Sardines are swimming sunlight
Sardines are in vogue. Literally. They are in Vogue magazine. They’re delicious (subjectively), good for you, and sustainable… right?
Recently, a listener called into the show asking about just that.
“I've always had this sense that they're a more environmentally friendly fish, perhaps because of being low on the food chain. But I'm realizing I really have no sense of what it looks like to actually fish for sardines,” Jeannie told us.
The Outside/In team got together to look beyond the sunny illustrations on the fish tins. Is there bycatch? What about emissions? Are sardines overfished? If we care about the health of the ocean, can we keep eating sardines?
Featuring Jeannie Bartlett, Malin Pinsky, and Zach Koehn.
To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly.
An example of stylishly dining on sardines. Photo: Justine Paradis.
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS
If you’re interested in finding sustainable fisheries, our sources recommended checking out Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch and the Marine Stewardship Council.
Sardines (specifically, Fishwife) in Vogue.
Why are tinned fishes in every boutique store, and why do all of those stores feel exactly the same? For Grub Street, Emily Sundberg reported on the digital marketplace behind the “shoppy shop.”
The documentary about the epic South African sardine run is “The Ocean’s Greatest Feast” on PBS.
Zach Koehn’s paper, “The role of seafood in sustainable diets.”
Malin Pinsky’s research found that small pelagic fish (like sardines, anchovies, and herring) are just as vulnerable to population collapse as larger, slower-growing species like tuna.
Explore the designs of historical Portuguese fish tins (Hyperallergic).
An animated reading of The Mousehole Cat
The last sardine cannery in the United States closed in 2010. But you can explore this archive of oral histories with former workers in Maine factories (many of them women and children).'
Sardines at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Photo: Todd Dwyer on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
Editor’s note: A previous version of this episode mistakenly referred to Cornwall, England as a town. It is a county. This episode has been corrected.
SUPPORT
Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.
Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.
CREDITS
Outside/In host: Nate Hegyi
Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis, with help from Kate Dario.
Edited by Rebecca Lavoie with help from Taylor Quimby
Executive Producer: Taylor Quimby
Our team also includes Felix Poon and Marina Henke.
NHPR’s Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie.
Special thanks to Hugh French.
Music in this episode came from Mia Pfirrman, Major Tweaks, David Celeste, Blue Topaz, Blue Dot Sessions, Revel Day, Lofive, and Spiegelstadt.
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
Audio Transcript
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Justine Paradis: Hey, Nate. Hey, Kate.
Nate Hegyi: Hey.
Kate Dario: Hey, Justine.
Justine Paradis: So, at a recent Outside/In meeting, we were discussing our plans for this episode, and, Kate, you actually told us about something that happened to you recently. Do you mind telling us that story?
Kate Dario: Yeah. So I was having a birthday dinner with some of my friends. They were giving me very sweet and thoughtful gifts. And one of my closest friends, she showed up with a bunch of individually wrapped little boxes. And I had a suspicion what they were because we have a shared interest. And they were exactly what I thought they were. Which was a beautiful display of a bunch of tinned fishes.
MUSIC: Windows, Mia Pfirrman
Kate Dario: It was an amazing birthday gift. And we had basically, like the fish equivalent of a charcuterie board afterwards. And it was super, super yummy.
Nate Hegyi: I have been completely in the dark with this term tinned fish. It sounds so much nicer than I think. What I normally think of is just like cheap sardines.
Kate Dario: Totally. I think that tinned fish, which I guess is like the classy way to say fish in a can has somehow undergone some type of rebranding that it felt equivalent to. Like if my friend had given me really nice, like gourmet chocolate or flowers or a bottle of wine. Like it's like a delicacy.
Nate Hegyi: So this is not like your chicken of the sea bumblebee style cans.
Kate Dario: Oh, totally. I think I mean, I think part of the appeal is it's like a little taste of the Iberian Peninsula to put in your sad pantry, you know, all the colors and fun.
Justine Paradis: They're pretty.
Kate Dario: They're pretty!
Nate Hegyi: I have not heard of this. I – is this like a Tiktok thing, what is this?
J ustine Paradis: This feels like impossible to me that you would not have heard of this Nate. But maybe this speaks to our different niches, I dunno.
