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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:7.5pt'><span style='font-size:22.0pt;
font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black'>In Birthplace of Local Food, Fish
Imports Take Over the Menu <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><img width=600
height=330 id="Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:image001.jpg@01CA7A50.C0FC4110"
alt="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/12/11/us/11sffish_CA0_337-span/articleLarge.jpg"></span><span
style='font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span style='font-size:
7.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#909090'>Josh Haner/The New York
Times<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:14.4pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#666666'>Paul Johnson has worked at the
Monterey Fish Market in San Francisco for 30 years and has witnessed a dramatic
downward shift in the local supply of seafood. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style='mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;border:none;
padding:0in'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
display:none'>Top of Form<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:gray'>By KATHERINE ELLISON<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:gray'>Published: December 11, 2009 <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Tadich
Grill, San Francisco’s oldest seafood restaurant, now serves farmed <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/salmon/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"
title="More articles about salmon (fish)."><span style='color:#004276'>salmon</span></a>
flown in from Scotland. Sam’s Grill & Seafood, which also dates to
the Gold Rush, features shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico and Alaskan halibut.<span
style='color:#004276;display:none'>Skip to next paragraph</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:11.25pt;line-height:18.0pt'><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><img border=0 width=190
height=356 id="Picture_x0020_5" src="cid:image005.jpg@01CA7A50.C0FC4110"
alt="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/12/11/us/11sffish_graphic/articleInline.jpg"></span><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><a name=secondParagraph></a><span style='font-size:14.0pt;
font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>The San Francisco region is where the locavore
movement got its name. And decades before restaurants like Chez Panisse in
Berkeley were recommending their local leeks, the establishments near San
Francisco’s wharves took pride in their fresh, local sand dabs and
petrale.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>These
days, fish flown in from around the world is more likely to be on offer. The
change began gradually, but has recently sped up. Data from the Pacific States
Marine Fisheries Commission, a federal advisory group, reveal the cumulative
effect: a 71 percent drop in commercial fishing revenue along the north-central
California coast since 1990. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>The
effects are everywhere, seen in the number of idle fishermen or those who have
left the profession altogether — membership in the Pacific Coast Federation
of Fishermen’s Associations is down by two-thirds in 15 years — and
the fish markets filled with Vietnamese catfish and Mexican spiny <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/lobsters/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"
title="More articles about lobsters."><span style='color:#004276'>lobster</span></a>.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Fish
from local bays has been “one of the last local foods to go,” said
Jessica Prentice, a Berkeley chef known for coining the word
“locavore.” She added: “Seafood was one of the few things,
well into the industrial age, that people associated with place. If
you’re on a particular coast, or bay, or lake, you typically want to eat
the seafood that’s fresh and local.” These days in the Bay Area,
that means Dungeness crab in the winter and precious little else.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>With
beloved local petrale scarce for the past three months, Andrew Carvalho, the
head chef at Sam’s, has had to make do with sea bream from Greece.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Not
long ago, said Larry Collins, a San Francisco hook-and-line fisherman, “we
fished salmon in the summertime, crab in the wintertime and rock <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/cod_fish/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"
title="More articles about Cod (Fish)."><span style='color:#004276'>cod</span></a>
whenever we needed to make the mortgage. Now we fish crab in the wintertime and
scramble in the summertime.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>San
Francisco’s situation is part of a national phenomenon. The National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last year that more than
three-fourths of the fish Americans eat comes from other countries, mostly
China. Yet the trend has special resonance around San Francisco. Robert E.
Ross, executive director of the California Fisheries and Seafood Institute, a
trade group, estimated that Bay Area residents eat, on average, about double
the amount of fish consumed annually by most other Americans.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Many
diners recall when local seafood — salmon, red snapper, abalone —
was abundant. “I think about it all the time,” said Paul Johnson,
the chief executive of the Monterey Fish Market, which supplies up to five
million pounds of fish a year to 150 regional restaurants, including Chez
Panisse and the Googleplex in Mountain View.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>“In
the fall when crab season comes around, and the boilers are steaming and all
the guys are coming around with the fresh crabs, it just makes you sad to
realize that this is the last major fishery we have left,” he said. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>The
decline and fall of California’s fisheries is an intricate tale.
Eighteenth-century Pacific Coast explorers described a paradise teeming with
life. “No country is more abundant in fish and game of every
description,” said the French naval officer Jean-François de Galaup, who
mapped the Pacific Coast in 1786. Two centuries of robust harvests followed,
with occasional off-years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Now
off-years are the norm. Still, the drop in local harvests doesn’t
precisely reflect the decline of fish in the sea. The confluence of expanding
global markets and more assertive local controls has produced dramatic change.
