The Whitefish's Burden
By PAUL GREENBERG
- AS the first chill of winter descends on the Northeast and the traditional cold-weather codfish run starts in earnest, fishermen and scientists are again at odds, debating whether the once fantastically abundant North Atlantic codfish populations are finally rebuilding — or hurtling inextricably toward collapse.
But even as regulators parse a recent gloomy assessment of Gulf of Maine codfish populations, the entire question of the commercial future of cod may soon become moot. Cod and other wild-caught whitefish, for centuries a staple of the Western diet, are on the way out.
Not long ago, any kind of colorless, neutral-tasting fish product sold in the United States or Europe ("whitefish" in fishing industry parlance) was made out of one of several wild species of the taxonomic order Gadiformes: cod, pollock, haddock, hake, take your pick. Over the eons, these fish came to congregate in the cooler latitudes in large enough numbers for fishing to transform itself from an artisan practice into an industry.
Largely thanks to the gadiforms, fish itself was also transformed — from a regionally specific menu item into a nameless transnational protein product. But beginning in the 1990s, right around the time the term "outsourcing" was entering the vernacular, two new fish appeared from the developing world that are remaking the whitefish portfolio.
The first, the tilapia, is well known in the United States, though most people don't quite know what it is (a fish farmer once told me the first time he heard the word, he thought it was a stomach disease). The name spans an entire genus: the Nile and Mozambique species, the ones most commonly used for cultivation, hail from Africa (though three-quarters of all tilapia imported into the United States come from China and Taiwan).
The technology for breeding them comes from many sources, ranging from food-security-conscious Israel to former Peace Corps volunteers who saw how the fish could be thrown into stagnant, algae-infested ponds in developing countries and miraculously eat up all that algae and turn it into protein. The fact that the fish can go from egg to adult in nine months makes its appeal obvious.
The second fish is the Pangasius, a catfish-like creature endemic to Vietnam. American catfish farmers temporarily drove it from the market in the '90s, insisting that it not be labeled "catfish" at all. But in Europe, Pangasius is as omnipresent as the tilapia is here, and equally confounding. "Qu'est-ce qu'un Panga?" or "What is a Pangasius?" asked the title of a recent French documentary.
Like the tilapia, it is a freshwater fish. Also, like the tilapia, it grows quickly. But Pangasius's special talent is its ability to live in close quarters. One of the limiting factors in freshwater fish farming is the amount of dissolved oxygen in a pond. Costly aeration systems must churn oxygen into the waters of a pond or else the number of fish must be reduced.
Pangasius don't seem to mind it so much when oxygen gets tight. In those moments the fish push their faces above the surface and open their mouths. Pangasius, it turns out, can breathe air.
This irrepressible biological trait (combined with cheap Asian labor and lax environmental standards) has allowed Pangasius to undercut Italian rainbow trout farmers and Greek branzino farmers and has even presaged a re-entry into the American market with the mysterious new name "swai" — now the ninth most consumed fish in America.
What's curious about both the tilapia and the Pangasius is that they surged in the Western market when the classic fish of the Western whitefish sandwich were encountering troubles. In the late 1980s and early '90s, the world saw a series of wild whitefish collapses, most notably in the North Sea, the Grand Banks of Canada and the famed Georges Bank off Massachusetts. Today, tilapia and Pangasius often account for more than eight billion pounds of whitefish annually — somewhere between a third to a half of all whitefish production, depending on the vagaries of the wild catch.
So whither whitefish in this next weird century of ours? If I were to bet, I'd say the odds are with the warm-water Asian upstarts. Yes, America still harvests two billion to three billion pounds of Alaskan pollock every year (the keystone species in today's Filet-O-Fish).
And the melting of the polar icecaps may indeed extend the range of the traditional gadiforms to higher latitudes and open hitherto untapped fishing grounds to fishing fleets. But at a certain point heat may dramatically contract the range of the gadiforms on our buns. Which is good news for farmers of tilapia and Pangasius, which seem to grow faster the hotter it gets.
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Largely thanks to the gadiforms, fish itself was also transformed — from a regionally specific menu item into a nameless transnational protein product. But beginning in the 1990s, right around the time the term "outsourcing" was entering the vernacular, two new fish appeared from the developing world that are remaking the whitefish portfolio.