Nate Hegyi: Also as I think we’re learning I have not been on instagram. Like I just started listening to Chappell Roan, that is where I am at.
Kate Dario: I would say Chappell Roan and tinned fish are part of the same extended universe.
Justine Paradis: Yeah I think so too.. Like – a beautiful person, getting done up, cracking open a can of STINKY fish, you know they’re so messy and oily – it kind of reminds me of this moment earlier this year when Chappell Roan shouted down a photographer who was apparently being super rude to in some photo line – it’s like, we’re not taking shit! We are eating stinky fish and you can deal with it.
Kate Dario: I know. What wave of feminism –
Justine Paradis: Fish wave.
Kate Dario: Fish wave. We're on the fish wave of feminism now.
Nate Hegyi: Fish wave feminism, I love it.
MUSIC FADE
Justine Paradis: So I think we can say that we are in the midst of what some are calling a “tinned fish renaissance.” And we are not the only ones who feel that way. A listener recently left a voicemail on our show's hotline asking about tinned fish, specifically sardines.
Jeannie Bartlett: Hey, Outside/In, this is Jeannie calling from Montpelier, Vermont.
Well, there's lots of good reasons to eat sardines. They're full of protein and omega three fatty acids, and they don't have a lot of mercury because they're low in the food chain. And I've always had this sense that they're also a more environmentally friendly fish, perhaps because of being low on the food chain. But I'm realizing I really have no sense of what it looks like to actually fish for sardines…
Um, just curious. And if it makes you curious too, then cool!
Justine Paradis: Does it make us curious?
Nate Hegyi: Ye-ah!
Justine Paradis: This is essentially a personal question, Jeannie.
Nate Hegyi: Of course it does, Jeannie. I am so curious.
Kate Dario: Me too. Me too.
MUSIC: Forever After, Major Tweaks
Nate Hegyi: This is Outside/In. I’m Nate Hegyi. I’m here with Kate Dario and Justine Paradis. This week, we are spending an entire episode answering this question.
Sardines are in vogue. Literally. They are in Vogue Magazine. But – fad aside, how sustainable are these little fish?
Jeannie Bartlett: Is there bycatch that happens with sardines also?
Nate Hegyi: How are they caught?
Jeannie Bartlett: Is there like ocean forage floor trawling where the nets get dragged along the ocean floor?
Nate Hegyi: What kinds of emissions are involved?
Jeannie Bartlett: Um, and does it matter what brand sardines I buy, or are there any other labels or indicators that I should be looking for if I buy sardines?
Nate Hegyi: What is the deal with sardines?
Jeannie Bartlett: Thanks so much. Bye!
//
Justine Paradis: Do any of you have people in your lives who are like, feel that sardines are very, like, sort of stinky and and gross?
Nate Hegyi: Yeah. My wife, like, I literally cannot eat sardines in the house.
Kate Dario: Definitely, my parents could not compute me and my friends being obsessed with eating sardines. Like putting on a cute outfit, trying to be glam, having a glass of wine, and then being like, all right, let's crack out the, let's bring out the sardines. They were like, aren't you girls supposed to be like, hip or something? Or why are you eating sardines right now? So definitely I think there's a generational divide.
Justine Paradis: So it may seem like this tinned fish renaissance is a new thing because at least in the US, there exists an attitude of distaste towards stinky fish. But I think you could probably also argue that this conception of tinned fish as gross is maybe a bit of a historical blip, because, for one, the beautiful vibey art on sardine boxes, it's not a 21st century phenomenon. I found a digital museum of Portuguese tinned fish boxes going back to the 19th century. A lot of them are very French nouveau kind of Moulin Rouge vibes.
Nate Hegyi: Mm.
Justine Paradis: So it's been a thing for a long time.
Malin Pinsky: they've been incredibly important for human nutrition and food and economies for probably centuries…
Justine Paradis: This is Malin Pinsky, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.Let’s talk a little about what sardines are. There is something to the logic that Jeannie and all of us have been apparently operating under.
Malin Pinsky: It is, I have to say, you know, eating small, fast growing fish that are feeding low in the food chain, right? They're not far removed from sunlight. They're basically swimming sunlight a couple steps removed is really sustainable. There are an enormous number of them out in the ocean.
Nate Hegyi: Swimming sunlight? What does he mean by that?
