Posts Tagged ‘fish’
“My heart & soul care for worms”*…
Last summer we visited the family in the Florida panhandle that has been harvesting worms to sell as bait for generations. Today, Inori Roy takes us to southern Ontario, where worming is an industry. Nearly all bait worms sold in North America are hand-plucked from farmland in this part of Canada. But are we witnessing the final wiggles of a once thriving business?…
To successfully catch a Canadian nightcrawler, you have to approach it a little like you’re a cat. The worm—fat, pink, undomesticable, and anywhere between five and 10 inches long—has made its way two-thirds out of its burrow, taking in moisture from the cool night air and exploring the surface of the soil for food. If it senses your approach, it will hurtle back into its hole with startling, uncharacteristic speed. So, crouched in the dirt, you must reach for it with a quiet, swift confidence. With the pads of your thumb and forefinger, you grasp the worm’s body right above where it disappears into the burrow hole. Gently, firmly, careful not to squish or tear it, you pull.
It’s just past 10 p.m. on a cool, overcast night in early July, and I’m standing in the middle of a field in the heart of southern Ontario farm country—West Perth, population 9,000. Dozens of workers quietly emerge from the three vans that have driven onto the field. In the dim light spilling out of the vehicle interiors, they layer raincoats over hoodies, bracing for the damp and the chill. Then, they accessorize: LED headlamps strapped to their foreheads, two bags of finely ground sawdust at their hips to keep their gloves or hands dry, and large, empty tin cans hooked at their waists. If it’s a good night, they will each harvest thousands, perhaps even 10,000, worms by dawn.
If you’re in the market for fishing bait anywhere in North America, and now even in parts of western Europe, odds are you’re buying a Canadian nightcrawler plucked from this stretch of land between Toronto and Windsor. These wild Canadian worms, who live so far beneath the surface of the soil that breeding or farming them is impractical, are hand-picked by a small army of workers, almost all immigrants from Southeast Asia, including generations of Vietnamese refugees and, more recently, temporary foreign workers from Thailand and Laos. It’s a niche sector of the western economy that’s exclusively sourced from this small corner of the province, and run primarily by family businesses passed from one generation to the next. In a given year, the more than $200 million industry sells between 500 and 700 million worms. But with changing demand, immigration labour policies, and the climate crisis, it’s also at an existential crossroads…
Fascinating: “The Worm Hunters of Southern Ontario,” from @royinori.bsky.social in @thelocal.to.
* Charles Darwin, in an 1880 letter See also here and the earlier (R)D linked above.
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As we wriggle, we might recall that it was at about 2:30 p.m. on this date in 2004, in the village of Knighton in Shropshire (in the West Midlands of the UK), that worms were temporarily unnecessary: it rained fish.
See also: “Ten Times It Rained Animals (Yes, Animals)” (and here).
“Enjoy every sandwich”*…
See how your quick, on-the-go lunch sandwich was produced (and as a bonus, how your big catch at sea becomes a permanent part of your decor)…
* Warren Zevon
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As we contemplate commercial comestibles, we might send inventive birthday greetings to Benjamin Thompson; he was born on this date in 1753. A supporter of the Tory Loyalist cause during the American Revolution, he fled to England after the war, where his scientific efforts during the conflict had earned him a reputation (and a knighthood). But he soon decamped to Bavaria, where he served as an aide-de-camp to the Prince-elector Charles Theodore. He reorganized Charles Theodore’s army and created the Englischer Garten in Munich, which remains one of the largest urban public parks in the world. For his efforts, in 1791 Thompson was made an Imperial Count, becoming Reichsgraf von Rumford. He took the name “Rumford” after the town of Rumford, New Hampshire, which was an older name for Concord where he had been married.
Relevantly to today’s post, he studied methods of cooking, heating, and lighting, including the relative costs and efficiencies of wax candles, tallow candles, and oil lamps. He invented Rumford’s Soup, a nourishing soup for the poor, and established the cultivation of the potato in Bavaria. And he invented the double boiler, a kitchen range, a coffee percolator– and the Rumford fireplace (which more efficiently heated rooms). He is also credited with the invention of thermal underwear and with creating the “baked Alaska.”
“The only kind of seafood I trust is the fish stick, a totally featureless fish that doesn’t have eyeballs or fins”*…
A minority opinion, it seems… we’re consuming more seafood than ever, and increasingly from farmed sources, which have overtaken that of wild-caught fish for the first time in history…
At the latest count, the average American was eating ~5 lbs more seafood per year than they had been in the 1990s, and globally the consumption of seafood has been outpacing population growth since the 1960s. But where exactly is all of that shrimp, tuna, and salmon coming from?
