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Fallbrook Avocado Festival
Fallbrook, Calif.
April 17
Pebble Beach Food & Wine Pebble Beach, Calif.
April 28-May 1
Cooking for Solutions Monterey Bay Aquarium
May 20-22
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| The World's Oceans and Sustainable Seafood |
We love seafood. Salmon, halibut, clams and the like taste great poached,
 | | Courtesy of Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute |
steamed, roasted, grilled and fried. Seafood is healthy, too. New government recommendations encourage more fish consumption.
But there's a big problem. The growing global appetite for seafood means humans are fishing some species to alarmingly low levels, including some tuna and salmon populations.
Seventy percent of the world's fisheries are being harvested at their capacity or are in decline, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a crusader for sustainable seafood through its Seafood Watch guide. The guide lists which fish are good and bad from a sustainability standpoint, and explains why.
The aquarium also notes humans have removed as much as 90% of the large predatory fish such as shark, swordfish and cod from the world's oceans. Bluefin tuna, Chilean sea bass, and orange roughy are among the other populations considered overfished.
"Ocean fish are wildlife - the last such creatures that we hunt on a large scale. And while the sheer size of the oceans is awesome, there are many signs
 | | Courtesy of Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute |
that we have found their limits," the aquarium says on its website.
Yet, as chef Rick Moonen says: "This isn't to say that you should avoid eating fish." There are fisheries being run in a sustainable way, including Alaska and the West Coasts of the continental United States as well as Canada.
Moonen, an authority on sustainable seafood, offers these suggestions for eating sustainable fish in the excellent cookbook he co-authored with Roy Finamore, Fish Without a Doubt (Houghton Mifflin Co., 2008):
- Look for fish that are caught by longline, hook-and-line, and traps.
 | | (c) Monterey Bay Aquarium/Randy Wilder |
These methods "are much less detrimental to the ocean environment." - Choose farmed seafood like catfish, tilapia, oysters, clams and mussels. Such farmed fish do "little to damage the ecosystem."
- Avoid fish raised through net-pen farming, like salmon. Such fish farming - reminiscent of cattle feedlots - "poses major issues for the environment."
- Choose fish that are caught with minimal "bycatch," the unwanted or unremarkable marine fish that's accidentally caught in nets and then discarded.
By following such practices, we can enjoy our seafood while knowing that we're doing all we can to ensure strong fish populations.
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| Our Favorite Sustainable Seafood Recipes |
Linguine with Clams
Recipe from Fish Without a Doubt by Rick Moonen & Roy Finamore, copyright @ 2008. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co. All rights reserved. |
Q&A with Our Featured Chef
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Dory Ford
Aqua Terra Culinary
Pebble Beach, CA
(831) 657-9790
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When he's traveling in some remote spot on the globe, Dory Ford likes to sample unusual dishes: like alpaca or guinea pig in Peru, or curried goat in Fiji. But when the California chef is back in his professional kitchen, he's all about preparing healthy and seasonal dishes and using sustainable ingredients like West Coast seafood.
 | | Photo by Topher Mueller, Alma Street Photography |
Ford is chef-owner of Aqua Terra Culinary, a Pebble Beach, Calif., firm which handles catering, event planning, and menu consulting. He grew up in British Columbia eating local and sustainable ingredients, like the mushrooms he and his family picked or the oysters they harvested along the shoreline. Before his current business venture, Ford was the executive chef for Bon Appétit Management Co. at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He was a leader in the aquarium's Seafood Watch guide, which lists various fish species from a sustainability standpoint.
How do you define sustainable seafood?
Sustainability is much more than preserving the fishery. It's about transportation; if you're flying spot prawns to Japan from the West Coast of North America, you're using up copious amounts of jet fuel. It's also about the economy; I'm sustaining the local economy by purchasing West Coast fish. And there are health considerations. By serving healthy products, we're sustaining the health of the people we're feeding. It's for those same reasons I like California extra virgin olive oil.
How did you become interested in sustainability? | | Courtesy of Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute |
I grew up in British Columbia and was taught to eat in a sustainable manner. But we never called it sustainable. We'd go out salmon fishing or harvest oysters. We picked berries and chanterelle mushrooms and a variety of other local items in their season. It was a way of life as opposed to a conscious effort - before the word sustainable was ever created, or the word organic was ever introduced into the vocabulary.
The education I went through during the 4-1/2 years I spent at the Monterey Bay Aquarium really raised my awareness. Sustainability is nothing new. It's the way we used to cook.
How did you become interested in cooking?
I was the youngest of four kids. The youngest is always trying to get attention. It started with baking in the house and cooking. People would say, 'This is really good.' I started off simple: cookies and baked goods, using my mother and aunt's recipes. At school when I was in sixth grade, I taught a cooking class to the first graders. We made cupcakes and other simple recipes that I had become practiced at.
Later, when I was in middle and high school, cooking for the family became one of my assigned chores. I cooked meatloaf, casseroles, chicken stew, braised meats, and more economical home-style meals. But it was always nutritious and balanced.
How would you characterize your philosophy toward cooking?
My menus are seasonally driven and change constantly. I have ADD
 | | Photo by Topher Mueller, Alma Street Photography |
(Attention-Deficit Disorder), and cooking is a profession that has a natural draw for people of my nature. I'm not going to do well in an environment where a menu is written today and stays in place for eight months. Having my menus seasonally driven so they have to switch and change is good for me and keeps me very involved in the process.
Also, my food is healthy by nature. At Aqua Terra Culinary, we primarily cook from scratch. We don't rely on canned or prepared products to create our dishes. Even when I eat by myself, my meals are balanced and healthful; they're based on vegetables, lean protein, and a reasonable amount of a complex carbohydrate. You won't see empty carbs on my plate ... nor in the dishes I serve my clients. You'll see a vegetable coulis or vinaigrette as opposed to a heavy butter sauce. If I am going to deep fry, for the bulk of the applications I'll use a healthy extra virgin olive oil.
What's an example of a sustainable seafood recipe where you use California Olive Ranch extra virgin olive oil?
Battered fish for fish and chips, as it is healthy fat and adds a complexity to the flavor profile
What do you like to do when you're not in kitchen?
I like to travel and I'm an avid SCUBA diver. I like to learn about different cultures and experience their foods. My trips most recently have included Peru, Belize and Guatemala, and before that Fiji, Tahiti, Christmas Island, Jamaica, Mexico, as well as Indonesia and the island of Sulawesi. I like to go to the most remote places that aren't really touristy. If I'm in the open public market experiencing authentic cuisine in a foreign country and I'm the only white guy there, I feel like I've accomplished something.
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