grouper

A NY Times article this week talked about the changing fishing culture in Greenland. Climate change has diminished commercial fishing opportunities, and mining is being considered as an economic alternative. While this might bring new jobs to the region, it's not a change that everyone wants. "It's about traditions, the freedom of a boat, family professions," says Greenland's housing and infrastructure minister. We've heard this sentiment before. Fishing is more than a business for our Maine fisherman friend Terry Alexander. "It's a way of life for us," he explains. Maybe it's time fishing cultures get more consideration.

The sustainable seafood movement doesn't seem to have taken off the way the local/organic food movement has, and we wonder if that's because the human component of fishing has too often been ignored. Local farms were recognized as a necessary part of our cultural fabric, and now chefs and home cooks alike take pride in knowing the name of the guy who grows their vegetables. We see restaurant menus that can name the person who produces their salt, but can't name the guy who catches their fish. Don't tell me about your warehouse, tell me about your fisherman.

Fish are jumping off Beaufort, NC, where Captain James Holden of the F/V Sea Mint is landing beautiful day-boat Wahoo and Mahi. Captain Dave “Grouperman” Tucker is bottom fishing for serious grouper, and the pound-netters are landing Flounder, Sheepshead and Drum. Two greenstick boats are pulling beautiful Yellowfin Tuna, and the day-boat Wahoo is $11.90/lb delivered, less if you are within 300 miles of the dock. This is the season to enjoy the incredible bounty from the bottom of NC’s Outer Banks.

PBS Newshour ran a frightening story this week about shrimp farmers from Thailand exploiting workers for cheap shrimp. Why would someone want antibiotic-filled imported shrimp that tastes bad, when they can have wild, sustainable, delicious shrimp and support Gulf Coast shrimpers? Beats me.

The fall season begins the end of the Northeast Striped Bass season. Please take a minute and watch this awesome 1956 newsreel about the passion of striper fishermen. Way cool.

We applaud the folks at Whole Foods (who shot this video with us down in Beaufort, NC last month) in their efforts to protect fish populations, but traditional fishing cultures need protecting as well. We carefully follow the advice of the scientific community, but by-catch species such as triggerfish in the Carolinas and little skate in New England with healthy abundant populations remain “unranked”. These under-appreciated, under-utilized species mean a great deal to the fishermen. Taking care of the fish is not enough; this resource feeds a whole community.

May Day has been a tradition of festivities throughout the centuries; a celebration of Spring, a day of political protest, pagan festivals, a saint's feast day, and opening day for grouper season in the Carolinas. Dave Tucker will start dayboat fishing grouper, pink snapper, cobia and amberjack on the F/V Emily's Weigh. James Holden will be doing the same for grouper and triggerfish on the F/V Sea Mint. Ray, Ian, and Randy Gray will be gigging flounder from the F/V Flounder Hounder at night with lights shining in the water. Way cool.

The only guy tough enough to go out in the fierce winds off Beaufort last week was Captain Donnie White of the F/V Sea Wolf. He has been greensticking for mahi, blackfin, yellowfin, and wahoo. Greenstick fishing rigs consist of long fiberglass poles mounted to the stern with no more than 10 hooks attached. Hooks are baited with plastic squid and trolled across the surface, mimicking flying fish skipping across the water. The Japanese introduced the gear to Hawaii in the 1980’s, and the quick retrieval allows fishermen to bring better fish to market, while significantly reducing by-catch.

Good news and bad news from New England where herring populations are strongly rebounding, while yellowtail flounder quota was cut by 80%. Very bad news from further north in Nova Scotia where Cooke Aquaculture was ordered by the Canadian government to destroy their entire salmon farm population due to a reemergence of the dreaded ISA virus. Friends don’t let friends eat farmed salmon. Alaska wild salmon season is just around the corner.

Sun was shining brightly in beautiful Beaufort, NC this week, and I was lucky enough to spend a day with Jack Cox and other fishermen there. Jack is a member of the South Atlantic Management Council and is most concerned with an inability to implement the catch-shares programs that have been benefitting traditional fishing communities around the nation. Still operating under the old “derby” style system, the Carolina grouper/snapper complex is closed to fishing until May 1. “I can’t make enough money to pay for gas keeping only trigger and amber” said F/V Sea Mint Captain James Holden, whose Lumbee ancestors have fished these waters for centuries. “I won’t even go back out until May”. Until then Captain Mike Santos of the F/V Iron Maiden will land summer flounder, and we will see a steady supply of sword and tuna from two boats that will head to their Montauk, NY summer home by June.

On our way home we visited the Raleigh/Durham area, home to a vibrant, growing food scene. We met a great group of chefs at Lantern Restaurant in Chapel Hill, where chef Andrea Reusing put her magic touch on some wild Bristol Bay sockeye salmon and some big wild Florida Gulf white shrimp. An impressive group in an impressive place enjoyed some impressive seafood.

Up north in the Gulf of Maine there is renewed concern for the health of Atlantic cod populations. A step in the right direction happened this week when Whole Foods committed to stop selling all “red-listed” fish by Earth Day 2012, a year ahead of schedule.

Just a few years back the Chesapeake blue crab fishery was in trouble, but strict management has lead it back to where they are now seeking MSC certification. Blue crab season opens today, and when you taste Maryland blue crab in comparison with the Asian product that has flooded the market, it makes you doubly glad that it will be around for our grandkids.