Justine Paradis: Yeah, so, because sunlight is the energy source of almost all life on this planet – ultimately all of us are just basically translating sunlight into our life force, I guess. Plants do that directly – but those of us who can’t photosynthesize must accept our fate of being one or two steps away. But because sardines are really low on the food chain – they eat plankton which are teeny tiny marine plants and animals – they’re practically swimming sunlight.
MUSIC: Aquarius, David Celeste
Justine Paradis: In general, sardines are relatively small, fast growing fish. You'll hear them described as pelagic, meaning of the open ocean rather than benthic, which is living on the sea floor. They love a coastal upwelling zone, but who doesn't? These are places where cold, nutrient rich water is rising to the surface, like off California. So that means there's a lot of plankton to eat. They swim in MASSIVE schools. It is truly a spectacle. The annual sardine run off South Africa is among the largest migrations in the world in terms of biomass — this sardine run is 4 miles long, a mile wide, 30 m deep. Just miles of fish.
Nate Hegyi: Oh my gosh, that'd be so cool to see.
Justine Paradis: I once watched a documentary about this sardine run and it was truly OPERATIC in terms of the characters that come – first the birds, then the tuna, then the dolphins, and finally the whales. It is bananas.
The Ocean’s Greatest Feast trailer: It's a mass migration of sardines. Why they gather is a mystery, but the result is a feast that will sustain an entire coastline of creatures.
Kate Dario: This sounds like they should have a sequel to “March of the Penguins.” “March of the Sardines.” It sounds really beautiful.
Malin Pinsky: Because the schools can become so large and they go through these large peaks in abundance, they're really important to fisheries.
Justine Paradis: So these massive sardine runs are also big business. One analysis I saw put the value of the global sardine market at almost $10 billion annually – and that’s just for CANNED sardines. So there are a lot of them. But of course we're here to ask is eating sardines sustainable?
Zach Koehn: So “sustainability” is kind of a… it’s a confusing word. It’s an increasingly confusing word, I would say.
Justine Paradis: This is Zach Koehn. He is a data research scientist at the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions. Zach made the point that there are so many facets to the idea of sustainability when it comes to fisheries – and everything else. The listener who asked this question, Jeannie, she named a few concerns as well. First thing she mentioned was…
Jeannie Bartlett: Is there bycatch that happens with sardines also?
Justine Paradis: … bycatch.
MUSIC: Pattern View, David Celeste
Justine: So shall we start there?
Kate Dario: Yes.
Nate Hegyi: Yes. This is like when they're, like, running those big nets through the ocean and like, they're picking up sea turtles and dolphins and stuff.
Justine Paradis: Exactly.
Zach Koehn: Any fishery is going to have issues with, you know, taking things that it doesn't want to take or non-target species. Same way that farmers are going to always have issues with, you know, birds on their crops and things like that.
Justine Paradis: A fishery, by the way, is kind of a vague term but it’s basically a, like, a specific area of ocean / type of fish – it can be defined by the species you’re catching, the geography – or… by the method. Like, Jeannie asked about trawling.
Jeannie Bartlett: where the nets get dragged along the ocean floor
Justine: So this is like dragging a net either along the bottom or through the midwater. And people trawl to catch fish that like to hang out on the seafloor. So like cod and haddock and squid and shrimp especially.
Nate: Okay.
Justine Paradis: But it “essentially [rototill] the seabed.” It stirs up the sand on the seafloor, rips up plants and habitats, messes with animals buried in the sand… you get it.
Kate: mhm.
Justine: Sardines, though, they hang out nearer to the surface of the water, so the technique is different. People catch them using a type of net called a purse seine.
Zach Koehn: They're typically fished in bigger schools where they do this thing called purse seine, which is this kind of like beautiful image of like a net that comes down. And then there's a little boat that comes off the big boat and just kind of wraps up the school and then tightens it like an old school purse and then pulls it up so it never interacts with the bottom.
Justine Paradis: Does that make sense?
Nate Hegyi: Yeah. Scoops ‘em up.
Kate Dario: Cinches ‘em.
Justine Paradis: Yeah. Yeah. So with the purse seine, fishers can go out and target a specific school of fish. So in a way, it's less random than, say, longlining, which is laying out a fishing line that's, like, miles long with a ton of fishing hooks on it to catch, like tuna and swordfish, but with purse seines, there are bycatch concerns. According to NOAA, in U.S. fisheries, the species most commonly captured include bottlenose dolphins and humpback whales.
