Care About Environment? Here Is Some Seafood for Thought

Trying to include more fish in your diet?

If so, the brilliant minds at Monterey Bay Aquarium (they must eat lots of fish!) have just the thing for you: an Internet “Seafood Watch” consumer guide you can download, print out, fold into a card and stuff in your wallet, providing easy access the next time you’re considering stuffing your face with a wonderfully sauteed Chilean seabass.

Be forewarned, though, that dish might leave a fishy taste in your mouth.

Chilean seabass--its actually Patagonian toothfish, but how could you market that?--is a victim of unregulated fishing that “is wiping out this slow-growing, deep ocean species” and listed by aquarium researchers in the “Avoid” category of the consumer guide.

And it’s swimming in a pretty big school. Also in this category are orange roughy (overfished to depleted), lingcod (fully fished to overfished), Atlantic cod, East Coast lobster (overfished), Pacific red snapper, rock cod and even farmed salmon, the raising of which in ocean pens, biologists say, “pollutes the water with feces and can spread disease to wild salmon,” which are in trouble everywhere.

Most prominent in this category, of course, is swordfish, especially those caught in the Atlantic, “where there are hardly any adults left to breed.”

You’ll also be taking a painful bite out of stocks of monkfish, shark, bluefin tuna, sea scallops and sablefish, if any of these should end up on your plate.

Depressing?

Perhaps, but there are several species of fish that have the aquarium’s stamp of approval. Among its “Best Choices” are such culinary standouts as calamari (squid), catfish, Dungeness crab, mahi-mahi, Alaska salmon (fully fished but healthy and well-regulated), striped bass, sturgeon, rainbow trout and albacore tuna.

There is also a borderline “Proceed With Caution” category, which includes New Zealand clams, black and New Zealand green-lipped mussels and West Coast oysters, all of which are farmed but “may pollute the water with shellfish feces.”

In this category, for another reason, is imitation crab, which is made with pollock. Pollock stocks are presumed healthy, but heavy fishing affects an important food source of sea lions, thereby disrupting the Arctic ecosystem.

Among others listed here: Pacific halibut (fully fished), English and petrale sole (healthy stocks but bycatch and habitat problems caused by trawlers dragging nets across the bottom), yellowfin tuna (also called ahi; healthy stocks but fully fished), and several species of shrimp and prawns, which are either netted or farmed, which presents possible bycatch and habitat problems, respectively.

Like some of the species on the list, the consumer guide has been a hot item since it was posted on the aquarium site (https://www.montereybayaquarium.org) in late October. Hundreds have been downloaded and 15,000 have been distributed at the renowned Central California facility.

The intent of this project, biologists say, is to generate greater public awareness of the plight of the world’s fisheries, but by trying to do this they have definitely opened the proverbial can of worms.

“We’ve been hearing from a number of fish farmers and seafood growers, primarily, who aren’t too happy about all this,” senior staff biologist Steven Webster says. “But you can’t please everybody all the time.”

WHALE WATCHING

Another season is at hand, and although it doesn’t officially begin until the day after Christmas, it began unofficially--and rather dramatically--last Sunday off Orange County, when a pod of more than 50 killer whales surfaced before a couple of fishing boats.

One was the Thunderbird out of Davey’s Locker Sportfishing in Newport Beach. Capt. Kenny Wager estimated there were 60-70 orcas swimming in a north-northwesterly direction at about five knots. A few other reports filtered in from the Long Beach area.

“One of the small sub-pods literally came toward the boat and was swimming right next to it, and they were rolling on their side and everything,” landing manager Norris Tapp said. “There were even some baby orcas in the pods that came to the boat.”

Scientists estimate that the killer whales belong to the “offshore” group, one of three distinct groups that turn up locally from time to time. The offshore group, so-named because the orcas tend to disappear for months or even years after near-shore encounters, feeds primarily on fish and generally travels in very large numbers. The orcas haven’t been seen since Sunday, but with all the baitfish in local waters, a return engagement is entirely possible, if not likely.

