Sea Change travels to the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, for a lively live panel discussion about the future of seafood.
For more than a century, the Gulf seafood industry has shaped towns, cultures, and identities along the coast. Yet, if you talk to almost anyone who works on the water, they’ll tell you the Gulf seafood story has changed more in the last 30 years than the hundred years before that. If you care about what’s on your plate, what happens to this coast, or what kind of future we’re leaving to the next generation of fishers and eaters, you’re in the right place.
CREDITS
This episode of Sea Change Live was hosted by Executive Producer Carlyle Calhoun. Eva Tesfaye edited the episode. Sound design by Kurt Kohnen. Live music performed by Grits and Greens.
We’d like to thank the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, Eagle Point Oyster Company, Holy Ground Oyster Company, Grits and Greens, and the panelists Ryan Bradley, Matthew Mayfield, Boyce Upholt, and Alex Perry.
Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
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TRANSCRIPT
CARLYLE: Welcome to Sea Change Live. Welcome to you from Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. I'm Carlyle Calhoun, host of Sea Change. What a crowd we have tonight joining us. We have a great night in store - talking about and celebrating the Gulf Coast's most iconic industry, seafood. For more than a century, Gulf Seafood has been a heartbeat for this region this an industry that has shaped towns, cultures, and identities across the coast, and yet if talk to almost anyone who works on the water, they’ll tell you the Gulf seafood story has changed more in the last 30 years than the hundred years before that.
But this story is also about rejuvenation. Across the Coast there are efforts to not just save the traditional industries, like shrimping and wild oysters, but there are new players joining, seeing opportunities in these salty waters. There is a lot at stake and a lot of change afoot. And so tonight’s conversation is really about where we go from here.
If you care about what’s on your plate, what happens to this coast, or what kind of future we’re leaving to the next generation of fishers and eaters, you’re in the right place. So let’s get into it.
Tonight, I am joined by Alex Perry, chef of Vestige which is located just down the road here in Ocean Springs and was recently named a James Beard award finalist for best restaurant in the country; Ryan Bradley, a fifth generation fisherman and executive director of Mississippi Commercial Fisheries United; Matthew Mayfield, founder of Eagle Point Oyster Company and serving on the Mississippi Advisory Commission on Marine Resources; and journalist Boyce Upholt, he is the author of The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi and founder of the new magazine celebrating the wild South in all its forms, called Southlands.
CARLYLE: So before we can discuss the future of Gulf Seafood, it's good to understand where we've come from and where we are now. Ryan, you've been working as a fisherman for almost 30 years now. When you think back to when you started fishing and compare it to this last year, what feels most unrecognizable about the job?
RYAN: Well, I started commercial fishing when I was about six, seven years old with my grandfather, so I've seen it for a while. I'm 38 years old now, so almost 30 years. I'm getting too old. I got too many gray hairs coming in. But, um, there's so few fishermen left that the fleet is unrecognizable. With the shrimp industry, we used to have, uh, over 2000 shrimpers just 25 years ago. that's just in Mississippi. Today we have less than 200 commercial shrimpers,
But, uh, that's the most, uh, unrecognizable thing. Uh, there's so much, uh. Brotherhood and camaraderie amongst the, the fishermen and the fishing industry. And it's just so few numbers now. Certainly a cause for concern.
CARLYLE: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's a huge change, especially for a place that its history has been so interwoven with the industry and we're gonna talk a lot about that.
So, Alex, your menu is built around what's local, what's in season. You open your restaurant vestige back in 2013. When you look at your menu today versus the early days of your being opened, what's the single biggest change you've seen in the Gulf Seafood and what's available to you?
ALEX: The biggest one is price. That would be the largest shift. We kind of live in an era where anything you want, you can get. And so sourcing it hasn't necessarily been a problem, but sourcing it where we want, it kind of has. 'cause I would love to say, all right, we're gonna have Mississippi Day Boat Snapper. Whereas before it was easier to do that. Now, not so much we can get Snapper.