Kate Dario: Wow. Yeah. You're getting a lot more than you bargained for. If you're trying to get a teeny tiny sardine and you end up with a humpback whale!
Justine Paradis: I know. This is huge. Caveat though – that’s not specifically about sardines. Purse seines are actually the most common method used to catch fish – a lot of tun are caught this way. Though data on bycatch generally is murky and complicated – fishery sustainability experts do say that bycatch in purse seine fisheries is tends to be lower than other methods.
MUSIC SWELL AND FADE
Let's move on to emissions. So, Zach, he was the author of a paper published in 2022.
Zach Koehn: So the title of the paper is The Role of Seafood in Sustainable Diets.
Justine Paradis: …which calculated the greenhouse gas footprint of different aspects of our diets. Basically, looking at the ratio of nutrients you can get for the carbon involved in the life cycle of catching it or producing it.
Nate Hegyi: Mhm.
Justine Paradis: So if you guys want to take a look at this graph from this paper.
Nate Hegyi: Okay. So there it is. Okay. So we're looking at a graph right now. It's got like capture fishery, aquaculture, livestock.
Justine Paradis: So, on the far right we've got beef which requires a lot of emissions for like a good amount of nutrients, but not the most. And then we have nuts, you know, which don't require a ton of emissions but are high in nutrients. But they're over far on the left. And you see that the small pelagics, so that's sardines and other other fish like them, they scored between nuts and tubers.
Nate Hegyi: That's amazing. So according to his study, they are like more like bang for your sustainable buck than seeds.
Kate Dario: Wow.
Nate Hegyi: That's amazing.
Kate Dario: That's shocking to me because I do try to think about sustainability, or I guess I try to think about the environment when I eat. And my general rule of thumb is always things that grow in the ground are better than something like fish or meat of any type or any sort of animal byproduct. So that's fascinating. I definitely would not have guessed that.
Justine Paradis: Well, you can see that it is the only meat on the left side of the chart.
Zach Koehn: If you're looking at it from having a small environmental footprint, small pelagics, all of those little fish like sardines or herring or anchovy are actually quite low in emissions. And the reason for that is how they're fished. They're typically fished in bigger schools.
Justine Paradis: So remember that purse seine technique?
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Justine Paradis: How sardine fishers scoop up entire schools of fish? They do this relatively close to shore, and on a single trip fishers can get a huge haul, especially since the technology in the fishing industry is so slick these days. Like, you can identify schools of fish with sonar and know exactly where they are, right? But compare that to lobsters, which were way higher on that ratio. They had a lot more emissions involved. They were right around lamb and beef. And that's because catching lobsters requires multiple trips. Like first you go out and lay the traps, let them soak for a few days, and then you go check them again. And it's not a ton of lobsters compared to the huge school of sardines, right?
Nate Hegyi: That's so cool.
Kate Dario: That's fascinating. So if we're looking at small pelagics, does that factor in the carbon footprint of like the boat and the like the the canning facility?
Justine Paradis: Good question. It stops before the canning facility...
Kate Dario: Hmm.
Nate Hegyi: Okay.
Justine Paradis: But there's Malin Pinsky, who was not involved with Zach’s study. Um, he made a good point about this. Like, think about what it takes to airfreight, like fresh fish from Alaska, say, to a dinner plate in New York City.
Malin Pinsky: Compare that to tightening something close to where it's caught, and then ship it as slowly as you want, because it'll be preserved for months or years.
MUSIC: Bounced Back, Blue Topaz
Justine Paradis: I'm getting a little hungry. Should we pause for a sec to enjoy some tinned fish?
Kate Dario: Music to my ears.
Nate Hegyi: Yes. Let's do it.
Kate Dario: Yeah. I'm just honestly feel like I don't have the wrist strength to open these without spilling olive oil.
Justine Paradis: I know we're really, the risks that we take while reporting are just…
Kate Dario: Are you guys just diving in?
Nate Hegyi: Mhm.
Justine Paradis: Okay, so we each brought two cans. Let’s go through them loosely in order of price – starting with Nate, you brought Season.
