Don't Eat Chilean Sea Bass

Every Thursday and Sunday evenings in McMurdo there are lectures, mostly given by the scientists working on the ice. This follows a long tradition in polar travel and exploration. Scott and his men had weekly lectures as well. They knew that to survive, or even thrive, on the ice they needed to keep their minds active.

When I was in McMurdo, David Ainley ("A Letter from Cape Royds" in Antarctica: Life on the Ice) gave a fascinating lecture on the fragile Antarctic ecosystem. I came away with many ideas, a vast appreciation for our planet and the determination never again to eat Chilean Sea Bass (which I had eaten; it's delicious). During the virtual tour someone emailed in a question about whether it's ok to eat "sustainable" Chilean Sea Bass. My first thought was that it is not possible to have "sustainable" Sea Bass, since it is a fish that begins to breed only when it is twelve years old. For a more in-depth answer, I turned once again to David. Here is what he has to say:

"The basic deal is that Chilean Sea Bass (also known as Antarctic toothfish) are major players in the Ross Sea ecosystem: they eat a lot of what penguins eat, both Emperors and Adelies. They're also eaten by competitors of the penguins, the killer whales and Weddell seals. With and without the CSB there's competition for food, in this case the Antarctic silverfish. Hard to say how the imbalance will be struck once CSB are removed, but all the other marine ecosystems on Earth have been broken by similar depletions of big fish near the top of the pyramid (e.g., cod, salmon, swordfish, tuna etc).

There is no such thing as a 'sustainable' CSB. It's just not ecologically nor mathematically possible, when 50+ year old fish are being removed and they don't even begin to produce young until 12 and likely not in quantity until several years later. The management strategy of CCAMLR (Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources)is to reduce the Ross Sea CSB population by 50% in 35 years. That's not sustainable fish management but rather sustainable fishery biologist management, because none of these fishery managers will even be alive by then. The 'certification' that recently has been applied to CSB fishing (off South Georgia, and now a move afoot to certify the Ross Sea) by the Marine Seafood Council is only because not many birds are caught in the longlines. This has been a major problem for longline fisheries in lower latitudes, especially with albatross and giant petrels. However, it appears, owing to severely depressed populations at breeding colonies farther north (because of longline mortality), there no longer are any giant petrels or albatross that frequent the Ross Sea. Their numbers have contracted closer to the colonies. Thus, you could not catch one on a longline if you even tried, at least in the Ross Sea.

So, that's the story.

Don't eat one. Bad karma."