“Grinding Nemo”
Overfishing is only half of the story, says Paul Greenberg in his talk. The other half is about the boom in fish farming and aquaculture, which – over the past few years – has started to exceed the amount of wild fish produced. In America and a great part of the Western World, shrimp is by far the most consumed seafood. 5, 10, 15 pounds of wild fish – deemed trash fish by the fishing industry – are killed to bring one pound of shrimp to the market. Filmmaker Mark Benjamin called the phenomenon “Grinding Nemo“: Shrimp dredgers vacuum up a huge amount of by-catch that is then minced and turned into shrimp feed. An „ecosystem literally eating itself and spitting out shrimp“. A recent study has found that dredging for shrimp represents one of the most carbon-intensive ways of fishing there is.
Paul Greenberg is the author of the James Beard Award winning New York Times bestseller Four Fish and a regular contributor to the paper. He has also written for National Geographic Magazine, GQ, The Times (of London) and Vogue, and lectures on seafood and the environment around the world. His recent book, American Catch, tells the story of how America has lost – and might regain – her local seafood resources.
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Title: Amphiprion ocellaris (Clown anemonefish) in Heteractis magnifica (Sea anemone). Author: Nhobgood Nick Hobgood