Four Fish explained at Cary Institute

MILLBROOK —  Why “Four Fish?†Author Paul Greenberg explained the title of his new book at the onset of his free public lecture at the Cary Institute on Friday night, Sept. 17, after asking for a show of hands on questions like, “How many of you have seen a sturgeon?†and “How many sports fisherman are there here tonight?†The audience was well populated by anglers and readers of books like “Cod,†and “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whale Ship Essex.â€

A journalist who writes about fish and food-related subjects, Greenberg’s original working title for the book was “The Fish on Your Plate.†He decided that the multitude of fish species made that a confusing subject and proceeded to focus on only four fish: cod, tuna, salmon and bass. Speaking without notes or slides, Greenberg talked to the audience about his research on the history and current status of these fish.

Fifty years ago most of the fish consumed were wild, but now more than half are farmed, and there have been large-scale collapses of fish stocks worldwide.

The Atlantic salmon is now effectively commercially extinct due to habitat degradation and over-fishing in Greenland’s breeding grounds. Wild salmon still exist in the Pacific, but Anglo-American, the large global mining company, is trying to build North America’s largest open-pit mine and the world’s biggest dam at Bristol Bay in Alaska, the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishing grounds.

“The best thing you can do for salmon,†said Greenberg, is to register your concern at savebristolbay.org.

European sea bass, which are 100-percent farmed, are another example of the “blue revolution†of applying biotech to fish. Each pound of sea bass produced requires 15 to 20 pounds of raw fish food, depleting the supplies of forage fish that sustain wild fish stocks.

Wild cod has largely disappeared because of large-scale industrial trawling, and Greenberg maintains that raising aquaculture vegetarian fish like tra (a cod-like fish from Vietnam) and tilapia makes more sense than industrial fishing.

Greenberg saved the most interesting fish stories for last, reading from “Four Fish†about the exhausting thrill of catching a tuna.

Despite ocean acidification, habitat degradation and loss of forage fish, Greenberg said that there is still a chance to restore wild fish stocks and suggested that integrated aquaculture offers promise. He cited the example of using seaweeds, algae and mussels to filter the waste generated by farmed salmon as an example. There is more information on his website, fourfish.org.

At the end of his talk, Greenberg refused to answer the question of whether Michael Kurlansky, the author of “Cod,†could distinguish a farm-raised cod from a wild one. You have to buy the book to find out the answer, but Greenberg himself said he thought the farmed fish tasted like striped bass.