Nate Hegyi: These are the ones you can buy at Costco. And they say that they were fished in a place called the Atlantic Ocean.
Kate Dario: Think I’ve heard of that!
Nate Hegyi: They're really good.
Justine Paradis: Nice. Uh, Kate, you got a can from New England staple food brand, Pastene –
Kate Dario: I think it's based in Canton, Massachusetts. Down in the fine print, it says “Product of Morocco.” But they're not trying to sell you, like a Spanish vacation or anything….
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Kate Dario: These were like $2.50.
Justine Paradis: Okay, now moving into the cans branded slightly more upscale. Nate, what is the vibe would you say of that big ol’ can of Bar Harbor sardines?
Nate Hegyi: You're eating this sitting on a dock wearing plaid like. It's got a smoky, natural wood smoke flavor, but, I don't know, just packed in water. I'm not a big fan. I like the olive oil.
Justine Paradis: Kate, you also went to the coop and picked up a $6 can of sardines in olive oil from a brand called – is it Matiz?
Kate Dario: M-A-T-I-Z. But it's Spanish. So it actually says on the back that it's pronounced “mateeth”. So not to do the like, Barcelona thing, but like Matisse, I guess. They have a little map of Galicia… mmm, yummy.
Justine Paradis: Okay, I had to pick up a can of arguably the quintessential fancy girl sardine brand. This was a $10 can. It’s sardines in olive oil with preserved lemon – and it is from Fishwife.
Nate Hegyi: Oh, those are beautiful. Like, it looks like it was like hand drawn. It's it's gorgeous.
Kate Dario: I feel like you're more likely to see Fishwife in, like, a trendy boutique, like, genuinely than you are, like an actual grocery store where you are shopping for groceries.
Justine Paradis: Truly, Fishwife has become literal fashion – they’ve collaborated with Lisa says Gah!, this internety fashion brand, to sell sardine necklaces and T-shirts. And I was actually in New York recently, in Soho, and Fishwife was doing a pop-up store. And the day after I was there, there was a line around the block for people to get in.
Nate Hegyi: Wow. This is so much more popular than I ever imagined.
Justine Paradis: That like hits the spot. I’m so hungry.
Nate Hegyi: I feel bad for my microphone. I have terrible breath right now.
Justine Paradis: All right, well, I actually, um, I really don't like when people eat on the radio. So we're doing something that's like, against my predilection.
Kate Dario: Everything you stand for.
Justine Paradis: This was maybe a deeply unwise idea. What do you think? Should we take a break?
Nate Hegyi: Let’s take a break. We'll be right back.
BREAK
Nate Hegyi: Welcome back to Outside/In. I am Nate Hegyi here with some of our team. Kate Dario and Justine Paradis. The topic du jour is, of course, the tinned fish renaissance, something that I had never heard of until we started making this episode. And specifically the sustainability of sardines.
Justine Paradis: Yes, we have come to perhaps the biggest question. Um, actually, they're all big questions. I don't really need to rank them here, but this the the question now is what about overfishing? So maybe if sardines aren't too bad on the emissions scale, that's awesome. But are we at risk of depleting the oceans? And the short answer is, yeah.
MUSIC: Checkered Blue (Steady Pulse), Blue Dot Sessions
Justine Paradis: Sardines, like anchovies and herring, they are small, fast growing fish relative to longer lived species like sharks and tuna. Of those two categories, intuitively, which do you guys imagine would be most vulnerable to overfishing?
Nate Hegyi: Tuna.
Kate Dario: Definitely tuna. I feel like people, that's a conversation people have, and I've never heard anyone hand out a Save the Sardines flier or something.
Justine Paradis: Yeah. And there is something to that. I feel the same way. There are a lot of sardines out there, but are there ENOUGH sardines out there given in this 21st century tinned fish renaissance?
Malin Pinsky: In the past, there had been this assumption that we have to be really careful with the slow growing species, but maybe we don't have to worry as much about the fast growing species because they can outgrow our ability to fish them.
Justine Paradis: Malin Pinsky, the marine biologist we heard from earlier, he looked into this question.
