This year's Teach a Man to Fish event was so successful (participation was up over 60%!) that I simply had too many resources and links to include in the huge round up. Here is a compilation of resources, you can find books, short entertaining video clips, and lots of organizations' site links. Pretty much any question you might have about sustainable seafood could be answered through this list of resources. Including what to make for dinner - see more recipes below!

Books:

• Trevor Corson's book is now out in an expanded paperback edition with photos and a new title: "THE STORY OF SUSHI: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice."
• Casson Trenor's book: Sustainable Sushi: A Guide to Saving the Oceans One Bite at a Time (available January '09)
• Fish Without a Doubt - terrific fish cookery for anyone who harbors doubts about which fish to cook, how, what to substitute these are straightforward and a pleasure - just like the author Chef Rick Moonen.
• 660 Curries - Raghavan Iyer - Many of us are just coming to know the wonderful seafood dishes prominent in Indian cuisine. Three coastlines but we hardly see these regions represented in restaurant food. All the more reason to buy this book and make them at home.

click image for good books & remember: books make great gifts!

Video:

• ALASKAN ALTON - Alton Brown (whom you know from Good Eats, Feasting on Asphalt, Feasting on Waves and emcee of Iron Chef.) Did you know he's also an advocate see this clip that explains what Alaska is doing right with its fisheries. You'll understand why I'm an advocate of wonderful wild Alaskan seafood.

• See this wonderful movie Once Upon a Tide with links to teaching materials for kids. Harvard University's Healthy Harvest is part of the Center for Health and the Global Environment.

Organizations: each bullet is a link.

• Seafood Watch Program of the Monterey Bay Aquarium
• Blue Ocean Institute
• Environmental Defense Fund
• Greenpeace - see the new report on sustainable seafood in supermarkets
• Ocean Conservancy
• Conservation Alliance for Seafood
• MSC - Marine Stewardship Council
• Mangrove Action Project Learn about what's being done to to promote the rights of traditional and indigenous coastal peoples, including fishers and farmers, to sustainably manage their coastal environs. See the Seattle chefs who've signed the boycott.
• NOAA's Fish Watch -includes more recipes and information, resources for kids.
• Sustainable Harvest issues- Learn what the four main problem areas are: AC, HD, OF, BC.
• Maui Ocean Conservation - See people in funny hats (there's more too, of course!)
• Food & Water Watch - Find out what's happening with food, water, fish.
  
• SeaChoice - Canadian resource guide
• Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment
• Hubbs-Seaworld Research Institute
• Passionfish
• Ocean Wise

 Articles:

•  Song for the Blue Ocean, Carl Safina "A Sea Ethic: A Floating Ark" a beautiful essay delivered at Unitarian Universalist Church of Huntington, N.Y., March 20, 2005.
• John Mariani's Virtual Gourmet featured my article in October: Salmon and the Sustainability Zeitgeist.
• This Good Guide to Fish Guides is really global in scope. Hong Kong to the Netherlands - there is information about how to find sustainable seafood. 
• Trevor Corson tackles the question Is sushi sustainable? on Gourmet.com.
• From the blog: Small Fish Big Red - Buying sustainably harvensted seafood not as easy as I thought.
• From Lia Huber's Swirling Notions: Sourcing Sustainable Seafood.
• Fisheries Waste Costs Billion BBC article
• Gourmet's Guide to Buying Sustainable Seafood (connected to Korea piece by Gold; resource by Estabrook)
• Gulf St Lawrence Shrimp attains MSC Certification.

Recipes: each bullet is a link.

• Miso Marinated Sablefish
• Barramundi recipes
• Home-cured Salmon
• Crab, Octopus, Wild King Salmon

Products: each bullet is a link.

• The Better Fish - Australis Barramundi - the good kind of aquaculture
• Kona Kampachi
• Wild Planet Tuna
• Lauren Farms Shrimp
• Stone Crab from FL - sustainable and in season now! (Link to article about it.) To go direct to Charlie's click here.

I wrote to the author of Eating Asia, a blog that was recommended to me by playwright and chef, Joseph Hayes (of The Burry Man Writers' Center and Inked-In fame.) Asking Robyn about sustainable seafood and whether this has entered the dialogue in her corner of the globe. As I suspected, it's mixed from the perspective of someone who lives there. Here is Robyn's response, reprinted with her permission:

Hi Jacqueline - Thanks for your email. Nice blog.

RE: the sustainability - it is rather more a US/European concern. Asians are only beginning to look at organics, and while there are organic farms in Asia most of them aren't certified. Quite often the term 'organic' is used by restaurants without any definition .. there are no real standards.

I would say that Singapore, Hong Kong, and even the Philippines are furthest ahead on this (I'm talking just SE Asia here - Japan is certainly way ahead).

p.c. incomes just aren't high enough in most of SE Asia to allow for concern abt sustainability. Esp in places like Indonesia and the Philippines, where a big chunk of the population lives close to the poverty line.

While I find the whole sustainability movement very worthwhile, I do have to say that when I read about it I feel like I'm reading about events in another food universe. There's not room for those kind of concerns in most of the region I live in, right at the moment.

Best,
Robyn @ EatingAsia

 

We do have pocket guides and talking points in a few languages and there are handfuls of organizations working on this issue. It's certainly a global issue but we have to remember it's not an either/or issue, nor is it "this first/then that." In fact, I got an interesting post from someone teaching in a school in Singapore where sustainable aquaculture was being introduced into the school science curriculum! In many cases, serial depletion of resources would leave people more impoverished rather than better off, but someone has to be managing this at a macro level.

So, we focus on what we can and recognize the tremendous buying power that our market represents. If we exercise that power, the market will begin to change. 

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