Sustainable Seafood?

All You Can Eat? A Journey Through a Seafood Fantasy is an excellent article by Jim Carrier in the March/April issue of Orion. This revealing look at the history and current state of the shrimping industry features snippets of conversations with Leslie Hartman, Alabama shrimp biologist working in Mobile Bay, and Mike and Joe Skinner, who (as of 2005) were shrimpers in Mobile Bay.

Via Culinate, a Canadian article raises the question of whether to put a moratorium on salmon consumption. As Daniel Pauly, a fisheries biologist quoted in the article says, “We’re told we have to buy right, we have to consume right. But to make consumption our major means of expression…consumption is the problem.”

Also at Culinate, a review of Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood by Taras Grescoe. If you’d like to know the end result of Grescoe’s journey,

Grescoe’s own diet has changed irrevocably. He has become a true bottomfeeder, eating mainly at the base of the food chain: small, pelagic fish (sardines and anchovies), plus sustainable shellfish (oysters, mussels, and clams). He also discovers some larger fish that are still abundant, such as sablefish, trout, and Arctic char, and eats them in moderation. (Grescoe eventually compiled his own sustainable-fish list and posted it on his website.)