Salmon Chanted Evening | Cher Josh Wilhelm prepares salmon at Jack's Grill in Edmonton.
There are four fish you will never see on a plate at Jack’s Grill and the Blue Pear: Chilean sea bass, swordfish, orange roughy, and caviar. That’s because those Edmonton restaurants are members of the Endangered Fish Alliance, a nationwide advocacy group made up of conservationists and concerned chefs. Orange roughy was fished to near-extinction because the deepwater fish gathers in large numbers in very predicable locations. The Chilean sea bass population was almost decimated because the fatty fish stands up well under heat lamps at buffets.
The Endangered Fish Alliance doesn’t list salmon, but there is growing concern. The sockeye population is expected to hit record lows in British Columbia this year, and salmon in general faces huge environmental threats from fish farms. On top of these pressures, health professionals have been encouraging people to eat more of the tasty pink fish because of it’s high levels of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids.
In short, salmon has become yet another seemingly insoluble moral conundrum—not just for fishophiles, but for anyone concerned about the health of the world’s oceans.
In Edmonton, Atlantic salmon (and all other varieties of salmon outside the summer and fall salmon season) most likely come from fish farms in B.C., says Catherine Stewart, campaign manager for Living Oceans, a B.C. group working to get proper labeling on Canadian fish. She warns consumers against any type of farmed fish because of the harm fish farms pose to the environment, as well as potential health risks. (Farmed salmon is often contaminated with sea lice, which can easily spread to the wild population.)
But simply avoiding farmed salmon might not be enough anymore. Wild sockeye salmon stocks are expected to hit record lows this year, especially on the upper Fraser River. Native groups on the west coast are considering rationing in order to preserve the species. (Oceans and Fisheries spokesperson Diane Lake cautions that those actions are based on forecasts whose accuracy will remain unknown until the end of the salmon season, sometime in the fall.)
That said, salmon won’t be disappearing from grocery store coolers or restaurant menus, nor are advocacy groups calling for a blanket ban.
Restaurateur Darcy Radies of The Blue Pear serves salmon during the summer, but he’s also watching top restaurants in B.C. He points out that Robert Clark, the executive chef of C Restaurant (perhaps the leading seafood restaurant in Vancouver), was one of the first to talk about the dangers of farmed salmon; Clark has taken wild sockeye salmon off his menu, and is now musing about putting certain inland-farmed salmon back on. Whatever course Clark chooses, Radies says he’ll likely follow suit.
Jack’s Grill already serves farmed salmon on occasion, in addition to wild salmon in season. “Everyone was serving salmon and I wasn’t,” says owner and executive chef Jack Peterson. “I thought, ‘There’s got to be an alternative.’ And there is. There are also good fish farms out there.”
Peterson gets his farmed salmon from Creative Salmon, a B.C. company that offers “naturally raised” Chinook salmon from Tofino.
Tim Rundle, the general manager of Creative Salmon, says interest in his farmed fish has increased since predictions of low sockeye salmon stocks surfaced. Usually at this time of year, demand for his fish would decrease because of the wild salmon available—but not this year. “I think there’s a really big demand for salmon across the board,” he says, “and because there are shortages, there will be a bigger demand for farmed fish as well.”
Rundle, who has worked there for 15 years, has never had to treat his fish for sea lice because Chinook salmon are less susceptible to the disease than the Atlantic variety. He notes that his company employs other precautions not generally used in the rest of the industry, such as moving operations around so that the bottom of the ocean can recover and employing stronger nets to prevent other animals from drowning while trying to eat the fish. (110 sea lions died in their nets last year.)
Stewart is still highly skeptical. She points out that open nets still dump large amounts of fish feces into the ocean and could never reach organic-farming standards. She adds that no fish farms in Canada are certified as organic.
But even given these problems and the predicted low sockeye salmon numbers, Stewart stops short of recommending an outright ban on salmon. “Banning salmon: that’s such a broad brush,” she says. “There are six species and in B.C. alone... Some are healthy and some are about to collapse, so it’s pretty tough to say salmon should be an endangered species.”
A coalition of sea-conservancy groups called SeaChoice, which Stewart belongs to, lists Chinook, chum, pink and sockeye salmon as species that should not be eaten often, and only when wild salmon is unavailable. Only farmed salmon is listed as “do not eat.”
Stewart has focused her efforts on instituting proper labeling of fish in grocery stores (specifically Safeway), so that customers can make more informed decisions while browsing in the seafood section. She points out that in the United States, all fish must be labeled as farm or wild, and indicate if the fish’s food contained colourants. (Farm salmon eat feed pellets that sometimes contain a colourant designed to artificially give them that distinctive salmon hue.)
“The important thing is for customers to ask,” Stewart says. “They are not going to get answers, because the retailers and restaurants largely don’t know. But if they keep asking, then the retailers will keep asking their suppliers.”
