Local Seafood Choices That Make a Difference : Q & A with Sheila Bowman

What’s a fish that people don’t know about that they should be eating?

“Maybe 10 years ago there was this idea of ‘trash fish’ and if you caught it, you would junk it. Current recommendations to try are sable fish and black cod. They’re super delicious, super available. They’re from the California coast and chefs love it. Rockfish is probably the best fish on the planet. Sometimes it’s sold as Pacific snapper, but it’s not snapper. I think they’re trying to call to mind the more familiar red snapper from the Gulf of Mexico.”

What is a common seafood misconception?

“The whole idea that fresh is best, and frozen fish isn’t as good. There have been taste tests on fresh versus frozen fish where chefs can’t tell the difference thanks in part to a technology for freezing bluefin tuna onboard the boat immediately after it was caught. Better to have something that’s been immediately frozen and freighted than something that’s been caught fresh and put on a plane.”

What’s a success story for fish people might not know about?

“Groundfish fisheries, which focused on bottom-feeder fish like rockfish and petrale sole. While groundfish were overfished and collapsed in the 1990s, fishermen took 14 years off and now they’re doing things completely differently with no bottom dragging, and the fish populations are rebounding.”

For the Bay Area, what are some local seafood Best Choices worth noting?

When choosing seafood, the very best route is to select items that are sustainable and local. These two criteria provide very different environmental benefits—one to fish populations and ocean habitats and the other to reducing the carbon footprint of the food we eat. Living near the coast, there are many Best Choices that are also local, seafood we catch or farm off the California coast. Some of the Best Choices from the Pacific Ocean are familiar seafood like oysters (farmed), herring and flounder. Some of the less-known local Best Choices you may want to discover are rockfish, sablefish, sanddabs and seaweed (farmed). The truth is, the more you ask local markets and restaurants for these fish, the more they will be available.