More Sushi - the sustainable kind - please

Being a metropolitan city with a sushi restaurant on nearly every street corner, why is Vancouver not full of greener sushi restaurants? Last week, the news about a Seattle sushi restaurant going fully sustainable started a buzz in Twitterland and in blog space. Mashiko has a wonderful looking menu and if they’re doing their bit for the ocean, I would not hesitate to choose this place when I’m next in Seattle. But I have to ask why the sustainable sushi restaurant is not the norm?

What am I REALLY eating?
First, see what’s good and what’s bad. A guide or suggestion list of sustainable seafood is a useful tool to take to the restaurant. In Canada, the Sea Choice Guide is an excellent source of information. In the US, the Monterey Bay aquarium has a well-established Seafood Watch guide. For the UK, there is the Marine Conservation Society information. For Continental Europe WWF has a listing of guides.

Is a tuna a tuna? The confusing issue of labelling
It’s not only the species and types of fish we have to watch but there is a big problem around labelling. According to Ocean Wise, Canada has a rather weak seafood labelling law. A name such as “snapper” is utterly useless as it covers thousands of different types of fish (some may be perfectly good to eat while others may be endangered). The Bluefin Tuna, a species in the news recently, is just one of many types of tuna. When a diner orders “toro” at the sushi restaurant, s/he doesn’t know if it contains Bluefin or another type of tuna. The David Suzuki Foundation is spearheading a campaign to change the law.

Time and again, the customer is always right
The movement is consumer-driven. The Ocean Wise programme by the Vancouver Aquarium is an example of a marine conservation organisation working with restaurants to promote sustainable fish. The programme helps restaurants in making sustainable options available to their clientele. Approved items will have the Ocean Wise logo displayed on the menu and this allows clientele to easily identify the most sustainable options.
Customers/diners enquiring what they’re eating leads to restaurants demanding sustainable fish from their suppliers. This in turn leads to suppliers changing their stock priorities. Diners see positive choices, avoid the non-approved ones and the restaurants don’t find it worth their while to have the unsustainable options. This alters their purchasing choices from their suppliers.

More positive choices please
So what about the lower-end places (the takeaways, eat-all-you-cans and the everyday hole-in-the-wall operations)? Ocean Wise is anticipating a first big mid-cost sushi restaurant on the major massive sushi hub of Robson Street to get on board. Although the programme started with the more high-end restaurants, there is greater demand by the wider sushi-eating public and surely, the restaurants must be taking note.

Below is a video of a demonstration by a famous Japanese sushi chef, very much a fixture here in Vancouver. Chef Tojo shows how to make a sushi that looks mouthwatering but the concept is simple – using fresh, local and sustainable fish.

Fish decline - Not just flavour of the month

It's quite heartening to see all the buzz about declining fish numbers generated by the very highly publicised reception of the movie documentary The End of the Line and the awareness around World Oceans Day. Everything from the smallest grassroots movements to the highly-publicised antics of celebrities (including the most salacious naked fish stunts and protests by washed up stars) have raised a great deal of awareness and that can only be good.

Lets hope that this is not a flavour of the month, like so many before it. The celebrities may have their spotlight with their fish stunts (for today’s attention-seeking famous set, fish is where it’s at whereas last year, it was babies, leaked out sex videos and stays at rehab). But once the issue of fish depletion is out of the headlines, will the public forget and resume eating bluefin sandwiches?

Less fish, great disasters
For everyone, regardless of their fish-eating status, the plight of the world’s fish is serious. Overfishing (combined with pollution, climate change, inefficient production procedures and uncontrolled growth of industry) has created a dangerous scenario. Nothing happens in the oceans without substantial knock-on effects. The entire marine ecosystem will be affected – not to mention the ecosystem on land. Fish are not only products for consumption but their health is the barometer of the ocean's health.

Healthy fish stocks are vital for communities, their employment, their culture and their very survival. In Canada, decimation of the cod fishery on the Atlantic coast has resulted in the loss of 27,000 jobs. The British Columbia salmon stocks which had sustained and facilitated some of North America’s most complex Aboriginal societies are now “missing”. All over the world, social and economic relationships are under pressure because of what is happening to the oceans.

Fish is NOT just posh nosh
The London A-listers may be cut up by the notion of Bluefin Tuna running out at Nobu (Heavens, they may have to resort to eating Pollock!) but for the world, the issues are a bit less trivial. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that 950 million people worldwide rely on fish and shellfish for more than one-third of their animal protein. Fish is the main source of protein for 2.6 billion people according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Report by World Fish Center states that Fishery is Peru’s fourth biggest exporter. Senegal, with a GDP of just $1,000, relies on fishery for a fifth of its total export and for the average Senegalese, fish make up 43% of dietary protein. When over a sixth of the world’s population suffers from chronic hunger, the importance of protecting a vital food source is clear.

Making the choice for sustainable fish
There are various guides to inform the consumer on which fish to avoid and which to consume. The British Marine Stewardship Council has the Fish to Eat. In the US, the Monterey Bay Aquarium produces the Seafood Watch. In Canada, the Sea Choice Guide uses the familiar red, yellow and green categories. It sounds all so simple but solutions often are.