The Fishmongering Apprentice

I'm working as the Seafood Specialist for a local supermarket.  When people ask me what I do, I like to tell them I'm a fishmonger.  This response usually triggers a quizzical expression and an interesting conversation about my current life cutting, preparing, and selling fish.

This job has sparked many thoughts about grocery store practices and contemporary consumer culture.

The average shopper I meet, for example, wants fresh, diverse, cheap seafood options.  When is fish "cheap"?  Fish can be cheap if it is local, abundant, and doesn't involve a bunch of middlemen.  A buddy of mine came back from Maine, for example, and reported lobsters at $4.50/lb.  But most grocery-store goers are not looking for just what is local and abundant.  So what about the rest of our options?

A fish farm in Shanghai (credit: Ivan Walsh, courtesy Flickr).

Wild fish is usually cheap when it was caught using environmentally destructive methods such as bottom trawling or massive driftnets.  Farm-raised fish is cheaper when short-cuts are taken such as feeding the fish suspicious material and then pumping them full of antibiotics to make sure they don't get too sick.  It's also cheaper when it comes from places where land, labor, and capital are cheaper.  According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) we import 80% of our seafood.  Unfortunately, the GAO also reports that only 2% of that seafood is inspected.

But even "cheap" isn't necessarily cheap.  How much fossil fuel did it take to catch it, chill, it, and ship it here?  How much of the seascape was destroyed because of the harvesting method?  How much of the fish was harvested?  Too much?  There's a long list of external costs that unfortunately don't factor into the sticker price you see at the store.

I don't blame the customers.  If I think back on my own life and ask when anyone ever taught me to think about where my fish comes from, I'm dismayed by the answer.  It wasn't really until I lived in San Francisco - a bit of an sustainability anomaly, unfortunately, as American cities go - that I heard such questions asked.  And even then I was just starting off life as a working young adult.  If dollars were votes, I cast mine for the cheapest food alternatives and saved the rest for rent, student loans, and going out.

If the choice was tough for me, how much tougher is it for the penny-counting shoppers who have to choose between rent, medicine, and bread?  And then there are the many who don't even know there's a choice that needs to be made.

A discussion of solutions is as important as this one on challenges, deserving of it's own post, I think.  But for now I will say this:  The number of people in this world who can vote with their money and purchasing power is limited.  There are over seven billion men, women, and children in the world and at least a billion of them live on less than a dollar a day.  I believe, therefore, that educating our children is the best hope we have.  We need them to grow into consumers who make informed decisions, activists who demand a better future, business people who factor sustainability into their balance sheets, and politicians with open ears, wise minds, and determined hearts!

If you're curious to know more about where your fish comes from and which fish are best to buy, a good place to start is the Baltimore Aquarium's Seafood Watch.  Enjoy!