The first, the tilapia, is well known in the United States, though most people don't quite know what it is (a fish farmer once told me the first time he heard the word, he thought it was a stomach disease). The name spans an entire genus: the Nile and Mozambique species, the ones most commonly used for cultivation, hail from Africa (though three-quarters of all tilapia imported into the United States come from China and Taiwan).
The technology for breeding them comes from many sources, ranging from food-security-conscious Israel to former Peace Corps volunteers who saw how the fish could be thrown into stagnant, algae-infested ponds in developing countries and miraculously eat up all that algae and turn it into protein. The fact that the fish can go from egg to adult in nine months makes its appeal obvious.
The second fish is the Pangasius, a catfish-like creature endemic to Vietnam. American catfish farmers temporarily drove it from the market in the '90s, insisting that it not be labeled "catfish" at all. But in Europe, Pangasius is as omnipresent as the tilapia is here, and equally confounding. "Qu'est-ce qu'un Panga?" or "What is a Pangasius?" asked the title of a recent French documentary.
Like the tilapia, it is a freshwater fish. Also, like the tilapia, it grows quickly. But Pangasius's special talent is its ability to live in close quarters. One of the limiting factors in freshwater fish farming is the amount of dissolved oxygen in a pond. Costly aeration systems must churn oxygen into the waters of a pond or else the number of fish must be reduced.
Pangasius don't seem to mind it so much when oxygen gets tight. In those moments the fish push their faces above the surface and open their mouths. Pangasius, it turns out, can breathe air.
This irrepressible biological trait (combined with cheap Asian labor and lax environmental standards) has allowed Pangasius to undercut Italian rainbow trout farmers and Greek branzino farmers and has even presaged a re-entry into the American market with the mysterious new name "swai" — now the ninth most consumed fish in America.
What's curious about both the tilapia and the Pangasius is that they surged in the Western market when the classic fish of the Western whitefish sandwich were encountering troubles. In the late 1980s and early '90s, the world saw a series of wild whitefish collapses, most notably in the North Sea, the Grand Banks of Canada and the famed Georges Bank off Massachusetts. Today, tilapia and Pangasius often account for more than eight billion pounds of whitefish annually — somewhere between a third to a half of all whitefish production, depending on the vagaries of the wild catch.
So whither whitefish in this next weird century of ours? If I were to bet, I'd say the odds are with the warm-water Asian upstarts. Yes, America still harvests two billion to three billion pounds of Alaskan pollock every year (the keystone species in today's Filet-O-Fish).
And the melting of the polar icecaps may indeed extend the range of the traditional gadiforms to higher latitudes and open hitherto untapped fishing grounds to fishing fleets. But at a certain point heat may dramatically contract the range of the gadiforms on our buns. Which is good news for farmers of tilapia and Pangasius, which seem to grow faster the hotter it gets.
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Canada Holds Hearings on Suspected Virus in Salmon
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
- VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The fate of wild salmon is a sensitive topic in the Pacific Northwest and arguments often end up in court in the United States, whether over threats to endangered fish by hydroelectric dams or sea lions swallowing them along their migration routes.
Laurie Niewolny prepared a test for Salmon viruses at a Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife lab in Olympia, Wash.
But on Thursday, a new and particularly bitter dispute began playing out in a very different kind of judicial venue across the Canadian border: a provincial Supreme Court justice held a hearing into questions of whether a potentially lethal virus had been detected in wild Pacific salmon — and whether the Canadian government was responding adequately.
The virus, infectious salmon anemia, has devastated farmed Atlantic salmon stocks in Chile and elsewhere. Some conservationists and scientists have long worried that the virus would spread from farmed fish to wild ones. Those fears escalated in October, when opponents of British Columbia's ambitious farmed Atlantic salmon program, which is heavily promoted by the government, presented lab results they said showed an asymptomatic form of the virus in wild Pacific salmon.
Several more reports of the virus have emerged in the past two months, including a draft paper suggesting that the virus was detected as early as 2002 but not revealed by the government, further angering farming opponents.
The developments have prompted passionate debate on both sides of the border, with reaction veering from accusations that the Canadian government is covering up evidence of the disease to claims by Canadian officials that the reports are based on poor science.
Some scientists have suggested that a strain of the virus may have been present in wild Pacific salmon for many years as a "host pathogen," without causing a disease outbreak, and that it may never pose a risk. It is also unclear whether farmed Atlantic salmon in Canada, raised in net pens along the coast, have contracted the virus or are spreading it. But scientists also note that viruses can mutate, and many say it is imperative to learn more. Officials in both Canada and the United States are planning extensive new testing efforts.