Malin Pinsky: Are there certain kinds of species that are most likely to collapse to low abundance, so we could predict which those are going to be in the future? And we looked at our graphs and we looked at the data and we looked at it again. And we just was like, wait a minute, this isn't making sense. Then we realized actually what the information was telling us is that actually these small, short lived, fast growing species are just as likely to collapse to low abundance as the species we already knew were in trouble, and that was really a surprise.
Justine Paradis: So sardines go through boom and bust cycles in their population. And this happens naturally as part of larger environmental cycles like El Nino. But fishing can make it worse. Specifically, scientists say we have to be careful not to overfish during the dips. Basically not hit ‘em when they're down.
And that’s tricky, because we live in a world with big boats, big nets, and constant high demand.
We’re in a tinned fish renaissance, remember? But sardines are not just in demand by hot, stylish people like us but by hot species like dolphins. So when sardine populations suffer, that has a domino impact on other species. It's called a trophic cascade. And the population of the Pacific sardine, for example, is dangerously low. So for the past few years, a lot of California sea lions are starving. The Pacific sardine fishery is currently closed due to overfishing. And remember that operatically dramatic sardine run off South Africa, the biggest fish migration on the planet. Yeah, it's starting to collapse too.
Kate Dario: Wow.
Justine Paradis: And that's because of a combination of overfishing and environmental changes. People think.
Some argue that part of the issue here is that fishing regulations are not as responsive as they need to be, as quick at changing as the environmental fluctuations as they need to be.
As climate change impacts intensify, there are species of fish that are moving to new places, which is literally causing geopolitical issues.
Malin Pinsky: It's something that has played out really dramatically, actually in the northeast Atlantic between European Union and Iceland, where mackerel, which historically were found primarily in Norwegian and European waters… then shifted north up into Icelandic waters, but the countries involved have not been very nimble at figuring out how to share this new fishery. And that's something that didn't just stay in fisheries. It spilled over. It became a trade war. There are also some suggestions that helped convince Iceland it didn't want to join the European Union.
Kate Dario: The only thing I remember from my Intro to International Politics class freshman year of college was that Iceland did not join the EU because they wanted to maintain their autonomy over fishing. So this is –
Nate Hegyi: Huh!
Justine Paradis: It’s a big deal!
Kate Dario: It's a big deal and I feel like Nordic people, if Iceland is considered one of the Nordic countries, they eat a lot of fish. I imagine a lot of pickled herring or mackerel. I'd go to war over it, too. Yeah.
MUSIC: Rose Petals, Revel Day
Justine Paradis: Alright. Let’s move on to our listener Jeannie’s last question:
Jeannie Bartlett: Does it matter what brand or are there any other labels or indicators that I should be looking for if I buy sardines?
Justine Paradis: What should we be looking for in the grocery store? Should we talk about that?
Kate: Yeah!
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Justine Paradis: Okay, so let’s pull out our sardine boxes again. And the first thing is to look for is just to see what information about where the sardines were caught and where they were canned, especially where they were caught. So if that information is not on the box or if it's vague, that's not a great sign.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah. Well, like one of my the ones that I really liked, the Season one, is incredibly vague. It literally just says “sustainable.” That’s it.
Justine Paradis: Yeah, that's not a that's not a legal term.
Nate Hegyi: No. It's like “natural.” “All natural.”
Kate Dario: I'm seeing “wild caught in the eastern Atlantic,” which is a noun with a modifier. But eastern Atlantic could be Namibia.
Nate Hegyi: That’s a lot of ocean.
Justine Paradis: Right?
Kate Dario: Could be Iceland. So I'm realizing that could be anything. It does say canned in Galicia. Hand-packed even. But then my cheaper ones just say “product of Morocco.”
Justine Paradis: Okay. So looking to where the sardines are caught, you can consider avoiding certain regions. According to many fishery experts, sardines caught in the Mediterranean are less sustainable. A combination of rising sea surface temperatures and fishing has led to a colossal fall-off in Portuguese sardines. Like 200,000 tons of sardines landed in the 80s to under 10,000 a few years ago.
Kate Dario: Oh, no.
Nate Hegyi: Okay.
Justine Paradis: So you do have to be careful about where you’re sourcing your sardines from. So, finally, let’s talk about certifications. There are two big ones that people point to. The first is the Marine Stewardship Council, or MSC. So on a couple of our boxes, you're gonna see a square label with kind of an ocean blue color and a graphic design fish. That’s on your box right Nate?