Down in Destin, FL, Chatham Morgan reports that in addition to the steady tuna, snapper, and grouper landing there, mullet, mackerel, pompano, cobia and sheepshead are now being caught within a mile of the beach. These delicious, under-utilized, under-appreciated species, next day from the dock, are a true chef’s delight. Your diners deserve them.

People in Destin, FL refer to their town as the "World's Luckiest Fishing Village".

Destin traces its history to a fisherman, Leonard Destin, who settled in Northwest Florida about 1845. For decades, he and his descendants fished and navigated the only channel passage to the Gulf of Mexico between Panama City and Pensacola, known as Destin’s East Pass. In 1879 Leonard hired a 13-year-old boy named William Marler. Captain “Billy” sailed the mail in and out of East Pass and created an informal post office. In 1904, an inquiry from Washington requested the name of the official new post office and Captain Billy responded with “Destin” in honor of his first employer. Destin remained undiscovered and pretty much an island unto itself until the mid-1930’s when the Marler Bridge was built and the world began trickling in, with Destin becoming officially incorporated in 1985.

Luck was none too good in 2000, when declining fish populations and a state ban on net fishing effectively put Destin’s 11 commercial fishing boats out of business. But due to new management practices fish populations have begun to rebound. In 2007, the National Marine Fisheries Service instituted a “catch share” program in which commercial fishermen are pre-assigned a quantity of snapper they can land, ending the free-for-all frenzy of the past. Now, red snapper numbers have more than doubled. This year’s red grouper quota was increased, and yellowfin tuna populations are up. Chatham Morgan is landing the F/V Toni Lynn each week with snapper and grouper, as is Captain Gary Jarvis and the F/V Miss Shannon with line caught yellowfin tuna. Striped mullet, an under utilized and under appreciated species, is almost always on the dock. Not only can we support the rebound of this traditional fishing community, but it is our good luck to enjoy some of the best fish anywhere.

Just down the road in sleepy Port St. Joe, the Wood family has been shrimping for five generations. Two years ago Ed Wood invested in state-of-the-art high-speed blast freezing equipment that allows Wild Florida White Shrimp IQF (individually quick frozen), both head-on and tails-only. Using the efficiencies of FedEx, we are shipping these shrimp from cold storage, using Next Day Ground within about 300 miles of either New York or Chicago at a significantly reduced carbon footprint and cost. When you taste the difference and compare the price of these crustaceans with the Asian farmed product that has flooded the market, you will be shocked- in a good way.

Although we haven’t yet won the battle against overfishing, we have turned a corner and are beginning to see many of our important stocks rebound. A remarkable milestone has been achieved with all federal fisheries having catch limits in place in time for the 2012 fishing season. “It’s something that’s arguably first in the world,” said Eric Schwaab, NOAA administrator for fisheries. “It’s a huge accomplishment for the country, and we recognize the tremendous amount of effort and sacrifice on the part of our nation’s fishermen and fishing communities to get us here”.

This week Michael will attend the TEDx conference “Changing The Way We Eat”. Our friend Michel Nischan, whose talk was the highlight of last year’s event, is honored in Food and Wine as one of 10 superstar chefs who are helping to make the world a better place. We love seeing special people get the recognition they deserve.

Last year’s epic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico left everyone angry, with lasting TV images of millions of gallons of crude oil despoiling our national treasure. For the past 18 months, scientists have been exhaustively studying the event and have made some very surprising discoveries.

Firstly, they can not find the oil. The Gulf of Mexico ecosystem was ready and waiting for something like the Deepwater Horizon blowout and seems to have made the most of it, a new scientific study suggests. Petroleum-eating bacteria has dined for eons on oil seeping naturally through the seafloor, and they ramped up their own internal metabolic machinery to digest the oil as efficiently as possible. The result was a nature-made cleanup crew capable of reducing the amount of oil in the undersea plume by half about every three days, according to the research.

Secondly, scientists have not been able to find any contaminated seafood. The FDA has tested thousands of samples, and in the 1% that any oil or dispersant was detected, the levels were 100 to 1000 times lower than the levels of concern. “The rigorous testing we have done from the very beginning gives us confidence in the safety of seafood being brought to market from the Gulf,” said NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco. Michael sat in on a panel at the Chef’s Collaborative event in New Orleans earlier this month that reported the same.

Thirdly, and possibly the most counter-intuitive, is that fish populations in the Gulf of Mexico have sharply rebounded. So much so that NOAA increased Red Grouper catch limits by more than one million pounds, or 21%. Our fishermen partners in Destin, FL report that they have never seen Red Snapper more plentiful. Working under a strict Catch Share Management Plan, they are landing abundant species weekly. Gulf fishermen have had a mighty hard go of it these last years, and deserve our support. And we deserve to enjoy their beautiful harvest.

From the Gulf of Maine comes new research that has resulted in a dramatic increase in quota for Skate. “We recognize that these are difficult economic times for many fishermen and are working hard to increase fishing opportunity wherever possible,” said NOAA’s Eric Schwaab, “The quota increase will boost revenues for many fishermen and related fishing businesses, while maintaining our responsibility to important conservation objectives.” Researchers found that by-catch mortality of four of the species in the Gulf of Maine (winter, smooth, little, and thorny skates), was considerably lower than previously assumed. The impact of this discovery will benefit skate fishermen up and down the coast. Dr. James Sulikowski of The University of New England said, “This research shows how scientists can work with fishermen in a cooperative way to inform management policy. Better science can really help improve conditions for the fishery.”

Good news is a good thing.