Once, and only once, have I ever dined on Alaskan Red King crab. It was long ago, in South Carolina, and someone else was paying for my meal.
But I remember it well – cracking open the legs, sliding the firm flesh into the tubs of melted butter. I violated one of the seven deadly sins that night and it wasn’t vanity. Not with that bib on.
But that’s a memory, and that meal will not come again, at least not any time soon. It’s almost impossible to get Alaskan Red King crab anymore. Although they’re few in number, they’re not extinct. Fishing boats pull in over a quarter million of them every year. And then they throw them over the side, dead.
This may seem like an insane way to go about fishing, and it is. But these are not fishermen who do this – these are corporations on the water.
The boats killing and throwing away all the Alaskan Red King crab are called factory trawlers. They’re floating factories that pull hundreds of tons of fish up in each net and process those fish in an on-board factory. Of course, they don’t process them all. Some, like the King crabs, they throw away, dead.
The discarded fish are all the wrong species, or the wrong size or the wrong sex. In the language of industrial fishing they’re called “bycatch.” Similar word games are used in wartime, when dead civilians are called “collateral damage.”
The family fishermen who used to fish for Alaskan Red King crabs are collateral damage, in an economic sense. The factory trawlers off Alaska catch nearly the entire quota of King crabs, throw them over the side dead, pay nothing in compensation to the family fisherman, who joins the family farmer on the unemployment line, I’ll never get another free meal of King crab and for what?
For pollock, that’s what. Pollock, until a few years ago, was considered a junk fish. No one wanted them. But then all the good species – the Pacific cod, the ocean perch, the Greenland turbot – got fished out. With the ability of factory trawlers to pull hundreds of tons of fish from the sea with each tow, very few species can survive for long.
Which brings us back to pollock. They may not taste so good, but there were millions of them and they matured quickly and multiplied rapidly. Remember, this is industrial fishing – quantity is job one.
So the factory trawlers catch millions of pounds of pollock, they process them in their on-board factories and they make surimi, which is fish paste, which comes to us, the happy consumers, as frozen fish sticks, or McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, or perhaps the greatest insult – fake crab legs.
This is where we are in late 20th-century America. We cannot get Alaskan Red King crab legs, because they are killed by the factory trawlers who are fishing for pollock to be made into fake crab legs.
But even this may not last for long – even the ubiquitous pollock are starting to decline as the factory trawlers strip-mine the sea.
The obvious answer is: Get rid of the factory trawlers and we can all eat a little easier.
The Last Time I Had Crabs
Once, and only once, have I ever dined on Alaskan Red King crab. It was long ago, in South Carolina, and someone else was paying for my meal.
But I remember it well – cracking open the legs, sliding the firm flesh into the tubs of melted butter. I violated one of the seven deadly sins that night and it wasn’t vanity. Not with that bib on.
But that’s a memory, and that meal will not come again, at least not any time soon. It’s almost impossible to get Alaskan Red King crab anymore. Although they’re few in number, they’re not extinct. Fishing boats pull in over a quarter million of them every year. And then they throw them over the side, dead.
This may seem like an insane way to go about fishing, and it is. But these are not fishermen who do this – these are corporations on the water.
The boats killing and throwing away all the Alaskan Red King crab are called factory trawlers. They’re floating factories that pull hundreds of tons of fish up in each net and process those fish in an on-board factory. Of course, they don’t process them all. Some, like the King crabs, they throw away, dead.
The discarded fish are all the wrong species, or the wrong size or the wrong sex. In the language of industrial fishing they’re called “bycatch.” Similar word games are used in wartime, when dead civilians are called “collateral damage.”
The family fishermen who used to fish for Alaskan Red King crabs are collateral damage, in an economic sense. The factory trawlers off Alaska catch nearly the entire quota of King crabs, throw them over the side dead, pay nothing in compensation to the family fisherman, who joins the family farmer on the unemployment line, I’ll never get another free meal of King crab and for what?
For pollock, that’s what. Pollock, until a few years ago, was considered a junk fish. No one wanted them. But then all the good species – the Pacific cod, the ocean perch, the Greenland turbot – got fished out. With the ability of factory trawlers to pull hundreds of tons of fish from the sea with each tow, very few species can survive for long.
Which brings us back to pollock. They may not taste so good, but there were millions of them and they matured quickly and multiplied rapidly. Remember, this is industrial fishing – quantity is job one.
So the factory trawlers catch millions of pounds of pollock, they process them in their on-board factories and they make surimi, which is fish paste, which comes to us, the happy consumers, as frozen fish sticks, or McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, or perhaps the greatest insult – fake crab legs.
This is where we are in late 20th-century America. We cannot get Alaskan Red King crab legs, because they are killed by the factory trawlers who are fishing for pollock to be made into fake crab legs.
But even this may not last for long – even the ubiquitous pollock are starting to decline as the factory trawlers strip-mine the sea.
The obvious answer is: Get rid of the factory trawlers and we can all eat a little easier.
Good night Mrs. Paul, wherever you are.