Ocean’s bounty on the line

“All that the sea asks of us is that we be wise in our harvest, recognize the limits of its bounty, and protect the places where seafood wealth is born. In return the sea will feed us and make us smarter, healthier, and more resilient. Quite a covenant.”

Quite a covenant indeed. And one that Paul Greenberg argues in his wake-up call of a new book, American Catch: The Fight for Our Local Seafood, we are much at risk of irrevocably breaching.

Growing up in the Midwest, where local fish was so abundant that it could, or should, have been a mainstay of every diet, Henri was continually astonished to see our neighbors blatantly disregard it in favor of highly processed meats and cheeses. Even when fish took the stage, at the state and county fairs, it usually was in the form of perch pie and deep-fried walleye-on-a-stick—or tuna imported from God knows where and whipped with Jell-O into “salads.”

Thankfully, mon père frequently sought out local fishermen, and brought home whole salmon and sometimes sturgeon, which he’d grill and smoke, and of course were ingredients in his wonderful fish stews.

And, now, having read Greenberg’s fascinating and urgent book, I see that the Midwest was, as it so often has been, a metaphor for the rest of the country: bounty at our fingertips, discounted, disparaged, nearly destroyed.

In American Catch, Greenberg, New York Times contributor and author of the award-winning Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, discusses the demise—and to some degree the recoveries—of three separate American fisheries.

The first chapter tells the story of the two kinds of New York City oysters: the ones in restaurants and markets, which have been farmed elsewhere and imported; and the ones “wild and live” in the harbor, “polluted, diseased, and staggeringly reduced from their former numbers.” When the Dutch first arrived in the area in the 1600s, the estuary was not only abundant with oysters but the natural oyster reefs partially formed Ellis and Liberty islands, as well as seawalls that protected the harbor. Hurricane Sandy, in 2012, would not have done nearly the damage had those natural seawalls not been dredged away.

The harbor would also be cleaner, a single oyster having the capacity to filter up to 50 gallons of water a day.

The second chapter is mostly about Louisiana shrimperies, but also how shrimp in general “tell the story of the unraveling of the entire American seafood economy.” Greenberg writes, “Fifty years ago, 70 percent of our shrimp was wild and most of it hailed from the Gulf of Mexico. Today, 90 percent of our shrimp is farmed and imported,” mostly from Asia. In fact, American seafood imports have increased 1,476 percent over the last half century.

This becomes especially puzzling—though Greenberg lays out the economic reasoning for it—in the third chapter, about Alaskan salmon, 79 percent of which is flash frozen and exported to China, where much of it is processed and sent back to the U.S. for consumption. And here is where Greenberg takes off his reporter’s hat and dons his fishermen’s advocate cap (literally, in an encounter with Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor). In the final pages, Greenberg argues against the proposed gold-and-copper Pebble Mine of Alaska’s Bristol Bay, which would have a disastrous impact on the 5.3 million pounds of seafood a year produced in those waters.

Throughout the book, Greenberg takes us along on his travels, introducing us to crusty old shrimpers, fish mongers, Native American elders, and inner-city school children (from New York’s Harbor School).

In the end, the picture’s not as bleak as it might be. While “seafood fraud” continues to be a problem (Oceana.org reports that up to 70 percent of fish sold in markets is mislabeled) and shoreline fish buyers and processors are forced to make way for resort hotels, positive things are happening, many in belated responses to legislation such as the Clean Water Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act—most notably the EPA’s proposal this last July 18 to restrict development of the Pebble Mine. Greenberg is also excited about community-supported fisheries, which link fishermen directly with consumers and are just recently becoming very popular in fishing communities around the country.