Sea Notes

Sustainable Seafood: An Interview with Chef Rick Moonen

Rick Moonen is the creator of October's Seafood Watch Sustainable Seafood Recipe: Chicken-fried Catfish with Green Tartar Sauce and Asian Slaw.

In the 1980s, when Rick Moonen was starting out as a chef in New York City, few people thought about how our seafood choices affected the oceans. But year after year, as he worked for some of the city's most prestigious restaurants, Moonen saw the size and quality of the fish he purchased steadily declining.

By 1998, when he was asked to join the "Give Swordfish a Break" campaign, the first large-scale effort to get chefs and consumers involved in fish conservation, he was ready to take action. "I realized that there were some major changes going on," he says. "At the Fulton Fish Market I used to see swordfish that were 200 pounds or more all the time—I used to buy them. But it got to the point where it was more common to find fish that were 100 pounds or less."

He joined the swordfish campaign and went on to become a passionate and vocal advocate for sustainable seafood. Today, at his Las Vegas restaurant, Rick Moonen's rm seafood in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, Moonen works hard to spread the word about the Seafood Watch program and encourages his customers to eat a variety of seafood. "If the ocean collapses, so do we," he says. "We've focused too much on a few fish—we put so much pressure on these species that they become endangered. To me, it's all about diversity—don't have tuna three times a week."

Moonen echoes this idea in his award-winning, 2008 cookbook, Fish Without a Doubt: The Cook's Essential Companion. "I wanted to write a book to help people get more comfortable with fish," he says, "and hopefully they'll start having tilapia once in a while, or barramundi; fish other than tuna, salmon and shrimp." This month's featured recipe for "chicken-fried," catfish is a case in point. If catfish isn't available, or isn't to your liking, Moonen recommends substituting any freshwater or fairly lean fish such as trout, tilapia, barramundi, pacific cod or halibut.

When he's not cooking, or writing books, Moonen can often be found encouraging other chefs to learn about sustainability and the Seafood Watch program. In Las Vegas, tens of thousands of pounds of shrimp are consumed each day, so there's a lot of work to be done to bring about change. But Moonen is undeterred.

"There's been more of a mentality shift here recently than I saw over the years in New York City; I'm seeing more chefs who are willing to do something. If we can turn Las Vegas into a more sustainable model, no one has an excuse not to follow suit—I kind of like the challenge."

California's New Sustainable Seafood Bill!

If you wanted to propose legislation in California regarding seafood sustainability, where would you turn for advice?

Well, that's exactly what California Assemblymember Bill Monning (D-Carmel) thought when he called the Monterey Bay Aquarium for their counsel and support for such a bill.

The Aquarium's Seafood Watch and policy teams worked with Monning's office to word legislation that could really benefit both California's fisheries, and the sustainable seafood movement.

Yesterday, (Monday October 12) the bill was signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger! Thank you to all of our supporters who took the time to write via our online tool. Many thanks also to the Seafood Watch partners who co-signed a chef and restaurant letter in support.

We were so pleased to work with Assemblyman Bill Monning in shaping this important piece of legislation. At a time when our oceans are in crisis, commercial fishermen are struggling and fisheries are in decline, it is more important than ever to support the work of people who are fishing responsibly and to ensure that they get the assistance they need to win official certification of their practices. Now they have tools that will help them bring their seafood to market, especially locally, here in California.

Aquarium Vice President, Mike Sutton said, "Governor Schwarzenegger again today proved himself an ocean champion by signing AB1217 into law. This new law will encourage more sustainable fishing in California and help our fishermen compete in global markets that increasingly demand seafood from sustainable sources.”

California is leading the way toward a future with healthy oceans. The Sustainable Seafood Bill is the latest example of legislation recognizing that ocean-friendly is good for people and for ocean ecosystems. It is a wonderful way to help celebrate our 25th anniversary, and a gift for future generations.

Watch Assemblymember Monning introduce the bill for a final vote.

Julie Packard, Ocean Hero

Monterey Bay Aquarium Executive Director Julie Packard has been named one of nine 2009 California Coastal Heroes by Sunset magazine and the California Coastal Commission. She and her fellow honorees are profiled in the September issue of Sunsetand will be honored at the California Coastal Commission's 25th anniversary celebration in San Francisco on September 17.

Here’s what Sunset editor Katie Tamony had to say about her:

“From the day it opened in 1984, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has been the standard by which all other aquariums are measured. Much of its success is due to its extraordinary executive director, Julie Packard, who has steered the organization since its opening.”