When we think of fishing, it’s easy to romanticize weather-beaten boats helmed by wizened sea captains. But, on a global scale, much of modern fishing looks very different. In fact, increasingly, the contents of a seafood tower or “catch of the day” is more likely to have been farmed rather than caught in the wild.
That’s the latest conclusion from The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, an annual report published earlier this month by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which revealed that — for the first time in history — the majority of the world’s seafood came from fish farming rather than wild catching in 2022.
The practice of aquaculture — rearing fish and sea plants in controlled ponds, pens, and pools — produced more than 94 million metric tons of seafood in 2022 and is being hailed by some as a means of sustaining seafood production in the face of depleting wild fish stocks. The 2022 tally was double the production figure from 2006 and reflects decades of investment and innovation in the aquaculture industry, which 30 years ago accounted for just 15% of total seafood.
Note: Total aquaculture production, which includes algae and aquatic plants like seaweed, overtook wild fishing efforts more than a decade ago (the more recent milestone excludes sea plants).
Asia, which has long been at the center of the world of commercial fishing and seafood more generally, is driving much of the aquaculture boom. In fact, the FAO attributes more than 90% of total global aquaculture production (including aquatic plants) to the continent, helping to secure fish farming’s spot as the “fastest-growing food production system in the world”…
Read on for more about aquaculture– it’s history and practice– and for the rise of U.S. seafood imports and the fall of shrimp: “We now farm more fish than we catch,” from @sherwood_news.
* Dave Barry
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As we reach for the ketchup, we might send aquatic birthday greetings to Frank Rattray Lillie; he was born on this date in 1870. A zoologist, he was an early pioneer of the study of embryology (making key discoveries about the fertilization of the egg (ovum) and the role of hormones in sex determination).
But he is probably better remembered for his role in building the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Lillie formed a lifelong association with the laboratory, eventually becoming its director in 1908, then turning it into a full-time institution.
Sadly, Lillie was also involved in the American eugenics movement at several levels: he was member of Chicago’s Eugenics Education Society; he was a committee member of the Second International Eugenics Congress; and he served on the advisory council for the Eugenics Committee of the United States. His status as a leading scientist likely helped to legitimize the movement.
“The public health, ecological, and social impacts of fish meal—which were a consequence of its cheapness as a feed ingredient—were largely invisible on the other side of the world”*…
… Those deleterious effects were largely missed in the mid-Twentieth Century, when fish meal became important to the rise of industrial-scale farming, and– as Ashley Braun explains– are still, as fish meal use is again growing…
The dirty yellow powder’s underwhelming appearance belies its influence. Fish meal—an unassuming yet protein-dense powder of dried, cooked, and pulverized fish—has fueled South American oligarchs, fostered slums, reshaped ecosystems, and fed Europe’s agricultural industrialization. Fish meal propelled the global production of meat and eggs, all while spurring public health crises, pollution, and unrest. The precipitous rise and fall of this humble commodity in the mid to late 20th century, writes medical and environmental historian Floor Haalboom, offers lessons for today as fish meal’s star rises again…
How cheap protein fueled the Global North’s agricultural expansion and destabilized the Global South: “Boom and Bust, All at Once: The Fraught Modern History of Fish Meal,” from @ashleybraun in @hakaimagazine. Eminently worth reading in full.
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As we ponder pulverization, we might recall that it was on this date in 1837 that John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins, a pair of successful Worcester chemists, began manufacturing Worcestershire sauce, a savory flavoring that capitalizes on umami. Their condiment, which was broadly available to the public the following year, faced down scores of imitators to become the dominant brand, which it remains.
“The sea hath fish for every man”*…
A few weeks ago, (Roughly) Daily shared the story of The Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ attempt to rebrand invasive Asian Carp as Copi in an attempt to make it a more appealing food. Kane Hsieh, writing in Spencer Wright‘s always-illuminating The Prepared, elaborates on the theme…
… It’s worked in the past: Chilean sea bass (Patagonian toothfish), monkfish (goosefish), and uni (urchin, also called whore’s eggs by American fisherman as recently as 1990) were all successful rebrandings.
Speaking of fish, it’s always a surprise to me how much of what feels like traditional cuisine is actually very modern, accidental, or even engineered. In Japanese cuisine, tuna and salmon rose to their contemporary status only in the 20th century: tuna was a poor man’s fish until post-war Western influence brought a taste for fattier meat, and salmon was an undesirable fish until the 80s when a desperate Norwegian government ran aggressive ad campaigns in Japan…
Trash to table: rebranding fish to make them more palletable, from @kane in @the_prepared.
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As we contemplate cuisine, we might recall that it was on this date in 1838 that it rained frogs in London. Indeed, there have been numerous instances on polliwog precipitation in the area, most recently in 1998, when an early morning rain shower in Croydon (South London) was accompanied by hundreds of dead frogs.
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