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A Culinary Crisis

By voltagegate on March 22, 2007.

According to a recent international assessment, overfishing has brought 20 of the world's 162 species of grouper - a culinary delight around the world - to close to extinction for comfort:

Eight species previously were listed by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) as under extinction threat, and the new assessment proposes adding 12 more.

A panel of 20 experts from 10 nations determined the extinction threat facing groupers, which are the basis of the multimillion-dollar live reef food fish trade based in Hong Kong and comprise one of the most valuable groups of commercial fishes in chilled fish markets of the tropics and sub-tropics. Around the world, consumers pay up to $50 per kilogram for grouper.

"This shows that over-fishing could decimate another major food and economic resource for humans, similar to the loss of the cod stocks off New England and Canada that has put thousands of people out of work," said Roger McManus, a senior director of Conservation International's Marine Program.

I worked in the restaurant industry for well over a decade, spending a short stint at a seafood market in Annapolis. We sold fish from across the world (especially with the Chesapeake in such bad shape for harvest), and I know there was very little thought of where the fish came from or where it was going, for that matter. You slap the fish on the table, gut it, fillet it and move on to the next. That's kind of the way it is in the restaurant industry, you really don't have time to think of the implications. It would have been interesting to look into it at the time, years ago.

Tags
conservation
ecology

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