Under her leadership, the aquarium has pioneered innovative exhibits and education initiatives, and has evolved into one of the nation’s leading ocean conservation organizations through its Seafood Watch program, its activities on behalf of ocean policy reform, and field research that is throwing new light on the challenges facing sea otters, white sharks and bluefin tuna in the wild.

A graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz with bachelors and masters degrees in biology, she brings a lifelong passion for the natural world to her service with many organizations dedicated to conservation activities. She is a trustee of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and chairs the board of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, a leader in development of new technologies for understanding the deep sea and global ocean. She has also served on the boards of the California Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund.

A member of the Pew Oceans Commission, she serves on the Joint Oceans Commission Initiative that works to implement comprehensive reform of U.S. ocean policy.

Packard was the 1998 recipient of the Audubon Medal for Conservation and the 2004 Ted Danson Ocean Hero Award from Oceana.  Earlier this year, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences –- one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies.

She will be honored as a California Coastal Hero along with John Hanke of Google Earth, Linda Sheehan of the California Coastkeeper Alliance, State Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), Serge Dedina of Wildcoast, actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, marine scientist Dr. Gary Griggs, and Pierce and Keely Brosnan.

A great honor for Julie, and a nice way for the aquarium to celebrate its 25th anniversary year!

Fishing for (Climate) Change

With our growing demand for seafood, there's barely a region on earth that we haven't explored and exploited. Except perhaps, for one of the last remaining frontiers, the polar ice-cap of the Arctic. With rising global temperatures, sea ice is thinning and and some species are already moving northward. In the not-too-distant future, some of our favorite dinner plate items may be living in the ice-free waters of the Arctic, and not Alaska or California. Should we go seek them there?

No! Says NOAA - the U.S. governing body for our ocean waters. The new Arctic Fishery Management Plan closes about 150,000 square nautical miles, an area larger than California and five times larger than all our national parks combined. The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council already voted unanimously in favor of the plan, which prevents commercial fishing in U.S. waters north of the Bering Strait, including the Chukchi and Beaufort seas; a favorite feeding ground of the gray whales that pass through Monterey Bay each year.

This is an historic, extremely thoughtful and precautionary decision on the part of the Council and the Administration. The opening of the arctic creates all kind of possibilities for extraction - oils, minerals and fish. Not to mention trade routes for shipping. Some of our last remaining wildnerness will suddenly become accessible. Let's hope that similar decision-making processes will lead to an equally promising outcome.

What's the Sound of One Prawn Eating?

More to the point, why should anyone care what noises a prawn makes while chowing down?

Well, research scientists in Australia think capturing audio and video of feasting crustaceans could make prawn farming more sustainable. And since shrimp farming is one of the major aquaculture activities around the world today, that's a big deal indeed.

The researchers with CSIRO -- the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization -- in Australia want to learn three things: How much prawns are eating, how quickly they consume the food available to them, and how efficiently they convert food into more prawn.

That information could help prawn farmers adjust how much they feed prawns -- potentially reducing waste, which translates into less localized pollution and a smaller amount of wild fish caught and turned into prawn-feed. In the process, they'd also cut labor costs associated with shrimp farming.

Waste and food sources big issues -- key factors considered by our Seafood Watch fisheries researchers in assessing the sustainability of any aquaculture operation.

The Australian institute hopes to improve the sustainability of the nation's prawn aquaculture -- and of shrimp farming around the world -- by applying the results of its research. It's just one of several initiatives aimed at improving aquaculture practices, under CSIRO's Wealth from Oceans program.

Check it out, and listen to the sound of one prawn eating, on the Discovery News blog.

FishChoice

Users of our Seafood Watch pocket guides often tell us that their retailer or restaurant say that it can be difficult to figure out where to source more sustainable seafood.

Let me introduce you to FishChoice: A new website and service that helps you join the dots between the recommendations on our Best Choices or Good Alternative lists, and the fish you'd like to see on your plate.

FishChoice - a new non-profit, is helping connect commercial buyers of seafood with sustainable choices consistent with Monterey Bay Aquarium's recommendations.

So, the next time your server or fish seller lets you know that your choice is one they want to help you with - then let them know that FishChoice is there to help them! Seems like a win-win all round!

Sad State of Salmon

Yesterday was good news (William Shatner speaking out against salmon farms and their impact on wild salmon populations).

Today, two new and sobering reasons to fear for the future of these iconic Pacific Coast fish:

First, a report that rising seagull populations may be contributing to the decline of salmon in California. this is not good news for fish already struggling to overcome the impacts of logging & dams on their spawning streams, and of climate-related changes in their food supply once they make it to the ocean.