It's coming from Louisiana. It's coming from Alabama, we're going through a bigger distributor. To get it there and it would be nicer if we could sort of not do that.
CARLYLE: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So Matthew, the Gulf is one of the last places in the world where there's still a major wild oyster harvest.
. But over the last couple of decades, wild oysters have been really struggling here as well. You decided to start Eagle Point Oyster Company after Hurricane Katrina, after the BP oil spill, after the collapse of Wild Reefs. Um, what made you think this was a good business decision?
MATTHEW: Um, good business decision and farm raised oysters that's, uh, funny to, uh, out of the gate. Um, to be quick, the state got into off bottom aquaculture a couple years prior to 2020 when we started. And like you said, there were several things that had shaped the natural reefs in a, in a horrible, negative way.
And the state was looking at alternatives like, how do you get oysters back in these waters? And uh, a buddy of mine who's here tonight, and I chose to take a class, basically the state said, if you'll give us a little time, we'll give you 10,000 oysters. We'll teach you how to grow 'em. See what you think about oysters. We said, wow, that's a great deal. If we don't do anything but learn how to grow 10,000 oysters, we can eat those over a couple of weekends. So that's, that was it. And uh, in the process of the class, I realized that I've always loved being on the water fishing. I've never really done it commercially, but,
I just, I fell in love with, I, I tell everybody to listen. it was kinda like my midlife crisis and uh, pretty good one I think. And um, now we think we've got a product at the end of the day that can compete with any gulf oyster and, and certainly like put some pressure on the people on the Northeast coast. We've just, there's such bad information, information out there about what a Gulf oyster is, but once they learn and taste what you guys have the opportunity to taste tonight, it's gonna look a lot different with, uh, the supply chains down here.
CARLYLE: I think we can all attest to that. So Boyce, you for write a ton about Gulf Seafood, including some sea change episodes about redfish and a series about the future of aquaculture, but you're not originally from this part of the country. So in all of your reporting, what are the most fascinating stories surrounding Gulf seafood and how it's changing that have kind of surprised you?
BOYCE: Um, yeah, I'm not from here. I, I moved to the south almost 17 years ago and my whole writing career has been here. And so I've, I've learned to be an eater here. Um, I mean, I think the thing that, that keeps me reporting and writing about seafood is the stories we're already hearing from Ryan, from, um, from Matthew, the, the connections that this makes for people, right?
It's like I write about food because I care about places, I care about the environment. but I think what's fascinating the most is someone not from here and then learned to eat oysters here is, is uh, the oyster eating culture that proceeded off bottom oysters perhaps.
I remember being at a party and someone had an oyster, literally as big as a shoe and they were shooting that oyster. And I was like, that is not what I grew up seeing. Um, and I've learned to love big, big chewy oysters, but I also love the, the new class of oysters that are emerging.
CARLYLE: it's really cool to see that coexisting and we'll, we'll talk about that.in a little bit too. So we're just a few minutes from Biloxi, a town once known as the seafood capital of the world.We now import 80 to 90% of our seafood that we eat in this country. Ryan, what would need to happen for our seafood industry to thrive again on the Gulf Coast? That's kind of a big question.
RYAN: Oh yeah. Wow. Well, you know, like I said, first we've done lost so many fishermen. We don't really have the next generation of young fishermen coming up, so that's a problem but I think we're on a path to recovering a lot of our seafood industry for what we've lost. There's a lot of good initiatives that's happening. Uh may see on your menus here in Mississippi, Most restaurants they're all required to disclose if your seafood this or domestic And so that's a great thing that's given consumers the ability to vote with their wallet for fresh local seafood.
Then there's genetic testing that's going on, they actually can tell you within 30 minutes if the shrimp you're eating in these restaurants are actually, local or, or not. And so that's been what we've done, covered a big, huge epidemic of fraud, of people or, or places saying that they're selling local seafood and they're not really.
