Friday Airing of the Grievances: Chilean Sea Bass
Friday has traditionally been a goofy day in the blogging world. I think it started when some people afflicted one another with supposedly "cute" pictures of their cats and dubbed it "Friday cat blogging," or something. Regardless, I don't have a cat, but I'm all for using Friday to devote time to a special topic: the little stuff that's been annoying / frustrating / pissing me off this week.
We'll call it the Friday Airing of the Grievances. And it goes something like this:
You know how Chilean Sea Bass is endangered, right? I mean everyone knows it. You hear it all the time from the smart set. I heard it last night twice on one of the new restaurant reality shows. Since everyone knows it, no one ever bothers to actually check it out.
Look, I know "endangered" is a very sexy word which shows how attuned you are with mother-Gaia and all that. But "endangered species" has a real meaning, and Chilean Sea Bass doesn't fit.
You can still be as environmentally conscious as you like by declining to order it in restaurants. There's reason to do that, but it's not based on the thing being "endangered." It's because it's overfished, and its deep water habitat is very difficult to regulate. In other words it's in about the same situation as Atlantic Cod, only not quite as bad.
So why are all the environmentally aware hipsters all alarmed about Chilean Sea Bass, and not the humble Atlantic Cod? Probably because the former is found on trendy menus in fine-dining restaurants where egotists and poseurs love to show off, while the later is associated with breading and frying and other déclassé means of dining.
The thing that disturbs me most about this is that it's an issue which will never be seriously addressed by declining to order one particular kind of fish after being alerted by Greenpeace or the like. If demand for Chilean Sea Bass goes down, consumers will just shift to another kind of fish which may have just as many, if not more, reasons for concern.
The problem is one of those tragedy of the commons issues you might have learned about in Econ 101. This is a serious problem which cannot and will not ever be effectively addressed by simply extending the practices of species conservation to the seas. Unless you decide we should only eat farm raised fish and leave the poor oceans alone (and among upper-scale diners who currently sneer at being served farm-raised salmon, how likely is that?), you're still part of the "problem" no matter how environmentally aware you think you are.
To clarify my grievance here, it's not the concern itself that so annoys me. It's the demonstrable insincerity of the concern. Try to engage these people in a discussion about how one carries the concept of sustainable seafood into international waters and their eyes would glaze over. Declining Chilean Sea Bass is more often than not a posture - a boast of one's environmental piety. It's not a sign of someone who has given more than token thought to the problem they pretend to be aware of.
So the next time someone at a fancy gathering blathers something about how they refuse to order Chilean Sea Bass, smack them upside the head with a fresh Cod. Or, if you don't have a Cod handy, tell them you've discovered a terrific alternative to Chilean Sea Bass - Patagonian Toothfish. Tell them to ask for it by name.
We'll call it the Friday Airing of the Grievances. And it goes something like this:
You know how Chilean Sea Bass is endangered, right? I mean everyone knows it. You hear it all the time from the smart set. I heard it last night twice on one of the new restaurant reality shows. Since everyone knows it, no one ever bothers to actually check it out.
Look, I know "endangered" is a very sexy word which shows how attuned you are with mother-Gaia and all that. But "endangered species" has a real meaning, and Chilean Sea Bass doesn't fit.
You can still be as environmentally conscious as you like by declining to order it in restaurants. There's reason to do that, but it's not based on the thing being "endangered." It's because it's overfished, and its deep water habitat is very difficult to regulate. In other words it's in about the same situation as Atlantic Cod, only not quite as bad.
So why are all the environmentally aware hipsters all alarmed about Chilean Sea Bass, and not the humble Atlantic Cod? Probably because the former is found on trendy menus in fine-dining restaurants where egotists and poseurs love to show off, while the later is associated with breading and frying and other déclassé means of dining.
The thing that disturbs me most about this is that it's an issue which will never be seriously addressed by declining to order one particular kind of fish after being alerted by Greenpeace or the like. If demand for Chilean Sea Bass goes down, consumers will just shift to another kind of fish which may have just as many, if not more, reasons for concern.
The problem is one of those tragedy of the commons issues you might have learned about in Econ 101. This is a serious problem which cannot and will not ever be effectively addressed by simply extending the practices of species conservation to the seas. Unless you decide we should only eat farm raised fish and leave the poor oceans alone (and among upper-scale diners who currently sneer at being served farm-raised salmon, how likely is that?), you're still part of the "problem" no matter how environmentally aware you think you are.
To clarify my grievance here, it's not the concern itself that so annoys me. It's the demonstrable insincerity of the concern. Try to engage these people in a discussion about how one carries the concept of sustainable seafood into international waters and their eyes would glaze over. Declining Chilean Sea Bass is more often than not a posture - a boast of one's environmental piety. It's not a sign of someone who has given more than token thought to the problem they pretend to be aware of.
So the next time someone at a fancy gathering blathers something about how they refuse to order Chilean Sea Bass, smack them upside the head with a fresh Cod. Or, if you don't have a Cod handy, tell them you've discovered a terrific alternative to Chilean Sea Bass - Patagonian Toothfish. Tell them to ask for it by name.
Posted by Doug Williams on
Friday March 20, 2009 at 10:34am
Well, that's a relief. It turns out that the endangered Chilean sea bass that Al Gore and others dined on during the rehearsal dinner for his daughter's wedding were not so endangered after all (though the particular entrees in question might choose to quibble). While the Chilean sea bass (aka Patagonian toothfish) species as a whole is clinging to survival as desperately as the McCain campaign, it turns out that the ones invited to the Gore table were special:
I'm sure that further investigation will show that the Marine Stewardship Council regulations also require that the fish enjoy government-funded universal health and dental benefits, lifetime education in government schools, and are harvested only by electric hybrid and bio-diesel equipped trawlers. Though not native to the U.S., the toothfish were here as "guest workers" and were happy to pay for a better wedding after Gore personally assured them that there was no "controlling legal authority" and that it "was for the (my) children."
I also look for the Gores to announce they are purchasing "tarpon offsets" to counter their conspicuous consumption.