| Question number one about Gulf seafood right now is the safety. Some feel its safe and trust that the government is doing a great job testing it before it comes to market. Given the various government cover ups going on right now about the toxicity of the dispersants and the safety of the working conditions for cleanup workers (who are forbidden by BP to wear protective gear brought from home), I'm not sure I trust that. But I'm also not a scientist, nor do I have any evidence that the fish isn't safe. So that's not my big issue.
Those who live in the Gulf say that fishing is their way of life. That I don't doubt. Generations before them made their living fishing and the entire economy of the region depends on fishing (and drilling for oil). I've even heard that towns miles away from the coast are losing business they relied on of tourists driving through on their way to vacations, having meals or buying gas as they passed through. That's a tragedy. But consider this: If a species - or an ecosystem - is at risk of being wiped out permanently, once it's gone, those fisherman are going to lose their ways of life then. AND the fish will be gone. So, as unjust as it is to ask entire fishing villages to change, isn't it better to do that BEFORE the fish are all dead? Is giving fishermen license to continue fishing until they've killed all of the fish worth the few extra years they get to continue fishing and we get to continue eating seafood?
Right now I'm speaking in generalizations. And I've got one very specific issue that I know something about and then I'll admit that my knowledge is much more generalized about the rest. From my research of seafood in general - not specific to the Gulf - a very small percent of seafood is actually fished sustainably. Even when a specific population of fish isn't in danger yet, often it is being fished in ways that are horribly destructive to its ecosystem, resulting in bycatch of species whose population numbers are not quite so robust. The sea urchins that are sustainably harvested by hand by divers that are available in a restaurant near my house are the minority by a longshot.
The type of seafood I am specifically informed about is shrimp. And that's not nothing, given that it's the #1 most popular seafood in America by far. Much of our shrimp comes from abroad, and much of it is farmed. But if you're going for local, wild-caught stuff, it's likely coming from the Gulf. And I have a story to share about shrimpers on the Gulf, who I can only characterize as behaving like thugs.
For each pound of wild-caught shrimp you find on your plate, imagine ten pounds of dead marine life to go with it. That's bycatch - other species caught in shrimper's nets by accident, then dumped overboard, dead and dying. Shrimp is caught by trawling - dragging enormous nets along the ocean floor, and flattening anything in its way. Imagine bulldozing an entire rainforest just to catch one species of bird. That's what they are doing. One victim of this is the Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle, an endangered species. Here's the amazing story of why this animal isn't extinct already, and what shrimpers have done to - in the words of one shrimper - make these turtles "go to hell." (To read this full story, check out the book Eco Barons.)
The Kemp's Ridley sea turtle caught a lucky break in 1981 when Carole Allen convinced her daughter's teacher to let the kids go on a field trip to an operation that was helping bring the species back from the brink of extinction. While on the field trip, she learned that the program was set to be cut by the Reagan administration. In response, the class and then the whole school began collecting donations to save the turtles. A Houston newspaper reported on their efforts and the campaign went national. This was enough to save the program until 1988 - enough time to help literally thousands of turtles.
That's when Allen's efforts changed to focus on the shrimp industry. According to the National Research Council, shrimpers were the number one threat to sea turtles. The good news is that there's a fairly simple solution for this. It's not a complete fix - trawling is an atrocious and unacceptable way to catch fish - but it's a start. It's called the TED: Turtle Excluder Device. A TED is made up of two metal bars sewn into the nets. When a turtle hits the bars, it pops out of the net. Shrimp don't get so lucky - the TED allows no more than 5% of them to escape. And, because of the reduced bycatch when a TED is used, the catch is "cleaner" and therefore has about the same value as a slightly larger catch without a TED.
First the shrimpers said TEDs were too heavy. The government made a lighter one. Then they called it too bulky. The government made a collapsible one. The government gave TEDs out for free in a voluntary program beginning in 1982. Some 5% of shrimpers took them up on it. Allen began lobbying to make TEDs mandatory.
In 1988, the National Marine Fisheries Service made TEDs mandatory. Shrimpers sued. As a result, the date the law went into effect was pushed back to July 1, 1989. To protest this, 200 shrimp trawlers blockaded all shipping in Houston for 36 hours. President George H. W. Bush suspended the requirement to use TEDs.
At this point, Allen sued - and won. TEDs were mandatory again. The marine fisheries service reported 90% compliance. Allen wondered what was up. After all, dead turtles continued washing up on shore. She and the Sea Turtle Restoration Project sued under the Endangered Species Act to stop all shrimping until TED enforcement was improved. Then, the Humane Society did an undercover investigation, revealing that four in ten shrimpers removed the TEDs once at sea or sewed them shut.
At this point, the shrimping industry began mafia-style tactics, mutilating turtles to show their outrage. A temporary ban on shrimping was put in place for eight weeks in 1997 and suddenly the number of dead turtles dropped dramatically to practically zero. A full decade had passed with government inaction and poor enforcement of the TED mandate, and now Governor George W. Bush was running for President. Protesters followed him around in turtle costumes on his campaign, and the turtle advocates put two full-page ads in the New York Times saying "If Governor Bush doesn't save the Texas sea turtle maybe President Gore will." That worked. Finally the TED requirement was enforced, bringing compliance up to 75%.
The final result? As of 2007, there were 128 Kemp's ridley sea turtle nests (a record!) in Texas and more in Mexico. But now the turtles have a new challenge.
This spring, reports began surfacing of an increase in dead turtles. Could it be oil? No. At least, not in those first weeks after the spill, before the oil reached the turtles. The dead turtles suffocated, as turtles do when caught in shrimping nets. Remember back to right after the oil spill. The shrimpers went out for a very short shrimping season, to catch what they could get before the oil wrecked their careers. Good chance many of them removed their TEDs.
These shrimpers are receiving the nation's sympathy right now, and I do sympathize in some ways. But I don't think that the answer is eating more Gulf seafood. If anything, now that the ecosystem in the Gulf is stressed and will be for a long time, encouraging fishermen to kill more fish is the last thing we should do. |