So getting that under control, supporting our next generation of fishermen, but we've been recovering the wild industry for many, many years. that it's pushed so many people outta the business.And so we gotta start being sensible with our regulations and, uh, supporting the wild in all the, and all the fishermen as much as we can.
CARLYLE: Yeah, and that's such an interesting point about the regulation thing because, This country prides itself on having the most sustainable fisheries in the world. So some of that is because of these regulations. Right. But I guess if you were to point to one example that, that you feel like would, would reach into that overregulation category that's causing trouble for the industry.
RYAN: You know, one, one that comes to mind is, uh, like our gulf shrimp boats, we have a very sustainable gulf shrimp. There's no problems with the biomass.
CARLYLE: What do you mean, biomass? But what do you mean
RYAN: the, the amount of, uh, actual shrimp in the water. So it's been always a very sustainable crop in the the go. but we've limited our shrimp boats. They're on a moratorium. There's only so many licenses you can't get new license. And so, you know, those are some, some things we need to start opening that back up. Make it where people can get permitted, can get licensed, and can do these things.
CARLYLE: Boyce, this is something that you've talked about some is kind of the romance behind the fishing industry and whether the romance and kind of that connection that many of us have too where are seafood's coming from, if it's enough?
BOYCE: Yeah, I've been doing a lot of report leading reporting lately on, I mean like one of the potential futures of seafood is aquaculture, right? And it's here already in terms of off bottom oysters and other things like that. But there's, we'll get into later, I think some proposals on the table to big to build very large offshore fish farms in the Gulf. And I've been trying to figure out is that a good idea, is a bad idea? What do people think about that?
And one of the things I always hear as I'm talking to people about that is like, we're losing this way of life that Ryan's talking about. And one of the questions I'm still trying to answer for myself, like, like, does that matter? And I like not, not to be too politeful, like, I think it does matter mostly, but I'm like, well we, I'm fine with coal mining fading away. I'm fine with, there's certain ways of life that disappear. it just, to me it's like an unexamined value. And I think,there's this romance and beauty of being the one man out on a fishing boat, but can we have that in the world anymore? What does it mean when we lose it? Those are some of the questions I'm trying to answer and I think a lot about. I should have said this in terms of what surprised me, one of the things that surprises me is the divide between commercial fishing and recreational fishing. And I think that is not always known as one of the factors that has led, not, maybe, maybe not a main factor, but some of the regulations.
There's a big ban on Gill nets back in the 1990s that a lot of people say that sort of changed the path of commercial fishing. And it's funny 'cause it's these two different sides of this romance that have sort of, in some ways torn apart this resource that belongs to all of us.
And one of the questions we have to sort out is. On this coast specifically where sport fishing is such a big thing is how do we make sure people who enjoy doing that for fun get their fish? And how do the rest of us also get to connect with this ecosystem by going and having a nice plate of fish at a restaurant.
CARLYLE: Yeah. And Matthew, you are, you sit in kind of an interesting place because off bottom oysters on the Gulf Coast anyway is kind of the new kid on the block.
And so how do you think about wild oystering, which as we were talking about, has been struggling, How do you think about that and off bottom oysters as kind of the new industry coexisting and can they happily coexist?
MATTHEW: they can absolutely coexist. The markets for these oysters are very different. off bottom can never replace the workhorse that the natural bottom oyster is. I mean, from canning to, like, I grew up eating, uh, Reese's, medium oysters, smoked in the can. My product will never make it to that market, I don't think.
CARLYLE: To the point of your market, I mean, we kind of have to shell out to enjoy your oysters, right?
MATTHEW: Yeah, he did. Had to shell. That's good.Like I said, I'll go back. We'll never compete, nor do we want to compete with a bottom oyster. I would love to see enough people getting to the off bottom game to where it does, the price comes down. 'cause they're not, they're not approachable on restaurant menus right now. And that's, that's unfortunate.
CARLYE: Boyce, I wanna ask you about your reporting on Mary Mahoney's, which is an iconic restaurant in Biloxi, just over the bridge here. It built its fame on freshly caught golf seafood, but then but then the Fed showed up and the owners ended up pleading guilty to seafood fraud. It was a huge story around here. Tell us about what happened and how this one story is symbolic of a much bigger one in this region.
