http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=124678&d=19&m=7&y=2009&pix=opinion.jpg&category=Opinion
Sunday 19 July 2009 (26 Rajab 1430)
Where have all the big fish gone?
Iman Kurdi | Arab News
The only time I ever think about fish is when I say to myself: "I should
eat more fish". I have never wondered how fish feel, or whether there are
enough fish to go round, or how they are caught and certainly have never felt
any sympathy for fish. Whereas I cannot eat a lamb if I have seen it alive -
hypocrisy I know - I feel no such qualms about a fish. It is after all a fish.
But despite being thoroughly uninterested in fish until the moment it lands on
my plate, preferably drenched in lemon juice and flavored with herbs, I have
found fish issues encroaching on my consciousness.
First, there were the jellyfish. Again, for years I swam in the sea,
happily oblivious to the existence of the creatures. And then I got stung!
Believe me it hurts. It burns, it stings and it lasts. The Mediterranean has
swarms of them. There have been days when beaches are full and the sea is
empty, people standing at the shore looking at the sea with longing. I counted
eight jellyfish in one square meter of sea the other day. Where do they come
from? To see one every now and then was once normal, but to see them in such
dense clusters is a recent phenomenon.
Then I came across several restaurants proudly announcing on their menus
that they no longer serve tuna. Some no longer serve it in the form of a tuna
and cucumber sandwich which, though one of my favorites, is no great loss. But
when I came across sushi bars that have stopped serving tuna, I was seriously
concerned. Sushi without tuna! What is the world coming to?
It seems the two are linked. On one end of the chain, you have the
blue-fin tuna and at the other end those nasty jellyfish. Blue-fin tuna are in
danger of extinction. The World Wildlife Fund for Nature predicts that unless
action is taken now, blue-fin tuna will be wiped out in the Mediterranean by
2012.
The blue-fin is the biggest of the tunas, and the most expensive. It is a
predator, or as I see it a vacuum cleaner for smaller fish and jellyfish.
Dramatic falls in blue-fin tuna stocks equal dramatic increases in smaller fish
and jellyfish. The balance has fundamentally changed.
But it's not just blue-fin tuna. Stocks - of almost every fish I can name
and a good many others I can't - have been decimated. The first to go were the
big fish. Just consider this: the stock of large fish in the seas and oceans of
our planet is now 10 percent of what it was 150 years ago! That's a massive 90
percent decline. Back then, fishing was done by fishermen going out in their
boats and coming back with a local catch that they sold right there in the
harbor on their return. But fishing is no longer that romantic ideal. Fishing
is now a multibillion dollar international industry just like everything else
we eat.
That industrial fishing and industrial scale fish farms have resulted in
over-fishing should not come as a surprise to anyone. That blue-fin tuna, the
most expensive fish in the world, should be over-fished is not in the least
surprising either. But the scale of it is. Could it really be that blue-fin
tuna could be extinct in my lifetime? If nothing is done yes, but the campaign
to ban the sale of blue-fin tuna is gaining momentum. Both France and the UK
are now supporting Monaco's move to have blue-fin tuna listed as an endangered
species; if they gain enough support, the ban could be in place by next summer.
But that's at the governmental level. As a consumer, I have the power to
choose what I eat. Maybe I should make a concerted effort to eat fish from
sustainable stocks. So no blue-fin tuna then. Does that mean no tuna at all?
Apparently not, yellow-fin and skipjack tuna are OK so long as they are net
caught or line caught and dolphin friendly. Trawling through the listings of
fish to eat and fish not to eat, I found myself increasingly confused. It's not
just what kind of fish but how it was caught and where.
And then my doctor added mercury levels to the mix. He gave me the good
old advice that I should eat more fish, and oily fish in particular, adding as
an aside that I should avoid fish with high mercury levels. Which fish is that
I said? Here's a rule of thumb, he replied, avoid the big fish and choose the
smaller fish.
Standing at the fishmongers it was all too complicated. Surely buying
food should not be so difficult. In the end I decided to take the old-fashioned
route. So I asked the fishmonger which fish he recommended? Which is the
freshest and the tastiest? And I followed his advice.
