The Perfect Protein

Today the teacher was absent, so instead we went to the school library, selected a book from a list of choices, and read for an hour. I chose The Perfect Protein by Andy Sharpless and Suzannah Evans and read chapters 3: "Shifting Baselines" and 4: "The Consumer's Dilemma."

the book I chose to read

Chapter 3 talks about the history of overfishing, what causes it, and what evidence of it can be seen. It talks about "shifting baseline syndrome," where people do not realize the oceans are being depleted because depleted oceans are all they know. Since they are accustomed to the oceans not teeming with fish, they think it is normal and so don't do anything about it. But did you know that in the 1600's, the coast off of New England was so rich in marine life that fish could literally be caught by hand? One captain reported catching fish three times the size as those found in Newfoundland. People were so astonished by the seemingly ceaseless bounty in these pristine waters because they had become accustomed to the European waters already depleted by nearly 1,000 years of fishing.

The depletion of the oceans started to increase rapidly around the 1700's during the Golden Age of Exploration, which the book calls the "Age of Exploitation." As people explored new places and discovered new species, they began to exploit them immediately. Some went extinct quickly, like the Steller's sea cow and the great auk. Some, like the Caribbean sea turtles and the sea otter, were hunted to near-extinction.

sea turtle (Wikipedia)

sea otter

As the most plentiful, easily-obtainable marine species were wiped out, people began to search for more obscure, harder-to-reach species and exploit them, too. The Patagonian toothfish, more commonly known as the Chilean sea bass, is one such example. The toothfish is a very slow-growing fish and can only be found in the deep underwater canyons off the coast of Chile. However, as soon as this previously-unexploited species was discovered, it was quickly overfished, and its population soon crashed.

Chilean sea bass (FDA)

One of the major problems contributing to overfishing is that there is no real law against it. Governments do nothing to stop it, so it continues to go on. If anything, governments actually encourage it by banning certain kinds of fish from entering their harbors. Each country has different laws banning different fishes, many of which are actually good, edible fish. Fishermen catch all the fish they can, but are then forced to throw much of it overboard, leading to massive amounts of "discards" -- wasted food that could have been used to feed people.

Certain kinds of fishing gear can contribute to overfishing. Trawlers, huge weighted nets held open at the front and dragged through the ocean bottom to catch anything in its path, are arguably the worst kind of fishing gear, destroying up to 16 pounds of marine life for every fish caught and tearing up marine habitats. When it was first invented in the 1300's, fishermen didn't like it because it caught too much, and they couldn't sell it all before it started to rot. However, with industrialization and the rise of railroads and faster means of transportation, the huge amounts of seafood could be shipped to faraway places quickly to be sold, so trawlers started being used more and more. The invention of steam boats allowed for bigger trawlers to catch even more fish. Now there are supertrawlers, huge trawler ships that can catch and store millions of pounds of fish in their holds. Though most trawlers are not supertrawlers, large fleets of smaller trawlers can collectively do as much, if not more, damage as one supertrawler.

"Bad" fishing gear that contributes to overfishing are frequently the ones that generate large amounts of bycatch, unwanted marine life that is caught along with the target species. This could range from other fish and sharks to dolphins and sea turtles. Trawlers contribute to 50% of the world's bycatch. For example, shrimp trawlers in the Gulf of Mexico frequently catch and drown sea turtles, leading to all 6 species of sea turtles found in American waters to become protected under the Endangered Species Act. However, the trawlers still won concessions from the government allowing them to kill turtles, until in 2000, conservation groups succeeded into getting the government to require improved turtle "escape hatches," reducing the mortality rate by 90%. Still, hundreds of endangered sea turtles are killed every year. Purse seine nets used to catch tuna also generate a lot of bycatch -- in the form of dolphins. Purse seine nets are used to surround huge schools of fish and drag them directly into a ship's hold; unfortunately, this also captures animals that chase after the schooling fish for food. When videos of hundreds of dolphins thrashing and drowning in nets started to appear, people became outraged and started boycotts, prompting the rise of "dolphin-safe tuna."

Consumer demand can also contribute to overfishing. Shark fin soup, which used to be a rare Chinese delicacy, has become more and more common, served at weddings and any "important" events as a symbol of wealth. As a result, sharks have become overfished in one of the most horrific ways imaginable. Every year, over 70 million sharks are hauled on board ships, where fishermen slice off their fins only, throwing the helpless shark back into the water to throw a slow and painful death, like poachers killing rhinos just to get at their horns. Imagine if someone cut off your arms and legs and threw you into the ocean to drown.

