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Sustainability is an incredibly complicated topic. Yet seafood sustainability is the surprisingly rare exception in which a really complex problem has a uniquely simple option — and it’s in the hands of the consumer.
To put it plainly, there are three things you can do to help change our ocean’s food systems: Diversify the seafood that you eat and cook. Eat more scallops, oysters, mussels and seaweed. Buy seafood that was farmed or caught in the United States.
In researching this topic for “How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea,” the cookbook I co-authored with chef Ari Kolender (of Found Oyster and Queen St. Raw Bar & Grill), I read peer-reviewed studies and talked to seaweed farming experts, a shellfish growing association, government agencies, award-winning authors, conservationists, journalists and chefs. Intelligent people disagreed on a great many topics, but the one thing they all agreed on was that we, as a country, are way too focused on eating the same few fish, over and over again.
Chef Ari Kolender’s L.A. restaurants Found Oyster and Queen St. combine the charm of Charleston and the cult of seafood with chill cross-coastal vibes. His first cookbook is out: “How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea.”
“Americans have a very kind of brutalist approach to the foods they allow on their plates,” said Paul Greenberg, author of “Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food.” “The idea came to me after repeatedly looking at menus and seeing this leitmotif of these same four fish. You’re always going to have something that’s pink and succulent — that’s your salmon. You’re always going to have some steak-y, or maybe sushi, that’s gonna be your tuna. You’ll have something white and flaky that’s usually called cod but could be swapped in with a tilapia. Then there’s always gonna be some kind of whole fish, for the adventuresome, and that’s often called bass.
“You have [restaurants like] the Providences of the world that present interesting fish, but in the main world, and especially in fast-casual, it’s almost always just salmon.”
The top three seafoods that we eat in this country are almost invariably, in some order: salmon, shrimp and canned tuna. When the vast majority of seafood consumption in our country is driven toward the same three sea creatures, businesses will find a way to meet demand, come hell or high water. Enough people diversifying the seafood they eat, and being open to “plenty more fish in the sea,” would change our foodways.
Eat a lot more of these
While seafood experts often disagree about finned fish farming, many agree that vertical ocean farming is a great way to grow sustainable food that is not only nutritious but also cleans our ocean water at the same time.
James Beard Award-winning author of “Eat Like a Fish” and Greenwave co-founder Bren Smith has written and spoken extensively on this subject, championing the symbiotic relationship of scallops, oysters, mussels and seaweed, grown together to maximize efficiency.
“The ocean is unique as an agricultural space,” Smith said. “If we choose the right crops — kelp, scallops, mussels, oysters — we can farm without feed, fertilizers or fresh water, making it the most sustainable food on the plate. All we need is sunlight and ocean nutrients.”
This scallop tostada with a tart yuzu vinaigrette is a signature dish at Ari Kolender’s L.A. restaurant Found Oyster. The recipe is from his new cookbook, ‘How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea.’
If we can increase demand for these products, it does more than just grow a more sustainable seafood option. “This is our chance to build an aquaculture sector that is regenerative out of the gate,” he continued, “can help feed the nation, reduce pressures on wild fish stocks and create good, blue jobs.”
If the demand for these products goes up, then so too does the demand for the sustainable ocean farmers to grow it. Also? They are all delicious.
Buy American
It can be really difficult to stay up to date on what seafood is sustainable at any given moment. I have been caught standing at a seafood counter trying to navigate the Monterey Bay Aquarium app, failing to figure out what kind of Atlantic halibut I’m looking at. Luckily, there is a much easier way.
The United States is the best country in the world at regulating its seafood supply and managing its fisheries, according to a 2016 peer-reviewed study, published by the National Academy of Sciences. We are, however, not nearly as diligent about the seafood that we import … and we import about 80% of the seafood we eat in this country.
If you read the work of people like author and investigative reporter Ian Urbina in the New Yorker, you find out that a lot of the seafood that we import comes cheaper thanks to horrifying working conditions and human rights violations, not to mention massive over-fishing and negative environmental impact. That’s why, if you look at your options at the grocery store, you will frequently find that U.S.-caught and -farmed seafood is more expensive than the alternatives.
Sear these scallops before transferring them to the broiler and basting them with espelette butter — a quick and easy seafood recipe from “How to Cook All the Finest Things in the Sea” by Ari Kolender and Noah Galuten.
But if you just buy American, you are most of the way there when it comes to being sustainable. So if you go to the grocery store and see shrimp from Thailand, Mexico and the U.S. — just buy the American one.
Meanwhile, take a look at those cans of tuna you wanted to buy and try to find ones caught in the United States. Not processed in the United States but caught. It is a lot more difficult to find, and more expensive, than you are probably expecting. That’s because for a can of tuna to cost 84 cents, some horrible things have to be happening to a lot of people before that can shows up at the grocery store.
‘But I like salmon and tuna and shrimp’
Get over it. It’s a huge ocean with lots of seafood. If we want to make real change in our oceanic food system, we have to change the way we eat and shop. But also, if you are only shopping American, it means looking at perhaps fewer but frequently also different options when purchasing fish filets in particular. This leads to one of the many great lessons from working with Kolender on “How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea.” Rather than give recipes that require a certain type of fish, we focused on breaking them down into three categories: steak-y; mild and flaky; and skin-on. Once you realize that you can put pretty much any type of fish filet into at least one of those three categories, you can cook any filet that you find.
Skin-on filets like Arctic char, halibut, ocean trout, rockfish, salmon and vermillion are all wonderful to cook in a pan for a crispy skin. Meanwhile steak-y filets like albacore, swordfish, tuna and wahoo are all great hard-seared in a pan or cooked on a grill. Mild and flaky filets like flounder, halibut, perch, any snappers and turbot are great in stews, soups, rice dishes, or even battered or breaded and fried.
Once you start thinking of things in these categories, it makes your shopping so much easier. It is often much better, as Kolender told me, to think about how you want to cook before you decide on what you want to cook.
Served nearly everywhere to sushi lovers, whether or not we should be eating bluefin tuna still is still hotly debated among consumers and conservation experts alike.
Where to shop
Los Angeles has great seafood markets, such as Santa Monica Seafood and Fish King in Glendale, all of which would be more than happy to direct you to the best type of U.S.-caught fish for the type of cooking you’re looking to do. But like any seafood market (and even many seafood stalls at farmers markets), they will sell whatever sells. That means it’s up to you to vote with your dollars.
My favorite way to buy seafood in L.A. is to visit Wild Local Seafood Co., which shows up at farmers markets in Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, Hollywood, Mar Vista and Long Beach. Owner Ben Hyman cares a lot about sustainable fishing practices, and catches most of its seafood off the coast of Santa Barbara. The market stand usually has a relatively small list of options, but you can rest easy knowing that the quality and sustainability practices will be of the highest order. You will probably even learn about a delicious fish you didn’t know about.
I know how easy it is to get caught in a cooking rut, focusing on the familiar. But whether we like it or not, I firmly believe that aquaculture will become a massive part of our foodway system in the coming years and decades. Companies are raising hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in the future of ocean farming, and if we want to have a say in that future, we have to become a part of that discussion now, before the decisions are made for us. The surest way to have a say in that is to put your money where your mouth is.
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