This week, the New York TImes ran the Op-Ed How to Handle an Invasive Species? Eat It by Taras Grescoe, who is author of a new book about ethically eating seafood. "One of the great unsung epics of the modern era is the worldwide diaspora of marine invasive species," explains the author. Jellyfish, Asian carp, cholera bacteria, seaweed, diatoms, clams, water fleas, shrimps, and others are invading waters around the world. Many of them find their new homes via ship ballast water. But to think the problems associated with marine invasive species are something new would be a shifting baseline.
There is nothing new about such invasions. The first recorded case dates to 1245, when Norse voyagers brought a soft-shelled clam to the shores of the North Sea on the sides of their wooden ships. What is new is the rate of introduction and the extent of impact -- 80 percent of world trade is conducted by ship, and a new marine invader is now recorded in the Mediterranean every four weeks.
The best and most obvious solution is that cargo ships empty and refill their ballast tanks at sea, rather in nearshore waters. But Grescoe quickly gives up on this idea since it costs the shipping industry money and the industry already lobbies against any laws that try to minimize marine bioinvasions. Instead, he makes the ever-popular suggestion that we try to manage the oceans with our stomachs. We should simply begin to eat Asian carp and sesame oiled jellies.
Returning from a fact-finding mission to China, a professor from Japan's National Fisheries University offered up 10 different recipes for preparing Nomura's jellyfish. "Making them a popular food," he told a Japanese newspaper, "is the best way to solve the problem."
But is it?
Comments
Making them a popular food, in my opinion, is a way to promote the value of invasive species. And that is a dangerous business.
Posted by: jebyrnes | February 22, 2008 8:38 AM
Excellent point and excellent post!
Posted by: Jennifer L. Jacquet | February 22, 2008 8:52 AM
The theme for the week seems to be "depressing solutions for pressing problems."
"We can't force the shipping industry to change, so I guess we'll just have to develop a global appetite for invasive species."
"We can't force the fishing industry to change, so I guess we'll just have to hope that the Australians will figure out a way to breed bluefin tuna in indoor tanks." (Suggestion made in The Bluefin in Peril in Scientific American this week.)
I wish we still had enough hope that we could address the root cause of these issues rather than just shrugging our shoulders and coming up with last-ditch efforts.
Posted by: knwd | February 22, 2008 8:54 AM
Grescoe's quoted suggestion ignores the crucial issue: a solution has to be demand-driven. Specifically--Jellyfish are disgusting to eat.
I know, because I've eaten them. For an office Christmas party in New York several years ago, my (Japanese) employers took us out for a lavish Chinese dinner. Those of us who were junior on the totem pole sat at the other side of the round table from the higher-ups. Dishes were brought out continuously and en masse, and we didn't always hear what each was.
A platter of thin-cut, translucent strips in a yellowish sauce: I hazarded some kind of cellophane noodle in maybe a mustard-based broth kind of thing. I took some and ate it.
It was awful, awful, awful. Astringent and bitter, like eating vinegared antibacterial strips. Found out what it was. Try anything twice, I say; but I've made an exception for this slimy, disgusting 'food.' Never again.
Grescoe should at least do his homework, nauseating though it may be, if he's going to suggest something this boneheaded.
Posted by: ridin | February 22, 2008 10:24 AM
I suppose in this day of a globalized economy, we could always export jellyfish to markets where they don't find them "awful, awful, awful" (which is also what I would expect, but then my tastebuds are more or less limited to breakfast cereal and Sour Patch Kids).
Posted by: Jennifer L. Jacquet | February 22, 2008 10:32 AM
I had seen this before, but the talk of jellyfish brought it back to mind:
http://www.galactic-guide.com/articles/2U37.html
Of course, the "stinging bits" will have to be removed for most of these uses (especially if you want to use them for use #0352 - you can't complain about "just lying there" if you don't remove them).
More seriously, though, I agree that once you get a fishery established, there is a tendency (among certain circles) to want to keep that fishery alive (note the shift in perceptions of alewife following the establishment of a salmon fishery in the Great Lakes).
Posted by: Umlud | February 22, 2008 11:16 AM
Umlud, really fun link and a great point. Kate Wing at NRDC also expresses her skepticism at whether eating invasives will mitigate the bioinvasion problem.
Posted by: Jennifer L. Jacquet | February 23, 2008 9:05 AM