BOYCE: Mary Mahoney's is sort of the iconic restaurant in Biloxi, right? It's been there for a long time and it's become, I think, a symbol of Biloxi s Pride and Survivorship, it was one of the, if not the very first place to reopen after Katrina, one of the very first. So it's, it's become Right. Anderson Cooper reported from CNN out front. It became this marker of, of, uh, Biloxi historic identity. But for more than a decade, the restaurant was selling, had on its label that all of its product was local Gulf product and they sort of had colluded with their supplier. And, and in many ways, it looks like the supplier was the, where this originated. And, and the supplier, um, was doing this with other restaurants as well, but was taking various foreign products and talking to the buyers at, um Mary Mahoneys and saying, okay, what do you think you can fa pass off as snapper most often in particular?
And so, part of what fascinated me was seeing the reaction to that, that on Facebook, when the feds raided. Mary Mahoney's to start doing this investigation. A lot of people were saying, we love this place. This is where we've come for weddings and birthdays, and we're gonna stand behind them.
We know this family, we love this family. And to me it, it kind of cut into some of the, all what we've been talking about of, the cultural change here. This is a, these a coast where literally places where fish processors used to be are now casinos, right? And so like we've seen a shift from this being the seafood capital world into an emerging tourism market.
And you're seeing more and more people that don't have this intimate relationship with their food, with the coastline. And I think that Mary Mahoney's, in some ways it seemed pretty explicit that the reason why that case was pursued when there are restaurants all up and down this coast that are serving imported shrimp and not mentioning it, it was, its big name was there was this explicit intention of we've gotta take down someone big to make this news.
As Alex was saying, this is not the best way for us to get truth and labeling laws. But it was that kind of target that had to be pursued to make that happen.
CARLYLE: Yeah. And I thought it was interesting that the judge said in the ruling, I mean, I don't you all owe something to the fishermen who helped build this place.
BOYCE: Yeah, I mean, one of the discussions, I, I attended some of the sentencing hearings. One of the, the defense lawyers was saying like, show me the harm here because I can show you sales receipts and. Our sales did not decline after this happened. But, the judge was kind of explicitly, no, you are harming people. That fishing is an important piece of this community, and this is about more than just the consumers that were defrauded here. and by doing this, you were sort of betraying the history and culture of this place.
CARLYLE: Yeah. And Alex, I wanna ask you, because we're hearing about all this fraud. We're hearing about the huge amount of imported shrimp, but all kinds of imports, flooding the market. And many, many other chefs are choosing that cheaper product. I guess like how difficult is it for you to maintain your local commitment? Like, are, are there some times where you're kinda looking at your choices being like, oh, that'd be a lot easier.
ALEX: noooo, we are unwavering. To kind of tie back into what Boce was saying about the, the romance and the story. I think this is very important, and worth preserving because it's in the identity. And I'm not against aquaculture at all. You know, we, if we want, you know, some ICO jime here at Masa, like it's coming from aquaculture. It's just not anywhere else. But at the same time, if, you know, everything just gets processed into gray sludge where it's the same industry and the same part of the country where everything has access to the same, there's no identity, there's nothing unique that makes you special to where you are. I I can't get behind that at
BOYCE: Alex, I'm wondering, do you ever worry about your suppliers or like, 'cause I I've talked to other chefs in this region who have said like I've made it a point to only serve local, and I know my purveyors know that, but one time I wasn't in the restaurant when the fish got dropped off and someone signed for it. And I only realized after I started cutting into a fish that it wasn't actually the product that I ordered. And like, it, that's one of the challenges to like, this industry has become so multilayered that even well-intentioned people can find themselves, um, caught in that.
