Gulf Grief

Image from Huffington Post slideshow of oil spill photos.

The BP oil spill warrants the growing outrage with its monstrous impact.  While most people I speak with are worried about how this will impact the price of gas, I’m worried about the price of fish.  Not about how it will affect my wallet, but what it means for ocean ecology as  hundreds of species are at risk.  Add this insult to the already injured—the Gulf of Mexico, an important biological, economic and gastronomic region, has not been thriving for quite some time.  The notorious dead zone, a hypoxic area the size of New Jersey created by Midwestern industrial ag fertilizer runoff carried to the Gulf via the mighty Mississippi, has already taken a toll on aquatic life and industry. Now, post oil spill, thousands of miles of Gulf waters are closed.

Who knows how this will affect seafood prices at your local grocery store.  Sources disagree as to how much of our nation’s fish intake comes from the Gulf catch; I’ve read as little as 1% and as high as one-third.  But certainly, we get most of our seafood from places far, far away.  Gulf shrimp is one of the many edible sea creatures that will certainly be affected by the spill, and unfortunately, Gulf shrimp is one of the few sustainable shrimp options.  Most of the shrimp eaten in the states come from places like the shrimp farms of Malaysia: where the factory like methods of raising shrimp degrade coastal habitats and communities.  (See the Environmental Justice foundations article: Farming the Sea - unregulated shrimp farming, the environment and people.)  Can we continue to export these ugly practices just so we can buy our seafood cheap?  

Even if the cost of shrimp doesn’t go up, this has cost us.  At the rate we are spoiling ecosystems and waterways it is becoming increasingly hard to support a growing population on this small planet.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottom-line: Finding sustainable seafood appears to be getting harder, but the nutrition benefits make it worth researching.  SlowFood USA recently stated in their monthly Food Chain, “We can also support the ongoing rebuilding of the Gulf and other regional seafood industries by making sure the seafood we buy is domestic and sustainably harvested.”  See past post: Finding Sustainable Seafood to learn more.  And if you’d like to get involved with relief efforts, consider supporting organizations like the Gulf Restoration Network.