What not to eat

Local author Taras Grescoe focuses
on the fish industry and our seafood
habits in Bottomfeeder

by JULIET WATERS

A month ago, Taras Grescoe brought attention to his new book, Bottomfeeder, by announcing in the New York Times that he would be giving up Pacific salmon. From now on he would be getting his omega-three from “bottomfeeding” fish (i.e. fish that other fish eat).

Maybe this inspired some people to read his book, but I’ve been procrastinating, and I know I’m not alone. When Bottomfeeder came up recently at a friend’s dinner party, someone sighed and said, “I’m just not ready to start eating sardines.”

I actually like sardines, but it’s hard to get excited about one more food to feel bad about. I’m still wrestling with eggs. Just the other day, I found out that my local supplier might be lying to me about feeding his chickens flaxseed. Or at least that’s what all the other egg suppliers at the Jean-Talon Market are saying about him.

Grescoe feels the same way about omega 3 as food guru Michael Pollan. (Critic Laura Shapiro on Pollan: “A nutrient he treats as lovingly as if it were a blond half his age.”) But Grescoe has a problem that Pollan doesn’t face. Pollan is simply against the cheap, processed, readily available food that makes up most of the average diet. Fish, however, doesn’t make up a huge proportion of the North American diet. So before Grescoe can talk average shoppers into eating less of a certain type of fish, and more of another, he has to talk them into wanting more fish in general. Most people who hear that fish is problematic will just tend to give it up entirely. And that’s not going to help his cause or sell his book; which is too bad because if Grescoe could just turn down the activist posturing a notch, Bottomfeeder is a very readable, even entertaining book.

Grescoe has a talent for trapping good stories and great details. His comparison of the old and new Fulton Fish Market in New York City is vivid stuff. From its days near the pier, where guys with names like “Johnny Dirty Face could disinfect a knife wound with half a bottle of whiskey, drink the rest, and still set a record for filleting shad,” to now, since its relocation to the Bronx: “a horizontal bunker the size of an upended Empire State Building.” Here we meet some pretty ugly fish and some pretty fishy people who are implicated in highly destructive things being done to our oceans.

It’s at the new Fulton Market that Grescoe comes face to face with the monkfish, the true star of this horror story. Salmon as far as I’m concerned, is just the sexy, troubled sidekick.

A “toadlike” fish, the monkfish traps its own food with a worm-like protrusion from its forehead. It hides under the sand, which is why bottom-trawling is the only way of capturing it. To do that, however, bottom trawlers pretty much have to scrape up much of the ocean floor and everything on it. “Imagine using a bulldozer to catch songbirds for food” explains one American biologist.

It’s unlikely anyone will have a hard time boycotting monkfish. But so what? If the situation is as dire as Grescoe describes, it’s going to take a lot more than just pressure from fish abstainers. It’s going to take serious lobbying and legislation.

Boycotting is almost always a poor substitute for activism. It’s mostly going to hurt fishermen and wholesalers, who’ll do more damage as they become more desperate. Grescoe takes a less arguable tack when he discusses putting pressure on powerful retailers to invest in more sustainable fisheries.

His advice to choose mostly fish from lower down the food chain is ultimately good, and he backs it up with some great tips and resources. I for one am grateful to have discovered whiting, a small, yummy fish that my local fishmonger is practically giving away. There’s a good book in here, but for Grescoe to get the kind of readership it deserves, he’s going to need a better hook.

Bottomfeeder by Taras Grescoe.
Harper Collins, hc, 326 pp, $29.95