Greetings from Monterey. This is the view from my hotel room window.
In the past 24 hours I met a guy who wrote a book about lobster sex. I watched Thomas Keller humbly accept a Chef of the Year award. And I peppered a scientist from the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program with questions.
Lots of questions.
Your questions. You know, from yesterday.
Poor guy. He made the mistake of sitting next to me at lunch.
I told him that Lisa's husband is sick of tilapia and she wants to know what she can buy instead.
Geoffrey Shester, PhD, said good choices include farmed shellfish like mussels, clams, oysters, and scallops. Also great are sardines, squid, and arctic char. And don't forget canned pink salmon, which is sustainable, unlike its farmed cousins.
There are many species on the aquarium's "red list." These are fish we should avoid because they may be caught or farmed in ways that harm marine life or the environment. Some even contain toxins, hormones, or antibiotics. Chilean sea bass, monkfish, imported shrimp (wild or farmed), red snapper, and Atlantic cod are all on the list, but there's more. (Full region-specific guides are here.) As for salmon, Shester says, go wild, go canned, or go without. "There are fundamental problems with the way salmon is farmed all over the world."
Next up, Nancy, who lives in Australia, asked about shrimp: "Are wild shrimp harvested sustainably, generally speaking?"
Shester's response: It depends on how they're caught. If they're caught using giant trawlers, avoid the shrimp if you can, as trawlers can be enormously destructive to marine life. "I'm not going to tell her she can't eat shrimp," he said. "But tell her to consider buying lobster instead."
For more information, please see Seafood Watch's 2009 Culinary Chart of Alternatives or download the Seafood Watch iPhone app here.
More to come...