Nate Hegyi: Yes! That one's on my box. Yeah. Bar Harbor, it says certified sustainable seafood. MSC.
Justine Paradis: So the MSC, um, they have a whole process of independently assessing and certifying fisheries according to their standards. They’re looking at the population of the specific fish, but also the ecosystem and the human system of governance around it. Right now when it comes to sardines, the MSC lists just two sardine fisheries in the world which meets its standards: one in Cornwall, England. The other is the Small Pelagics fishery in Sonora in the Gulf of California.
Nate Hegyi: Oh, wow.
Justine Paradis: So, looking at Fishwife, I still do find it a little confusing. It has the MSC label, and I know from their website that they source their sardines from Cornwall, but that specific information is not on the box.
Kate Dario: Yeah. I wonder if they’re not foregrounding Cornwall, England because English food is not as exciting as the bright colors of the Mediterranean, I’ll say that much.
Justine Paradis: Dude, look up Cornwall. It’s got the cutest frickin’ towns. Have you ever read The Mousehole Cat, the children’s book story?
Kate Dario: No!
Justine Paradis: It’s, like, the landscape from this children’s book.
Mousehole Cat clip: He took his little boat through the narrow opening between the great breakwaters and out into the blue green sea and caught fish for Mouser’s dinner.
Kate Dario: Oh my god. Oh yeah, this is gorgeous.
Nate Hegyi: Oh yeah. No, they should definitely be putting Cornwall onto their can. It is beautiful. It’s tucked into this emerald harbor.
Justine Paradis: Little shutters and gates.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Justine Paradis: It feels very hobbits on the sea.
Nate Hegyi: It is. Hobbits on the sea.
Mousehole Cat clip: On Saturdays they soused scad with vinegar and onions. And on Sundays they made stargazy pie with prime pilchards in pastry.
Justine Paradis: So the other organization that a lot of people point to is Seafood Watch out of Monterey Bay. This isn't a label on the can. Instead, you go to their website and look up the seafood you're considering, and they kind of have a traffic light system of labeling. So green is go; yellow, use caution; and red, avoid.
Kate Dario: Can I look mine up?
Justine Paradis: You can. Yeah.
Nate Hegyi: Okay. So I'm there. Seafood Watch. How do you find the business?
Justine Paradis: You don't. It's not the business. It's. It's like the species.
Kate Dario: Oh the type.
Nate Hegyi: Okay.
Kate Dario: Sardine, anchovy and herring. Best choice. Now I'm getting confused because this one says buy sardines caught in Japan or Morocco, but also buy sardines and herring certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. So maybe they're just…
Justine Paradis: Well, the reason also that this might be you would get different information in different places is there's something to be learned by looking at the business models of these certifying organizations. Here’s marine biologist Malin Pinsky again.
Malin Pinsky: Seafood Watch is largely driven by sort of a philanthropic model where they where they help new fisheries get certified and there's relatively less burden on the, on the fisheries, which makes it more accessible in the developing world, where Marine Stewardship Council certification, fisheries have to pay upfront for the costs of getting certified. It's not at all cheap, so it's actually out of reach for some fisheries that might be sustainable but don't actually have the ability to get certified in that way.
Kate Dario: Mmm. That's really interesting.
Nate Hegyi: It's kind of like organic a little bit, right? Like when you go to your local farmer's market and they're not certified as organic, but you're like, they're organic.
Kate Dario: Totally, totally.
Justine Paradis: But I will say that even if you don’t eat sardines at all — your diet can still impact the health of wild sardine populations. And that's because a lot of the fish we catch is not directly eaten by humans, but is used for fishmeal and fish oil. According to one study, over a quarter of fish that we catch goes to those purposes. Nondirect human consumption is the technical term. Where do you think a lot of that fishmeal and fish oil goes?
Nate Hegyi: Uh, fish, my grandma used to take fish oil pills.
Kate Dario: Yeah.
Nate Hegyi: Into my Grandma?
Justine Paradis: Supplements for, yeah, for women. For everyone.
Kate Dario: What – is fish meal, is that like food for fish?
Justine Paradis: Yes.
Nate Hegyi: It goes into farmed salmon, doesn't it?
Justine Paradis: It goes to farmed salmon and livestock, or farmed fish and livestock.
