The collapse of Great Lakes fisheries foretells the future of our oceans
At Empire Fish in Milwaukee, you can buy a frozen octopus the size of your head from South Africa. Red king crab legs the length of your arm from the Bering Sea. Or as many pounds of tilapia as you can fathom farmed in China.
But on this particular weekday in the fillet room at the market, four men are slicing along the spines of lake whitefish and walleye, native species from the Great Lakes region. These fish were caught wild in Canadian waters.
One man brings his slender blade to the fish’s head and removes it, chucking the discard into a grey garbage bin beside him. He presses his knife through flesh until it hits hard abdominal vertebra. Next the man follows the fish’s backbone with his blade past pectoral fin, then dorsal fin until meeting caudal fin: its tail.
The man tosses a one-pound chunk of meat into a silver tray with one hand, and flips what’s left of the whitefish with the other. As instinctually as a plumber tightens a washer, he carves out the fillet. After removing the meat, the only remains are spinal column to tail. The skeleton gets tossed into the garbage bin, piled high with heads, tails and bones.
Next fish. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
While lake whitefish and walleye are from the Great Lakes, local fish are a minority at the market. Empire Fish is only 10 miles from Lake Michigan, one of the world’s grandest freshwater bodies, yet its stock is mostly exotic. The United States imports 80 percent of its seafood from other countries like octopus from South Africa.
Not all of the fish at the market was caught wild, either, as aquaculture has become a widespread phenomenon. In 2012, the United States was ranked third in overall fish farming production by country worldwide, after China and Indonesia, according to the US Food and Drug Administration.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has determined that Asian countries including Thailand, India, and China use unsustainable fishing and farming practices. That’s why ?a frozen bag of imported tilapia fillets at Empire Fish costs proportionately less than locally sourced fish.
In the Great Lakes region, fishermen are feeling the brunt of global trade in seafood. Before the 1960s, the Great Lakes sustained abundant commercial fisheries and exported fillets east to west. But now the region imports instead.
Due to overfishing, invasive species, and pollution, commercial industries in the region have collapsed and few wild Great Lakes fisheries remain. Even ocean fish stocks are in decline, and many scientists worry that overfishing could cause the ocean to run near empty. World Wildlife Fund reported in 2015 that marine fish populations have declined by 50 percent since 1970.
To reduce stress on wild seafood populations, across the country laws are being instated to relax aquaculture regulations. A federal law came into effect on February 12 that allows offshore fish farming in the Gulf of Mexico. Another research venture hopes to erect fish pens off the coast of San Diego. Inland, the Wisconsin legislature proposed a bill to regulate aquaculture like agriculture.
Earth Island Institute