One fishery after another petered out in the wild, and regulators curtailed
fishing to preserve species. As with other environmental problems, every person
with a stake in the Bay Area’s seafood decline has a villain of choice. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Salmon
fishermen tend to blame the decline on inland water users, like farms and
developers, who, they say, diverted water needed for spawning new generations
of fish. Scientists suggest that a warming ocean has put the fishes’ food
supply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Others blame mismanagement. Similar
finger-pointing is evident around other wounded fisheries.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Wild
abalone was one of the first local seafoods to vanish, after state officials
closed depleted fisheries in 1996. In 2002, trawling for rockfish — the
bottom-dweller often called “red snapper” and used in the spicy
stew cioppino — was barred on much of the Pacific Coast. In the past two
years, fishing bans multiplied as salmon and herring grew scarce.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>In
all cases, the regulators responded to evidence of sharp declines in local
species. But many local fishermen, who have sustained staggering economic
losses, feel the actions of state and federal officials have been excessive. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'> “In
California, we have the least exploited fisheries in the world, but the
toughest regulations,” complained Zeke Grader, executive director of the
Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. At the Monterey
Fish Market, Mr. Johnson’s 30-year career has spanned the most dramatic
downward shift in local supply. When he began, he said, he was importing only
about 30 percent of his fish from outside of California. Now, he said, the
figure is closer to 80 percent. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>While
industry insiders are all too aware of the change in Bay Area menus, diners may
have been slow to grasp it. “People still don’t get it,” said
George Leonard, a marine biologist at the Santa Cruz office of the Ocean
Conservancy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>“Restaurants
will go to great lengths to make it seem like the fish is local,” he
said. “They’ll advertise the ‘fresh catch of the day,’
and half the time, it’s farmed fish from halfway around the world.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>The
illusion of fresh local fish became harder to maintain after a 2005 law obliged
vendors to label wares by country of origin. This has combined with the trend
to advertise the pedigree of foods, like the “Bolinas black cod” at
Chez Panisse.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>CleanFish,
a San Francisco-based supplier of “sustainable seafood,” boasts its
wild and “sustainably farmed” fish, like the “Carolina
Mahi-Mahi” and the Loch Duarte salmon featured at Tadich Grill. Yet its
use of air-shipped and farmed fish rankles some environmentalists. “When
you put fresh fish in an airplane,” Mr. Leonard said, “all bets are
off,” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>The
Monterey Bay Aquarium includes all farmed fish on its “red list” of
fish to be avoided, citing concerns like the discharge of waste and parasites
from farms. The founder of CleanFish, Tim O’Shea, said this ignored
differences among the farmers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>A
few chefs, including <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/alice_waters/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
title="More articles about Alice Waters."><span style='color:#004276'>Alice
Waters</span></a> of Chez Panisse, vigorously advocate serving local seafood
whenever possible — “We collected our own mussels from a legal zone
recently. Divine!” Ms. Waters recounted in an e-mail message. Still, she
occasionally resorts to “sustainable” shrimp from New Orleans.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>While
the globalization of fish may seem unstoppable, some dream of San Francisco
seafood’s resurgence. Mr. Johnson of the Monterey Fish Market foresaw
encouraging trends over the next few years, if federal strictures help rebuild
rockfish populations. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>Recently,
environmental advocates took heart in the state’s decision in August to
protect 155 square miles of ocean, permanently banning professional fishing in
reserves covering 11 percent of California coastal waters. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>The
decision, to take effect early next year, has prompted complaints from struggling
fishermen, yet it is meant to preserve habitat crucial in rebuilding species
like rockfish and abalone. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'>“We
can no longer treat the ocean and its fish and wildlife as an all-you-can eat
buffet,” said Kaitilin Gaffney, the Pacific ecosystem program director
for the Ocean Conservancy. “But the ocean is pretty resilient. If we
allow nature to restore herself, she will.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Byron
Leydecker, JcT</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Chair, Friends
of Trinity River</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>PO Box 2327</span></i><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Mill Valley, CA
94942-2327</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 383 4810
land</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 519 4810
cell</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'><a
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href="mailto:bleydecker@stanfordalumni.org"><span style='color:blue'>bleydecker@stanfordalumni.org</span></a>
</span></i></b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>(secondary)</span></i><b><span
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