Newsletters: March - April 2007
Wild Salmon-In Search of the Real Thing
By Fritz Johnson, Captain F/V Jazz, Bristol Bay, Alaska
Like so many of today's mass marketed foods, the noble salmon has suffered a host of indignities in the quest by the food industry to convert a wild natural fish into a consumer commodity. Investors have spent millions of dollars over the last 20 years to develop the farmed salmon available today at seafood markets nationwide.
Who could blame them? Wild salmon are delicious and renowned for healthy Omega-3s, known to reduce cholesterol and heart disease, enhance children's brain development and may slow if not prevent the progression of Alzheimer's disease. But like factory-grown poultry or bioengineered tomatoes, the industrial pen-reared salmon is a far cry from its wild ancestor, not only in health benefits, but in taste, texture and flavor. And as is so often the case with agribusiness, salmon farming exacts an environmental cost.
The salmon pictured here is a wild sockeye, or red salmon, from Alaska, the last place left on Earth where wild salmon populations remain abundant and healthy. The bright red color of the fillet is sockeye's natural color and what gives it its name; the flesh of farmed salmonoids, un-augmented by chemical colorants, is an unappetizing grey. But I don't want to write about industrial salmon. The evidence is in that salmon farming is a crime against nature, and the practice is illegal in Alaska. I much prefer to discuss the wild sockeye salmon native to a huge and pristine ecosystem in southwest Alaska known as Bristol Bay.
Four other species of wild Pacific salmon thrive here: kings, chums, cohos and pinks. But the sockeye run that begins in the middle of June staggers the imagination. Some years more than 40 million return to Bristol Bay's thousands of unspoiled rivers and lakes. Since before recorded history, this incredible pulse of natural ocean-reared protein has been a foundation of the region's Eskimo, Aleut and Athabascan cultures, people for whom heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and cancer were essentially unknown before the introduction of western processed foods.
Wild salmon don't live long enough to build up the toxins common in larger pelagic fish species. Sockeye themselves feed on even shorter-lived Bering Sea zooplankton, where industrial pollutants don't have time to accrue. The fact that toxins, mercury among them, concentrate in the fatty tissues of predatory species such as swordfish and tuna is an unfortunate irony for health conscious consumers seeking the benefits of seafoods' Omega-3s. Recent findings show those benefits extend even further than previously known, enhancing brain development in children whose mothers included wild salmon in their diets.
Participation in Alaska's wild harvest is a rare privilege, one that my family and crew don't presume without a proactive responsibility for keeping this fishery sustainable and Bristol Bay's waters unspoiled. One reward is knowing that wholesome natural protein can be harvested from this earth if we have the wisdom to care for it. Another? Grilling up a wild sockeye or king salmon and hearing folks exclaim, when they come back for seconds, "Lord, I didn't know salmon tasted like this!"
More information on Alaska salmon, sustainability and environmental issues is available at these websites:
Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute
Marine Stewardship Council
Trouble On The Salmon Farm
Renewable Resources Coalition
Northern Dynasty Mine:
