Fishing Down The Food Chain - Jellyfish The Next Big Thing In Seafood

[hatrack]

VANCOUVER, B.C. -- It's your wedding anniversary, so you go out for seafood. As you and your mate reflect on your years together, you're both salivating in anticipation of a fine meal of ... Jellyfish?

That's the picture of the not-too-distant future painted yesterday for 1,500 fisheries scientists from around the globe by one of the world's leading fisheries researchers, Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia. Kicking off the World Fisheries Congress, the veteran scientist showed how people's growing appetite for seafood has driven fishing boats from industrialized countries ever farther into Southern Hemisphere seas controlled by Third World nations.

It's a pattern also reflected in Puget Sound, where commercial fishing has virtually disappeared but a Seattle-based fleet goes all the way to Alaska to land the nation's biggest fish catch. Pauly recounted how, as traditional fish stocks have declined, people in Third World countries increasingly have turned to eating lower on the food chain, even taking in the likes of sea cucumbers and sea urchins -- "stuff that eats dirt," Pauly said. "When we first presented this, it was a joke -- you're going to have a jellyfish sandwich," Pauly said in his keynote address. "The journalists all ate it up -- not the jellyfish, the quote. It was a joke, but now it's real." In the wake of the disastrous crash of the North Atlantic's cod stocks, the Newfoundland government is encouraging fishermen to go after jellyfish, Pauly said.

EDIT

Pauly recounted how fish once overlooked as subpar have become dinner mainstays, as when fish from Australia and New Zealand known as "slimeheads" were rechristened "orange roughy" in the 1980s -- and promptly overfished. Similarly, Patagonian toothfish became "Chilean sea bass" and demand drove a thriving poaching business. Now fishermen are starting to go after hagfish, but the development is so new that a fancy marketing name has yet to be invented, Pauly said."

EDIT

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/171765_fish04.html

It's worth noting that the hagfish is a variety of lamprey - yum yum!!

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Just more evidence that we have totally f*&ked the planet. nt

[forgethell]

2. Not while there is ONE

blue crab left on the planet!!! Oh, and earthworms are said to be quite tasty.

http://www.naturewatch.ca/english/wormwatch/cool/recipes.html

:9

[hatrack]

4. I'm just wondering what name they'll cook up for hagfish

North Atlantic slime tubes?

Deep ocean primative chordates?

Rasp-mouthed ocean trout?

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Never had it...

due largely to the yuck factor, but you've been able to get jellyfish in Chinese shops, and real Chinese restaurants, for years. Sea cukes and urchins, too.

Clams and catfish eat dirt, so what's the point there?

Anyway, the main point is that we've managed to fish all the fish out of the sea. What do we do when the sea robins and jellyfish are gone?

Eat the dirt?

[jpak]

5. I've eaten jellyfish and sea cucumber at Chinese restaurants

It's good!

Unfortunately, jellyfish are the principle food of several sea turtle species (I believe the leatherback consumes nothing but jellyfish).

Commercial exploitation of jellyfish would seriously impact these species already in trouble.

[NickB79]

6. Just how do you eat jellyfish?

Cook it, fry it, what do you do with it? It seems so fragile, how do you prepare it without it falling apart?

[forgethell]

7. On bread,

with peanut butter. Yummy! Not!!

[mmm]

8. How will this affect the food chain?

What do jellyfish eat and what feeds on jellyfish?
Is this like eating the seed corn?

Hagfish is fine on the palate but hard to look at.
If they call it ocean-mountain trout they will do just fine.

[Nihil]

9. Tell me again why humans deserve to survive?

> "In the wake of the disastrous crash of the North Atlantic's cod
> stocks, the Newfoundland government is encouraging fishermen to go
> after jellyfish", Pauly said.

In other words, "We've fucked up the larger species, let's go for
the rest of 'em!"

Pathetic.

In geological timescales, we are not only living in the next major
extinction event, we will have caused it.