still the specialty market’s biggest sellers.It’s no coincidence that the most endangered fish are also staples of the American diet. When we talk about overfishing, we’re referring to individual species that consumers — and the market – latch on to, often to the exclusion of other options. As much as we extoll the virtue of seafood, our enthusiasm for those select few suggests, we’re really not all that comfortable with it.“There’s a fear of seafood,” said Rick Moonen, a renowned seafood chef who was one of the first to advocate sustainable fishing. “For some reason, people get nervous.” Fish are complicated, expensive and easy to overcook. They’re laced with small, sharp bones ready to choke the incautious diner. They smell. The limited number of species we stick to aren’t exceptions, but at least they’re familiar. Yet by refusing to broaden our options, we’re threatening to eat them out of existence.Read the full article here.