Evidence of overfishing can be seen throughout history. In the past, the biggest catches of the day were so big that they couldn't fit on a rack. Over time, they got smaller and smaller: in the 1950's, they were small enough to fit on a rack, though they had to be stacked on top of each other; in the 1980's, they were small enough to sit nicely in neat rows; by the 2000's, they were hardly any bigger than fish from a koi pond. The very fact that we are searching in the deep dark depths of underwater Chilean canyons and need state-of-the-art technology to find fish to catch now should be a red flag. I think the book sums it up nicely: "This expansion [of fishing] is not driven by some unspoken desire to conquer the oceans, like summiting Mount Everest or hiking Death Valley. It's because we've already laid waste to the marine wildlife that was easiest to catch. We started with the slowest and most trusting seabirds and marine mammals...and are now in pursuit of the most elusive fish in the world's remotest underwater places" (36). However, most people do not realize the consequences of overfishing our oceans because our grocery store shelves are so well-stocked with seafood, and those that do see the decline in fishing do not connect it to overfishing.

Chapter 4 is about the problems we as consumers face whenever we purchase seafood. It is difficult to buy sustainable seafood that does not harm our oceans, and sometimes, what we thought we are buying is not actually what we are buying due to "seafood fraud." "Sustainable," like "natural," is hard to define. The easiest, most consistent way to define sustainable seafood is as wild seafood harvested at the maximum sustainable yield (MSY), "a scientifically determined rate that allows the population to rebuild itself each year" (44). This should be treated as a limit, but unfortunately most commercially-minded fishers treat it as a goal, and by the end of the fishing season, they are well over the MSY.

It is hard for most people to determine real sustainable seafood, since most people are not marine biology experts that can tell at a glance the difference between farmed and wild salmon, or even halibut and flounder. Now there are organizations like Greenpeace, the Blue Ocean Institute, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and Oceana that help consumers determine what is really sustainable seafood by providing lists of what to buy and what not to buy. Even then, consumers can fall victim to seafood fraud, where what's on the label isn't actually what's in the package. There has been cases of Atlantic cod being replaced with escolar (which is also passed off as "white tuna," "super white tuna," and "albacore"), an oily fish that sometimes causes digestive problems. Rockfish, a slow-growing fish vulnerable to overfishing, is frequently sold under the name "red snapper." In one study, 39% of the 142 fish samples were mislabeled. This widespread mislabeling may be due to the fact that the "FDA currently inspects imported seafood at a much lower rate than the USDA inspects beef and poultry, despite the fact that we eat less seafood as a whole and yet get sick from it more often" -- 15% of foodborne illness outbreaks are due to seafood (56).

Just as Michael Pollan simplified his philosophy into three short sentences -- "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." -- in his article "Unhappy Meals" in the New York Times, The Perfect Protein simplifies its philosophy into: "Eat wild seafood. Not too much of the big fish. Mostly local" (57). By following these six sentences, you can dictate pretty much what you should eat to lead a healthy life and take care of the environment at the same time.

Reading The Perfect Protein reminded me that leading a healthy life is not just about taking care of ourselves -- it is about taking care of the environment us as well. Yes, eating fish is healthy, but if we wipe them off the face of the earth, there wouldn't be much fish left for us to eat. The book's urging to eat more local seafood reminds me of how eating local produce is good as well -- it is fresher, costs less, and has a smaller carbon footprint (is better for the environment) because it didn't travel such long distances to get here. "Seafood fraud" is similar to how manufactures sometimes hide the fact that there is trans fat in their products by putting "hydrogenated oil" in the ingredients list instead of putting "trans fat" in the nutrition facts. The reading also reminded me that even when eating healthy foods, we should not tricked into thinking that all "healthy" foods are "good" -- some are better (more nutrient-dense) than others -- and that we should not get caught up in the nutrients. We should treat food not as a thing, but as a relationship -- in this case, seafood is not just a thing we eat, but a mutually beneficial relationship we have to cultivate if we want to continue to enjoy the benefits of it.

References:
Sharpless, Andy, and Evans, Suzannah. The Perfect Protein: Saving the Oceans to Feed the World. Rodale: Emmaus, 2013. Print.