The TFT Interview: Sustainable Sushi Guru Casson Trenor

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to buying fish for supper. Wild or (sustainably) farmed? How to avoid mercury while still getting your omega-3s? And which fish are unsustainable from an endangered species point-of view?  To make sense of it all, I called up Casson Trenor, Senior Markets Campaigner at Greenpeace, and author of Sustainable Sushi: A Guide to Saving the Oceans One Bite at a Time

HW: Succinctly put, what is sustainable fish?

CT: It’s just like sustainable anything else. It’s a way of using a resource that allows us to continue to use it in the same way in the future, taking into account economic, environmental and social issues.

HW: Why is it so hard to find sustainable fish at fishmongers and restaurants around the country?

CT: It’s not that the fish themselves are hard to find. It’s hard to find fish that’s being accurately pushed as sustainable fish. If you know what you’re looking for—you can find it: oysters, clams, trout, wild salmon. The issue is that there’s no discrepancy drawn by many merchants between what’s sustainable or unsustainable. Or sometimes the discrepancy is incorrect. So it’s tough. That kind of approach necessitates the consumer having a comprehensive knowledge of contemporary fisheries.

I am one of the select few people on the planet who has the blessing of talking about fish ten hours a day, six days a week. And I get lost. So if your job is something else, how can you possibly keep up with everything? That’s what irritates me the most: when fishmongers or chefs say that it’s up to the consumers. To put the onus on the consumers is such a cop out. I love those wallet cards. My book is a glorified wallet card. It’s a consumer education guide. But it’s a stop gap. We haven’t done what really needs to be done, which is to get decision makers at a policy level to change things. Ideally, consumers should be able to go in and sit down at a restaurant and not be able to make a mistake.

HW: What are the top three fish we should not be eating?

CT: I can definitely answer that question, but I’d like to preface my response by saying that this is an incredibly dynamic issue that is changing all the time. So what I say should not be taken as gospel. That said, here are three examples of sushi fish that you should not eat right now: bluefin tuna, eel, and octopus.

Bluefin tuna is an endangered species in some cases. There are actually three, but all are in serious trouble. You will find it at any high-end or medium-level sushi bar across America. It’s usually sold as toro, which technically means belly meat. In fact, the U.S. government actually stood up and said that the northern bluefin is so imperiled that it deserves the same type of protections that we give to the rhinoceros. This was soundly defeated by a coalition led by Japan.

Eel. Eel farms do not hatch eels from eggs. They in fact raise juveniles that are taken from wild stocks. The eels that we eat when we eat unagi at most U.S. sushi restaurants are not actually from China, but are in fact American or European eels that have been taken as baby eels, flown to China, put in an eel rearing facility, fattened with fish protein and antibiotics and then killed and blanched.

Eel populations around the Atlantic oceans have declined by an average of 90% in the last 30 years. That eel is ranched, not farmed, because it was not hatched from an egg in a hatchery. Rather, they stole it from the wild, before it had the chance to breed. We’re dealing with a relatively delicate species. And to add insult to injury, by the time it hits your plate—you don’t even taste it! The flavor of the eel is covered up with a sweet sauce.

Octopus is an excellent example of the opacity of the sushi chain of custody. The package will say it’s from Japan, but the octopus is almost never from Japan. Most of it is from Mauritania, Morocco or Senegal. A Senegalese fisherman goes out, puts down his nets. He can pay lower landing fees at Mauritania. The octopus is shipped up by boat to Morocco where they have facilities to process it. Then it’s put into a freezer and sent up to Spain where it is loaded into a container and sent to Japan, where it is blanched, packaged, and re-exported. Because of labeling laws, it only has to say where it last underwent a change in format, so it says “Product of Japan.” You cannot identify sustainable seafood unless you know where it’s coming from.

HW: And what about when you’re shopping at grocery stores or ordering at non-sushi restaurants—what kinds of fish do you want to stay away from?

CT: Farmed salmon, Chilean sea bass, and orange roughy. (For more on why these fish are bad choices, see here.)

HW: I’ve always thought that wild fish is preferable to farmed fish, but is that always true? You sometimes see farmed fish that have been fed organic food touted on menus.

CT: I believe that aquaculture is going to be the future of seafood, for better or for worse. What I’m hoping is that as that transition takes effect, we will apply lessons learned and rather than find a better way to farm bluefin tuna, we’ll start farming fish that are omnivores and herbivores: striped bass, Tilapia, catfish. There are other issues—are you feeding the fish GMO soy? And I’m totally aware of this. But it’s easier to farm and cheaper. I’m not going to stand up and say that tilapia are great—they are the white bread of fish. They’re mostly from China, totally unregulated, full of chemicals. But there are some really solid guys in the U.S. doing some really good Tilapia operations.

HW: I wrote a story about mercury and fish last year and was shocked to learn that it’s not just swordfish, shark, tuna, and tilefish that contain high levels of mercury. Are small fish such as sardines and mackerel really the only ones that are safe to eat regularly?

CT: It has to do with more than just size. Generally the real big fish will have more mercury because they’ve lived for a long time and have eaten a lot. If you’ve got a fish that grows quickly but hasn’t lived very long like Cobia—it may contain less mercury.

One of the benefits of aquaculture is that offers a chance to get away from mercury and PCBs.

HW: What’s the latest being done to curb overfishing?

CT: There’s almost nothing being done. Overfishing is rampant. There are a few different fishery management associations, but they are crippled by political interests and they fail again and again and again.

We just went to Qatar last month to have the endangered species meeting. Bluefin tuna needs protection. Japan said no, we want to keep on eating it. The biggest problem in international fish conservation right now are the countries that really look at this issue as something akin to national security. Japan is first on that list—then China, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Spain.

We need to build an international management to save these fish. The countries that care about conserving fish aren’t putting enough resources or political will behind it. The one possible exception is Australia and that’s whaling, not fishing.

HW: What does “Senior Markets Campaigner” mean?

TC: I run all the work that has to do with seafood. My primary work is the ongoing development of the Carting Away the Oceans project. Greenpeace has an annual retailer ranking report of the 20 largest seafood retailers in the U.S. We appraise these retailers based on sustainable seafood purchasing policy, sustainability initiatives, and transparency & the chain of custody for point-of-sale, and inventory, we look at those four issues and give them a score. Then we use this to leverage the chain by rewarding sustainability.

We’ve been doing this for two-and-a-half years now and have found it quite successful. It’s the core of my work. There’s been a lot of shake up and a lot of progress, so we’re happy.

HW: Which retailers are leading the way?

CT: Target is doing amazing things. They are the first grocery store that publicly stated that they will no longer carry any types of farmed salmon. At their price point that’s amazing.

HW: Other than Greenpeace, what are the best organizations where consumers can go to find out more about sustainable fish?

It depends on what kind of information you want. What’s unique that Greenpeace offers is teaching consumers how to choose fish purveyors. Our ranking information allows consumers to see which supermarkets in their area care about this stuff. Honestly, I think, if consumers want to know about sustainable sushi they should go to the Greenpeace site. There is a drop-down menu that let’s you select your state. On April 26th, we’ll update the ranking with new data. 

HW: How did you get so impassioned about our oceans and saving fish?

TC: I don’t think I had a choice. I grew up in a little town in Washington state, right on the beach. I saw the ocean every day—I saw it change and I saw it die. I used to dig for clams in the summer. I wouldn’t touch anything from that beach with a ten foot pole right now—the levels of pollution, runoff, etc. have been horrible. It set off a fire in me. I don’t want my children having to see oceans die.

[this interview was edited for length and clarity.]