At a glance. Recommended servings per month. Eco details:. Marketed as Chilean sea bass, Patagonian and Antarctic toothfish are slow growing and inherently prone to overfishing.
The premium price also spurred rampant illegal fishing, which has fortunately declined with an increasing percentage of legal operators. The longlines commonly used to catch Chilean sea bass can incidentally snag and drown seabirds, however the fishing industry has made major strides in reducing bycatch in recent years.
Commercial Sources The main legal harvester of toothfish is New Zealand, although illegal harvests may be rampant. Thanks for the article. That cleared this up a lot. I think there are other foods that have this same situation going on. R — disingenuous, maybe. It is definitely a marketing ploy to get people to buy more of this fish. The relatively low reproductive rate and late age at maturation cause this species to be vulnerable to overfishing, and without careful management of the fisheries targeting this species, it could soon reach a point of being vulnerable to extinction.
Note on a related species: The Antarctic Toothfish Dissostichus mawsoni is closely related to the Patagonian toothfish, is the target of a growing industrial fishery, and is often also marketed as Chilean Seabass.
Therefore, it is important to be able to distinguish between the two species. Like many Antarctic fishes, the Antarctic Toothfish has special proteins in its blood that prevents it from freezing in sub-zero temperatures. The slow reproductive rate and long lifespan of the Patagonian toothfish make it particularly vulnerable to overfishing.
Click here or below to download hands-on marine science activities for kids. The incentives to ignore regulations were simply too high. This is well illustrated by the case of Antonio Garcia Perez, a Spanish fisherman with serious disregard for fishing regulations. Spotted by Australian patrol boats, Perez ordered his ship to flee south toward Antarctica.
With an Australian ship giving chase, the Viarsa made directly for a storm of 75 mph winds. It would be nice if market mechanisms kicked in to protect stocks of popular seafood. When lobster became popular and overfished, the difficulty of trapping them would increase the price, leading people to seek alternatives.
Lobsters would have a respite until stocks increased and prices dropped, hopefully leading to a sustainable equilibrium over time. People continue to pay for popular seafood, with high prices becoming a draw for fishermen rather than a deterrent for diners. The result is hard to enforce and negotiate regulations and a tragedy of the commons. The trajectory of the Chilean sea bass -- from almost unknown, to fish sticks, to a fine cuisine risking extinction in a mere 20 years -- shows just how much power seafood markets hold over the state of our oceans.
Seafood Watch notes the success in allowing some stocks to recover, and lists a number of responsible sources for acquiring toothfish. In the future, expect to see more examples like the toothfish turned Chilean sea bass.
Partly due to chefs and foodies always looking for the hot new thing, but also because in the context of overfishing, we simply need new things to eat. This post was written by Alex Mayyasi. Follow him on Twitter here or Google Plus. To get occasional notifications when we write blog posts, sign up for our email list. Learn how to create content marketing that performs.
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