Here’s what we’re up against, straight from the pages (or at least the Web site) of Time magazine:
“Farmed salmon is never as good as wild salmon,” writes Josh Ozersky, in a piece entitled, How I Learned to Love Farmed Fish. “Everybody knows that. The taste is duller, the flesh flabbier, the finish forgettable. If I could, I would only eat wild salmon. But I can't in good conscience, any more than I can keep eating wild bluefin tuna.”
Ozersky’s conscience may be overworked, but the area of his brain devoted to intellectual curiosity must be quite well rested.
How else would he come to believe that there are sustainability issues related to human consumption of wild salmon? For the record, Alaska salmon is one of only three wild harvested species to earn the designation “best of the best” on the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “super green” list. (The other two are hook-caught albacore and Pacific sardines.)
The vast majority of wild salmon consumed by Americans is Alaskan.
Granted, salmon runs along the West Coast are facing real challenges. However, the stocks are closely monitored and quotas are low enough that fishing doesn’t threaten to make things worse.
And don’t lump the Fraser in with other western rivers: The sockeye run there eclipsed 34 million this week, the strongest in a century.
I was doubly disappointed to learn that Ozersky is a food writer, a group that I have found more likely than the rank and file of reporters to consider sustainability on a case-by-case basis.
Ironically, given his apparent disdain for research, Ozersky in the same essay criticizes as “lazy” and “unimaginative” the use of the term “Frankenfish” to describe genetically modified salmon.
But at least it is accurate.
Thank you for your time.
Jerry Fraser
Editor & Publisher, National Fisherman
www.nationalfisherman.com
