Eating Bottom Dwellers

Sat, 31 May 2008 03:24:43 PST

I grew up in a culture where bottom dwelling fish were taboo. They still are for the most parts. I cannot see myself eating a cleaner fish or worse an eel or lungfish, not that these are delicacies where I live. They come into direct contact with decayed material close to the seabed and are considered unclean. Someone recently came out with a book on consuming more bottom dwellers than surface fish because of the crisis in the food market and the fact that many favourite fish choices are either near extinction or threatened because of over fishing. Here we did not think of reducing the effect of consuming to many of these fishes because of our collective shortsightedness.

The author of the book decided to elaborate on a principle after travelling around the world and getting facts on what certain peoples are doing to adapt to the changing availability of fish. In Japan for example people are farming the blue fin tuna because its stock has been dangerously depleted. They are working with raising the fish from the larval stage. Large fish like the tuna, swordfish; sea bass have been caught in excessive numbers such that the numbers of fish they live on have been able to multiply more. In other words we have been so busy eliminating the predatory fish that we have forgotten what it does to the fish food chain. The average person could not care less about the check and balances of controlling wildlife or fish.

The author suggests that we should be able to consume larger numbers of the bottom dwelling fish, which are generally smaller and would have accumulated a smaller amount of pollutants like lead and mercury. This would be a healthier alternative to eating an equal amount of fish from those living closer to the water's surface. Sardines are healthy alternative according to the Portuguese and some other populations where fish is a major part of their diet. The fish is much smaller than the tuna and will contain less contaminant. Perhaps then if people change their attention to bottom dwellers like the sardine their predatory fish populations will be able to recover sufficiently that we will be able to consume them as before. In my opinion we should monitor how much we consume so as not to remove this food supply from their predators and contribute more to their disappearance.