Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood
Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood by Taras Grescoe opens with a horrifyingly poetic description of a monkfish as the “Quasimodo of the Atlantic” whose “uncooked flesh, especially the liver can be virtually ambulant with marine worms”.
The book goes on in squirm-inducing detail to educate readers about why we shouldn’t be eating the fish we are eating and how, if we want to save our oceans, we’d all be well-advised to become bottomfeeders.
Expertly written, enthralling and suspenseful, this book goes deep into the reasons most top-of-the-food-chain fish aren’t sustainable and also lays out the facts about heavy metal contamination in many popular fish, like tuna and swordfish.
In addition to being an invaluable resource for eating fish sustainably, the book has huge entertainment value. The author is a true seafood lover with the mind of a social geographer. He has a feel for describing the fisherpeople he meets on his travels as he searches for marine life he can safely enjoy without emptying the oceans.
Along the way, readers are treated to gorgeous descriptions of Belon oysters with French butter and rye bread, flame-kissed Portuguese sardines and micro-scale sustainably-farmed shrimp in a coconut curry, while getting an intimate peek into the lives of the people who harvest, produce and cook the fish.
The book’s journey around the world is organized around a species or a dish that is a central part of the culture of each place the author visits. The opening chapter is set in the fine restaurants of Manhattan and centers on the monkfish, a severely overfished bottomfeeder that nobody would have considered eating until Julia Child popularized it.
While in New York, he provides a sharp, spot-on critique of top chefs who speak convincingly about sustainable fisheries while filling their menus with overfished species.
Grescoe visits the Chesapeake Bay and France in the chapter about oysters. He goes to England to discuss the reasons behind the demise of the cod, ending that chapter with the assertion that if moratoriums are not placed on the cod fishery, the next generation will be eating jellyfish and chips.
Next, he heads to the Mediterranean in search of the rascasse, the essential ingredient to bouillabaisse and a cousin to this hemisphere’s endangered snapper. Tokyo is the setting for his investigation of the mighty blue fin tuna and India for a sickening description of the ponds that provide the ubiquitous, cheap shrimp on those all-you-can-eat platters. You don’t want to know about this, but you need to.
This book has unequivocally changed my eating habits forever.
Though for years I’ve carried the Seafood Watch card to avoid buying endangered fish, I must admit that I have ordered off restaurant menus without thinking too hard about that sushi on my plate or the type of fish in those tacos. No more.
Now I will eat delicious sardines, aquacultured clams, oysters, and vegetarian species of farmed fish, squid, Pacific halibut, and the occasional black cod.
It is hard to learn there are so many things I love that I can no longer eat, like canned tuna, but I’d like to save something besides jellyfish for the next generation and help preserve the vibrant fishing and eating cultures that I learned about in this book and in my own travels.
The end of the book provides useful information on what to eat when, including fishing methods. This is important because some fish are only smart choices if they are caught in ways that don’t harm the environment or take a lot of bycatch.
Bottomfeeder will break your heart if you are a lover of seafood and our ocean environments. Yet that’s exactly why everyone should read it. Our oceans might just depend on it. It will be nearly impossible to come away unchanged by this book. After reality sunk in, I felt empowered by my knowledge and inspired to do the right thing all the time. I will no longer look the other way for the sake of one good meal.
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4 Comments
April 15th, 2009 at 10:40 am
This is a really tough one for me. I’ve been avoiding dealing with it…but I need to. Thanks, Vanessa. Will check out the book.
April 16th, 2009 at 6:15 am
These issues are far more complex than any one book can summarize. If you investigated Grescoe’s assertions, you might find that monkfish are actually nearing the end of a ten year rebuilding plan implemented by the New England Fishery Management Council. While some fish are caught by draggers, many are caught by gillnets with a 12 inch mesh size that allows smaller fish to escape and is actually a highly selective gear type when used well. Fishermen have been reduced to 23 days at sea per year in order to meet the rebuilding targets.
Vanessa, your new thinking about what fish to eat hardly rewards the efforts of fishermen to rebuild the stocks they rely on to make a living. Yes, there are pirates among them, as in any industry, but for the most part, fishermen are the ultimate stewards of marine resources. If you care strongly enough to make choices about what types of fish you eat based on the way they are harvested and their current biomass, you might want to dig in a little deeper. Attend a fishery management council meeting. Talk to some fishermen on the wharves. Look at the National Marine Fisheries Service site which can tell you which species are overfished or where overfishing is occurring (there is a difference!) (http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fishwatch/).
The seafood cards are an oversimplified answer to an extremely complicated question, and as such, miss alot that you are taking for granted. You will feel much more empowered about your seafood decisions, I assure you.
April 16th, 2009 at 7:14 am
What is sustainable seafood?
Seafood is sustainable when the population of that species of fish is managed in a way that provides for today’s needs without damaging the ability of the species to reproduce and be abundant for future generations. If you buy fish managed under a U.S. fishery management plan, you can be assured it meets 10 national standards that ensure abundant fish stocks are maintained, overfishing is eliminated, and the long-term socioeconomic benefits to the nation are achieved.
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fishwatch/index.htm
This book is appalling! For starters, monkfish is not overfished. It is a healthy stock that supports a viable US fishery. So instead of eating healthy US seafood you’re going to swtch to vegatarian farm raised? What can you be thinking?
Throw out the book and the Seafood Watch cards and start looking up the facts. The web link above, Fish Watch, is the valuable resource you need – forget the book.
April 16th, 2009 at 10:04 am
This is yet another book on seafood and the fishing industry written by a well intentioned ,yet highly under informed individual that is full of incorrect facts. Yes, monkfish is a fully rebuilt stock and it was rebuilt by fishermen who made deep economic sacrifices to rebuild the stock.
There is so much complexity to fisheries management, those who aren’t involved in it should just acknowledge that it is a subject about which they are uninformed. My estimation of our journalistic standards has come down tremendously while watching our news media, in its various forms, cover the subject of fisheries management.
Mary Beth Tooley is absolutely right regarding farm raised product. I suggest anyone advocating for farm raised product do a little research on the subject. Throw out those seafood watch cards. Anytime a complex subject is reduced to such a simple format all kinds of problems and inconsistencies invariably develop.
I wonder how many consumers have reduced their income by 30% or more to support an environmental cause. Ask that question in a room full of U.S. fishermen and every hand will go up. Foreign fleets devastated our stocks prior to the U.S. declaring the 200 mile EEZ, poor governmental policy and management delivered the final blow thereafter. Fishermen my age (47) and younger have spent their entire youth, and then some, rebuilding the depleted fish stocks that were passed down to us. We have done more to support a good environmental cause then 9 out of 10 people in this world. So explain to me why we should be the target of some under informed environmentalists who have yet to put their money where their mouth is the way us fishermen have in the last 15 to 20 years.
If it tastes good, and you like it, buy it! Leave fisheries management to those who understand it. Ms. Grescoe is way out of her depth with this book!
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