"Sustainable fish" news and stories

Chefs Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver talk the talk about sustainable fishing, and even appear on the BBC show "The Big Fish Fight," where they go to the source, and supposedly walk the walk. But, report the editors at TheStir, both chefs have been caught red-handed serving unstainable fish at their restaurants. What were the two star chefs putting on the plate that caused the ruckus? Find out at TheStir.

Watch episodes of BBC's "The Big Fish Fight" online.

Legal Sea Foods' "Blacklisted" dinner just turned a shade lighter with news from Monterey Bay Aquarium yesterday. Current updates to the organization's Seafood Watch guide moved seafood favorites like Atlantic haddock and Gulf of Maine cod from the red "Avoid" column to the "Good Alternative" and "Best Choice" lists after the most recent U.S. stock assessments showed signs of recovery.

"Science isn't static, so we're reflecting these changes in our recommendations to consumers and the major buyers we work with," said Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly, Seafood Watch director in a press release.

The good news is given with an asterisk. Fishing gear counts.

Atlantic haddock, once listed in the "Avoid" column but now considered almost fully recovered off the East Coast, was given a "Best Choice" stamp when caught by hook-and-line methods, and received a "Good Alternative" ranking when trawl-caught.

Atlantic cod stocks may still be recovering from their collapse in the 1970s, but encouraging population counts now means Gulf of Maine hook-and-line Atlantic cod will be given a "Good Alternative" ranking. (A point, Roger Berkowitz of Legal Sea Foods was planning to make at the dinner later this month.)

We were pretty excited to hear the news that "The Big Fish Fight," a U.K.-based show featuring superstar chefs Jamie Oliver, Heston Blumenthal and Gordon Ramsay was taking on the dark side of the fishing industry. But the news got even juicier yesterday when bad-boy Gordon Ramsay told The Daily Mail that while in Costa Rica filming his episode on the illegal shark-fin trade, things got downright harrowing for the chef when he got close to a Taiwanese crew with a full load of fins and a stash of cocaine. The story continued to be a nail biter when he crossed paths with a shady character named Enrique, who is thought to be the third largest supplier of shark fins in the world.

The experience includes cars with ominously darkened windows, pointed steely rifles and chilling threats of bodily harm. In the backdrop? The sheer gruesomeness of sharks being shocked with electric prods, their fins sliced from their bodies, and then being thrown back into the sea to die.

"At one [point], I managed to shake off the people who were keeping us away, ran up some stairs to a rooftop and looked down to see thousands and thousands of fins, drying on rooftops for as far as the eye could see. When I got back downstairs, they tipped a barrel of petrol over me," Ramsay told The Daily Mail.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium's free Seafood Watch app just got enhanced with a nifty new feature: Project FishMap. The idea is to give you eaters a chance to spread some sustainable seafood love by giving a public nod to restaurants and markets that are making an effort to source their fish thoughtfully.

LA Magazine deems it a GPS for fish, and we agree.

Press the "locate" button on the app, and you'll pull up restaurants like Oleana in Cambridge, which got a pat on the back for serving ocean-friendly seafood such as mussels and striped bass; or Esteban Restaurant in Monterey (a Seafood Watch partner), which snagged some smooches for serving items like farmed clams, Pacific halibut, mussels and oysters.

While the list of restaurants and markets is on the slim side right now (the app was just launched Tuesday), Seafood Watch is hoping users will get busy placing push pins in locales all over the country when they spot a "Best Choice" or "Good Alternative" seafood item. With over 325,000 users, we think the list will be chock-full in no time, earning participants badges like "Sushi Master" or "Pioneer".

If you look solely at the fish we consume here in America, we're a predictable crowd. Since at least 2001, shrimp, canned tuna and salmon have placed first, second and third on the "Top 10 Consumed Seafoods" list published by the National Fisheries Institute every single year. Yawners. (Plus, tuna used in canning, other than albacore and skipjack, is overfished.) But according to a Wall Street Journal story, chefs are increasingly turning to undervalued species as a way to keep the menu interesting, and possibly quell demands placed on other overfished species.

Take cuttlefish, for example, which is cut into strips and paired with a flatiron steak at Miami's Area 31, while sheepshead (a fish known for its human-like teeth) is on the board at nearby AltaMare. Other chefs are turning to finfish like pompano, golden tilefish, triggerfish or hogfish. The BP oil spill played a role in the fish swapping as well. At New Orleans-based Cafe Atchafalaya, North Carolina rockfish was used as a substitute for their traditional redfish and crawfish-stuffed flounder.

"In general, expanding the base of fish from which we choose from is a very good idea," says Tim Fitzgerald, marine scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund. "One caveat, though, is if we switch a lot of our sourcing to less common or overfished species, or those that are farmed in destructive ways, that's not a good thing. But if we can identify species of fish that have healthy populations and can withstand the extra demand, that's wonderful."