Alisa Schulman-Janiger, a researcher with the American Cetacean Society, is looking for photos of killer whales for an ongoing identification project. She can be reached at (310) 519-8963 or by e-mail at janiger@bcf.usc.edu.

SKIING/BOARDING

* Another spectacular, sunny day has dawned, but it really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas on the slopes at the Southland’s larger resorts.

“We’ve been blowing [snow] nonstop since Tuesday afternoon,” says John McColly, spokesman for Mountain High in Wrightwood. “After we sew up the West [resort], we’ll start making snow at East and hope to have that open by the holidays.”

Mountain High has more than a dozen trails open and a machine-groomed base of 18-38 inches. Big Bear-area resorts boast similar conditions--Snow Summit’s popular Westridge Freestyle Park opened Thursday--while owners of the smaller resorts, which rely solely on Mother Nature for snow, are feeling scrooged for the second consecutive season.

* Mammoth Mountain, which claims it has “fooled Mother Nature” with its expansive snow-making system, has opened 15 lifts servicing 50 trails, some at the top of the mountain.

SURFING

The field for the final stop on the world tour, the Gerry Lopez Pipe Masters on Oahu’s North Shore, has been narrowed to 32, but from a spectator’s viewpoint, the most exciting parts of the year-end spectacle were the elimination heats last weekend.

Saturday was the bigger day, with eight- to 15-foot waves that were incredibly steep and hollow, even by Pipeline standards, and the wipeouts were breathtaking.

“If you were watching from the beach, you could actually feel what the surfers were going through,” tournament director Randy Rarick says.

It had to hurt then to watch two-time Pipe champion Derek Ho go over the falls, get slammed into the reef and nearly drown after sucking in a breath of water in the impact zone. Lifeguards on jet-powered rescue vessels pulled him to safety. Ho, a North Shore local, took six stitches to the head and spent the night in the hospital for observation.

Florida’s Cory Lopez suffered a broken nose when his board slammed into his face; Hawaii’s Kai Henry suffered a cut hand and “mangled knee,” Rarick says; Australia’s Taj Burrow was hospitalized briefly after being slammed onto the reef buttocks-first, and several other surfers, including 1999 world champion Mark Occhilupo, were involved in dramatic wipeouts, emerging unscathed.

In all, there were nine broken boards last Saturday alone.

“I’ve actually taken a more conservative approach to riding Pipeline in recent years,” says Occhilupo, an Australian who won the event 14 years ago. “ . . . I was pretty shaken after Derek Ho’s wipeout and it just amazes me the way these young guys charge the place with reckless abandon.”

Mother Nature has given the surfers all week to rest, but a swell is expected to hit later today or Saturday, and a wide-open affair featuring the established pros (Kelly Slater, Sunny Garcia, Rob Machado, et al.) and rising stars such as Zane Harrison, 19, who will go head-to-head with venerable countryman Occhilupo, 33, will resume in the next round.

BAJA FISHING

* Cabo San Lucas: With north winds prevalent in the gulf, the action is mostly in the Pacific, which is where the marlin are, anyway, providing consistent action for most, while others are getting skunked.

This is only the start of the season, though, so the stripers should hang around for a few weeks. Top catch was a 330-pound blue marlin caught, surprisingly, in dirty 76-degree water.

Small-game fishing is slow off Land’s End, but good just north of San Jose del Cabo in the gulf, when the winds aren’t blowing.

* Magdalena Bay: The capture of a small bonefish in the nearby flats of Santa Maria Bay, by Gary Graham of Baja on the Fly, confirms rumors that bonefish do exist in Baja. Graham will explore this further after the holidays.

* La Paz: The only fleets that can get out with any consistency are those leaving from wind-protected Muertos Bay, 30 minutes from town. On windy days, they can still fish for pargo and cabrilla at Cerralvo Island. On calm days, they can get outside in search of more exotic game.

Jonathan Roldan’s Adventure Services reports a solid tuna bite with fish running 20-40 pounds, with a few large dorado being pulled from beneath the buoys. Details: (877) 825-8802.

* FISH REPORT, PAGE 12