Kate Dario: Whoa! Okay.
Kate Dario: So we're like. It's cannibal salmon. A little bit.
Justine Paradis: Well, I mean, fish eat other fish. But yes. And the vast majority of the fish that ends up in fishmeal are food grade. So 27% of landed fish doesn't end up on a human plate, although most of it could have.
Nate Hegyi: Mm.
MUSIC: Drive Slow, Lofive
Justine Paradis: So this is a reason to consider our diets holistically and not in isolation for a single ingredient.
Nate Hegyi: Right right. Exactly. And again like thinking about when you're eating eating lower on the food chain, you know. Sardines, pretty low in the food chain.
Kate Dario: I think people should use the phrase “swimming sunshine” more because.
Justine Paradis: I agree.
Kate Dario: I want that on a t-shirt. I love that I want someone to give me that nickname. I love “swimming sunshine.” That's so fun.
Justine Paradis: Call up Lisa says Gah!
Kate Dario: I have an idea for another $78 t-shirt.
MUSIC SWELL AND FADE
Justine Paradis: So I will say this with the caveat that none of this is perfect. None of this, like, lets us off the hook, so to speak.
Nate Hegyi: har har.
Justine Paradis: It sucks to answer these questions with, okay, like right now, sardines probably are more sustainable than other choices for a number of different reasons. Like for your own health, for emissions, for overexploitation of the oceans, depending on which fishery you're drawing from. But that's true right now. And it's just something that you can't stop paying attention to, if you want to be making these choices sustainably, do you know what I mean?
Kate Dario: Mhm.
Nate Hegyi: Justine, I gotta say, I was actually concerned that the only, like, super sustainable, good for you sardines were going to be like the $10, $11 Fishwive sardines. And I just have to say, like, as much as I didn't love the flavor of these Bar Harbor sardines that I got, they were pretty cheap. And they're still certified by the MSC. Yeah.
Justine Paradis: No, I mean, I, I it definitely was a wake up call for me because I think I sort of categorically was like, sardines are fine.
Nate Hegyi: Mhm.
Justine Paradis: And it's just — part of what I think these choices make us do is like reconnect to the details and the nuances of this planet. And while I think it can be framed as, like, snooty to do that, I don't I don't think it has to be.
Nate Hegyi: Mhm.
Justine Paradis: And, you know, it's not about like judging other people. It's it's like, I love when you go to the Cornwall Fishery website or like look through the documents of the MSC for, for this, this Cornwall fishery. You look at the actual names of the people going out fishing and they've been doing it for generations, many of them. Um, you see the town where it happens and it's it's like, I don't I don't want to be disconnected and be, like, subject to the whims of marketing, which is really corporate whims, you know.
Nate Hegyi: Mhm.
Kate Dario: I totally agree how I think sometimes really being an ethical consumer is equated with being bougie or just looking for the most expensive thing. And I think, like, you know, I'm early in my career. I don't have a ton of disposable income, but I like to really think about, um, shop with a lot of intention. And I think because a lot of it's finding out bang for your buck. And I think a lot of it is exactly what we're talking about, that it's not always the most expensive option. Yeah. And I think it just it's a rewarding experience to do that.
Justine Paradis: Yeah. Unfortunately I am I am like fully a convert to Fishwife. I think it’s excellent. So I will be spending money on–
Nate Hegyi: Um, I mean there's also flavor, right. Like
Kate Dario: it is good.
MUSIC: Immer Zusammen, Spiegelstadt
Nate Hegyi: Thank you to Jeannie for calling in with the question which inspired this episode. Which anyone can do, by the way: the number of our voicemail hotline is 1-844-GO-OTTER. We love hearing from you. Please call us with your questions, your feedback, ideas for the show. No question is too silly or too serious.
This episode was produced, reported, and mixed by Justine Paradis. It was edited by our executive producer, Taylor Quimby, with help from our director of podcasts, Rebecca Lavoie. Our team also includes Felix Poon and Marina Henke. I’m your host, Nate Hegyi.
Music in this episode came from Mia Pfirrman, Major Tweaks, David Celeste, Blue Topaz, Blue Dot Sessions, Revel Day, Lofive, and Spiegelstadt.
Special thanks to Hugh French.
Outside/In is a production of NHPR.