Oceana's editor Suzannah Evans recently interviewed Taras Grescoe, author of the new book Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood. In the book, he circles the globe on a twofold mission: to consume exotic seafood and to explore why fish, crustaceans and marine mammals are disappearing. Drawing on the research of renowned fisheries scientist and Oceana board member Dr. Daniel Pauly, Grescoe explains the overexploitation of the seas and how we might restore the abundance of seafood for future generations. To read the full interview, visit http://oceana.org/newsletter.
Was there anything you couldn't bring yourself to eat? Because of the issues or you just didn't want to?
There were so many things I did eat, and my M.O. was to be an adventurous eater, but to have a list of seafood, things I wanted to try, things I hadn't yet tried. And as I became educated, [I would] cross things off the list. I was taking the reader through this process.
In Japan, there are 450 kinds of seafood on the market, I didn't eat gooey duck - not too many issues associated with it. Pufferfish, I ate. I regret eating whale. I'll never do it again, but it was interesting to figure out how to fit into Japanese culture. There are things I'm still interested in trying, particularly when it comes to mollusks and crustaceans. The one thing that was really problematic was live shrimp in Shanghai.