On Thursday, the first of three days of testimony, lawyers for the Canadian government, the province, the aquaculture industry and those opposed to it, as well as conservationists and others, questioned four scientists who have studied infectious salmon anemia and many of the fish tested in British Columbia. The scientists gave highly technical and sometimes contradictory testimony before a full but largely quiet gallery. Some people wore T-shirts that read: "Standing on guard for wild salmon."
The most combative exchanges occurred during testimony by Kristina Miller, the head of molecular genetics for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans laboratory at Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. While previous reports of the virus had surfaced from sources outside the Canadian government, only to have Canadian officials question them, Dr. Miller testified that she also had received positive results when she tested for the virus, known as I.S.A. She said that when she reported her work to a superior last month, she was asked why she had conducted it at all.
"Nobody in the department talked to me about disease or I.S.A. after that," Dr. Miller testified. At one point, she said she was frustrated at what she called "flippant dismissal of pathogens" that could be harmful.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is charged with promoting aquaculture but also with protecting wild fish, a dual mission that some critics say creates conflicts. Agency officials are scheduled to testify in the next two days.
Some of Dr. Miller's research methods were questioned by another virus expert, who participated via teleconference. But that expert, Professor Are Nylund of the University of Bergen in Norway, expressed support for positive results that were found by Frederick S. B. Kibenge, a professor at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Dr. Miller said that while her tests showed that the fish responded to the presence of the virus, it was not clear that it causing harm. She testified that she had recently tested salmon tissue samples from 1986 and that they, too, showed the asymptomatic form of I.S.A.
"We have not established that it causes disease," she said.
The virus, infectious salmon anemia, has devastated farmed Atlantic salmon stocks in Chile and elsewhere. Some conservationists and scientists have long worried that the virus would spread from farmed fish to wild ones. Those fears escalated in October, when opponents of British Columbia's ambitious farmed Atlantic salmon program, which is heavily promoted by the government, presented lab results they said showed an asymptomatic form of the virus in wild Pacific salmon.
Several more reports of the virus have emerged in the past two months, including a draft paper suggesting that the virus was detected as early as 2002 but not revealed by the government, further angering farming opponents.
The developments have prompted passionate debate on both sides of the border, with reaction veering from accusations that the Canadian government is covering up evidence of the disease to claims by Canadian officials that the reports are based on poor science.
Some scientists have suggested that a strain of the virus may have been present in wild Pacific salmon for many years as a "host pathogen," without causing a disease outbreak, and that it may never pose a risk. It is also unclear whether farmed Atlantic salmon in Canada, raised in net pens along the coast, have contracted the virus or are spreading it. But scientists also note that viruses can mutate, and many say it is imperative to learn more. Officials in both Canada and the United States are planning extensive new testing efforts.
On Thursday, the first of three days of testimony, lawyers for the Canadian government, the province, the aquaculture industry and those opposed to it, as well as conservationists and others, questioned four scientists who have studied infectious salmon anemia and many of the fish tested in British Columbia. The scientists gave highly technical and sometimes contradictory testimony before a full but largely quiet gallery. Some people wore T-shirts that read: "Standing on guard for wild salmon."
The most combative exchanges occurred during testimony by Kristina Miller, the head of molecular genetics for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans laboratory at Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. While previous reports of the virus had surfaced from sources outside the Canadian government, only to have Canadian officials question them, Dr. Miller testified that she also had received positive results when she tested for the virus, known as I.S.A. She said that when she reported her work to a superior last month, she was asked why she had conducted it at all.
"Nobody in the department talked to me about disease or I.S.A. after that," Dr. Miller testified. At one point, she said she was frustrated at what she called "flippant dismissal of pathogens" that could be harmful.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is charged with promoting aquaculture but also with protecting wild fish, a dual mission that some critics say creates conflicts. Agency officials are scheduled to testify in the next two days.
Some of Dr. Miller's research methods were questioned by another virus expert, who participated via teleconference. But that expert, Professor Are Nylund of the University of Bergen in Norway, expressed support for positive results that were found by Frederick S. B. Kibenge, a professor at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Dr. Miller said that while her tests showed that the fish responded to the presence of the virus, it was not clear that it causing harm. She testified that she had recently tested salmon tissue samples from 1986 and that they, too, showed the asymptomatic form of I.S.A.
"We have not established that it causes disease," she said.
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