Second, from Alaska -- where salmon have been relatively abundant and well-managed, news that their numbers are also in decline. The potential culprit: Pollock fleets that are snagging too many salmon as bycatch. (Bycatch of salmon is one reason the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Oceana have raised an objection to potential Marine Stewardship Council certification of the Pacific hake fishery.)

What can you do? Keep using your Seafood Watch pocket guide or iPhone app, and tell your friends to join you. Each time you buy seafood, you cast a vote with your dollars for fish that are caught or farmed in ways that promote healthy ocean ecosystems.

Phasers Locked on Salmon Farms

Canadian actor William Shatner, best known for his portrayal of Capt. James Kirk on the original Star Trek series, has taken dead aim at salmon farms in British Columbia.

In a letter to Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, Shatner urges that all salmon farms be removed from migration routes of wild salmon and steelhead in order to safeguard the native fish from infestations of sea lice transmitted from the farms.

He says the step is needed to protect "one of Earth's most precious assets, the wild salmon and steelhead of B.C."

His letter was inspired by a visit with biologist Alexandra Morton of the Raincoast Research Society, who has been studying the sea lice issue. She met Shatner during a visit to the region. The issue of farmed salmon later was highlighted on the show "Boston Legal," in which Shatner stars.

Salmon farming interests were not pleased. They discounted the impact that intensive aquaculture operations have on the health of wild juvenile fish that swim past their farms.

Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program rates farmed salmon as something to "Avoid" -- based in part on precisely the concerns that Shatner raises in his letter.

(This has nothing to do with the fact that Shatner was part of the Star Trek cast when they filmed scenes at the Aquarium for the best of the Star Trek films, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.)

Photon torpedoes launched. No official response yet from the Canadian government.

CSI: Overfishing

The victim in this crime is our ocean. The perp is overfishing. But what can we do? Quite a lot, say the authors of a new paper published today in Science. "Rebuilding Global Fisheries" is the name of their hopeful research and though there's still lots of bad news, and new crimes against fish-manity to report on, there's also signs of regrowth, regeneration and recovery. And, at the very least, in many parts of the world we're putting the brakes on our desire to extract every last fish.

Building on a previous paper that predicted a possible collapse of global fish stocks by 2048, the team of scientists from across multi-stakeholder groups, decided to dig a little deeper. What they found was that though the trend was generally still towards collapse, the situation varies widely from region to region. And in some regions, preventative measures are in place and in others, stocks are rebuilding.

In fact, the previous research indicated that this could/would happen. If you don't kill fish, they get bigger, reproduce and have more offspring and ultimately you have more fish. Seems pretty obvious really! And it's why we're in support of Marine Protected Areas(MPAs) here at the Aquarium.

The scientists found that MPAs and other methods to close areas to fishing are one of the factors in the success stories, but true recovery requires a combined effort. Effective management, reduction in effort, modification to fishing gear and incentives for fishers are all needed to turn this situation around.

The good news is that we can do it. Now the task is to do it.

You can do your part by creating market incentives. Use your Seafood Watch pocket guide and ask for sustainable choices.

Ethical Seafood Choices

What is our responsibility -- as consumers, chefs and businesses -- when it comes to our seafood choices?

The issue's very much in the news, especially with Monday's World Oceans Day release of the powerful documentary, The End of the Line, about the global crisis in the ocean. (Ted Danson, who narrates the film, was interviewed on CNN about the film and the state of the ocean today, and wrote a commentary, too.)

With 90 percent of the large fish in the sea already gone, and researchers forecasting the collapse of most major fisheries by mid-century if we don't change our ways, our ethical responsibilities are far from an abstract consideration. Our choices DO matter, for ocean wildlife and marine ecosystems.

The New York Times thinks so, too. It created a conversation about the issue in its online Room for Debate blog. Sheila Bowman, senior outreach manager for our Seafood Watch program, is one of the contributors. You can weigh in with your thoughts in the Comments section.

The discussion is timely, too. Celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa, creator of 24 restaurants on five continents, has faced withering criticism -- and protests -- because he continues to serve critically endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna. He has shown no sign he plans to pull the fish off his menu.

Other renowned chefs have been -- and still are -- leaders in the sustainable seafood movement. Check out the Room for Debate forum. If you're inspired, Monterey Bay Aquarium & Seafood Watch have tools you can use to make a difference.

ADD: The Times' coverage begins with MarK Bittman's essay on the challenges facing the ethical seafood lover today; and includes three sustainable seafood recipes, featuring lobster, mackerel and squid.