Gulf Seafood & The Anniversary of the BP Spill

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the BP oil spill, and caps a very tough year for Gulf fishermen. Many are still struggling to stay in business while being dogged by lingering consumer doubt over the safety of the very seafood they're harvesting.Images of dead dolphins and sea turtles that washed ashore earlier this month fueled concerns over just where the estimate 200 million gallons of crude oil and 1.8 million gallons of dispersants ended up. In the meantime, plenty of Gulf residents continue to harbor anger over the spill. At BP's annual meeting last week, protesters, including Gulf fishermen, rallied to be heard.Bryon Encalade, president of the Louisiana Oystermen Association, told The Guardian, "We've not been made whole: our fishing grounds have been depleted, our oysters are dead and we're not receiving the funds we need to support and sustain ourselves. We're seeing money going everywhere but at ground zero."And, one year later, long-term effects of the oil spill are still unclear.
"We have yet to understand the magnitude of the impact," renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle tells the Houston Chronicle, adding that it can take several decades to understand the impact of the catastrophe on wild populations.Just yesterday, NOAA announced that commercial and recreational fishing in all 1,041 miles of the Gulf immediately surrounding the Deepwater Horizon wellhead has been reopened. Despite the announcement, concerns over seafood safety continues to be on the mind of the public. NOAA and other federal and state agencies have been continuously testing seafood for contaminants in an effort to reassure consumers that all Gulf seafood sent to market is 100 percent safe, but conveying that message to the public hasn't been easy.New programs surrounding Gulf seafood are also being launched, including Alabama's "Serve the Gulf" campaign, released to coincide with the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon blast. Their message is one echoed by other Gulf states -- that all seafood being pulled from the Gulf of Mexico is thoroughly tested for oil and dispersants and is safe for consumption. The program is also trying to convey the economic importance of local fisheries."When we choose to eat [Gulf seafood] at home, or in a restaurant, we are helping support a cultural way of life that goes back multiple generations and hundreds of years. And that support doesn't go to some faceless entity, rather it goes first to all of the fishermen, boat captains and seafood restaurants -- the hardworking people of the Gulf Coast who earn a decent day's wage from a good day's catch," says the group's website.The newly launched Gulf Wild program is also stepping into the role of seafood ambassador. The program pushes transparency and traceability of grouper, tilefish and red snapper. Every fish caught by Gulf fishermen in the program is tagged, and remains traceable even at the fillet level. This hook-and-line fishery has little by-catch or discards, and like other seafood being caught in the Gulf, is tested for safety."It's seafood with certainty," says David Krebs, president of the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders' Alliance and Wild Gulf spokesperson. "You can track every fish back to the very fisherman that caught it."But one year after the catastrophe began, the lingering question here remains: Will Americans outside the Gulf region embrace it?

Farmed vs. Wild Seafood

Fish farms can be a benefit to the population are a necessary need to feed a growing population. Billions of people depend on fish as one of the main sources of protein in their diet even as wild fish stocks in the ocean are becoming serious depleted. The only solution to the problem is to raise fish through aquaculture provides food, jobs, and money for those in desperate need. Without fish farms, people in developing nations will starve. Aquaculture first began contribute significantly to the world production in the 1970s, with it became clear that wild capture seafood harvests could no longer keep pace with the demand of fish. Many popular fish stocks had been overexploited even before the era, but the fishing industry compensated by repeatedly switching to previously “underutilized” species. By the 1980s, even diversifying the wild harvest could not increase the yield enough to feed the world’s booming population and growing appetite. Seafood accounts for about 15 percent of the protein in the average human diet, about16 kilograms per person per year. Residents of the United States, however, consume 7 or 8 kilograms per person, about half the global average. When they do eat seafood, few US consumers realize that more than half of what they eat comes from fish farms. By the global standards, U.S. aquaculture production is relatively modest, with a value of less than 1 billion per year of the worldwide total of $50 billion. Catfish, salmon, and oyster farms dominate the U.S. efforts. Aquaculture development is constrained by economics, especially competition from low-wage foreign producers and a lack of available and affordable coastal real estate. As a result, the U.S. imports more than half of the seafood it consumes. Aquaculture holds a great promise, especially in developing countries and historically non-productive coastal areas with few natural wild fish stocks. Negative environmental effects from poor planning, designs, and operating procedures have in some cases been problematic, but can be avoided through sensible regulation and monitoring. In the U.S., automation and other technologies will have to be harnessed to compensate for higher labor costs. But from a global protein perspective, aquaculture is necessary. The question is not whether to farm fish, but how and where. Other critics have environmental concerns. Tom Worthington and Paul Johnson, owners of the San Francisco—based Monterey Fish Company; acknowledge that aquaculture has increased the variety of fish they can sell year-round, but worry that this convenience masks a larger issue. Johnson says, "The constant supply that aquaculture provides blinds people to problems in the environment, such as the decline in wild fish populations." Worthington and Johnson also voice a fear, held by many that genetically manipulated hybrids might escape and breed with their wild counterparts, leading to a decline in true wild species. Salmon floods the market—430 million pounds are farmed annually worldwide. You might have paid as much as $14.99 a pound for salmon. Farmed specials at $2.99 a pound aren't unusual. The old adage about avoiding months with the letter are no longer applies to shellfish safety. Sturgeon and striped bass, disappearing in the wild, are enjoying a revival because of aquaculture. Controversy aside, aquaculture is having its day in the sun. Already, one of every five fish destined for dinners worldwide comes from farms, and everyone expects that share to increase in coming decades. Stocks of cod, halibut, and other prime fish are dwindling; in 1996, several species made the World Conservation Union’s Red List of species vulnerable to extinction. Canada’s once bountiful Grand Banks cod fishery has been closed completely since 1992. Indeed, 25 percent of the world’s wild fish stocks are now overexploited or have already crashed, according to the United Nation’s Food and agriculture Organization (FAO). “You and I are probably members of the last generation, who will sit down at dinner tables to things as exotic as grouper-or cod, even,’ says Jeffrey Graham, a fish biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. In the future more and more of the fish we eat will come from fish farms. I think instead of having all these different kinds of wild fish, they will be replaced by those fish that are most easily farmable. Turning over the prairies to agriculture left one of North America’s great ecosystems in tatters, replaced by corn. Can we justify a similar trade-off in our coastal waters?