Sightings | Alumni News

SIDEBAR: What’s Up with Chilean Sea Bass?

By Lisa M. Dellwo

Chilean sea bass was the toothsome darling of chefs and seafood lovers in the 1990s. So popular was the buttery fish that world stocks were quickly overfished and it was threatened with extinction by the end of that decade.

Many restaurants and markets removed the fish—also known as Patagonian toothfish—from menus and displays, and along with other environmentally conscious consumers, I refused to purchase it from those restaurants and markets that continued to offer it.

So when a banner advertising Chilean sea bass appeared on the façade of the Whole Foods Market in Durham just days before my interview with Jesse Marsh MEM’02, I knew I had a good ice breaker for my conversation with the sustainable seafood analyst at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

According to Marsh, one Chilean sea bass fishery in South Georgia, near Antarctica, has recently been certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). Seafood that is certified by the MSC comes from a fishery with environmentally responsible practices, says Marsh. “Only a small portion of the sea bass that is available is certified,” she says.Most of the rest is caught illegally,with fisheries that ignore catch limits and that increase the mortality of albatross through bycatch.

“If you see Chilean sea bass on a restaurant menu, the chances of it being MSC-certified are slim to none,” she says.However, the fish from Whole Foods does indeed carry the blue MSC seal.

Lisa M. Dellwo is a freelance writer in Durham, N.C.