ALEX: Yeah. And you just have to be ever vigilant. And I mean, I'm always at the restaurant and I know what a red snapper looks like 'cause we buy it and everything, whole fish. And you can say, well we trust our purveyors and. We do. Sometimes they might make a mistake, but again, it's imperative that we catch it. And if you're dealing with the right purveyors, that's gonna happen at such a small percentage of the time. it's just for us and where we're at. It's not a huge deal. Like nobody's trying to pull the wool over our eyes on that.
CARLYLE: So, Ryan, how are you dealing with this issue? What are you hearing from all the fishermen that you're working with? Are they struggling with finding a market?
RYAN: Well, I was just, I was interested to hear you. He was telling how the, the defense attorneys won't say, well, Mahoneys didn't hurt anybody. Well, they hurt two people sitting on the stage right here because I'm a commercial fisherman that catches red snapper and I a seafood business and I sell to restaurants like Mr. Perry here. So whenever people like, uh, quality and, uh, Mahoneys, or are committing this fraud, uh, they're undercutting the marketplace for legitimate fishermen like myself. The fish that, that they're selling is, uh, a fraction of the cost. we can't sell it once We have to, uh, go through all of the red tape that the government requires us to do to catch these fish sustainably.
CARLYLE: Yeah. And absolutely. And Matthew, you've talked about the story that you need to tell too, that there are a lot of misconceptions about Gulf oysters. What kinds of misconceptions are you kind of thinking about when you talk about that and what, what is the story that you need to tell?
MATTHEW: For all, for all oysters coming outta the gulf. We get irresponsible journalists that make headlines with they don't, you don't get the facts you don't get. somebody gets sick, sick and dies and you don't get. Were they immediately compromised? Should they have been eating oysters? Whose oyster was it? Like you don't get the chain of command, you just get that the, the oysters like is a villain. And that's, we gotta like de-villainize oysters across the board. I mean, it's of the best, cleanest, finest protein you can find. People in the North think that if you eat Gulf oyster, you're gonna get sick and die. And that's a, that's a problem. Um, it all comes down to time, temperature, matrix and how that oyster's controlled. But the reality is it's hard to get somebody sick. There's almost gotta be like a lot of neglect in that equation. I would just like to say that Gulf oysters are safe, they're delicious. And let's get a bunch of Yankees down here to check 'em out. But they can't stay.
BOYCE: I will, I, I did a story on, on oyster farming and I talked to sort of the oyster guy, this James Beard to winning oyster expert. And he told me like, the gulf, the farms here on the Gulf are making some of the best oysters in the world now.
CARLYLE: Um, well, as much as we all love this peace, love, and oyster stuff, we're gonna get into some controversial things going on. So let's talk about what some people think is the solution to the massive amount of imports and kind of our seafood deficit they call it. So experts say we're fishing our wild fisheries at capacity. We're importing so much seafood to meet our demand. So instead of importing all of this sometimes questionable farm raised seafood, why don't we farm it ourselves? The US currently ranks 18th in the world for aquaculture and there's been an effort to change that for decades, but there is real momentum now really for the first time to open up federal waters to fish farms and the Gulf could be the first location to see these farms. It's extremely controversial. Boyce, first kind of set the table for us what's going on?
BOYCE: So it's been building for a long time, right? There's a, a lot of different interest groups of various kind that want a much larger aquaculture industry. Some of its like soybean farming groups who want to have another place to send their soybeans, because that could be fish feed.
So multiple presidential administrations have been pushing for this, but they're some laws being considered in Congress right now that would, um, for the first time greenlight offshore aquaculture farm. So basically these would be large nets floating in very deep federal water. So that's three, at least three miles offshore.
In some states it's nine miles offshore. The, the one that's furthest along is here in the Gulf of Mexico is from Ocean Era. It'd be this small-ish pen relatively to what they wanna build eventually, but 20,000 redfish, 45 miles off the coast of Florida. Um, there's another proposal that's fairly far, far along that would be off the coast of here, Louisiana, Mississippi, kind of.
And so there's a lot of debate about these. Is, is this just gonna drive people like Ryan further out of business or is this, is this kind of, the world is getting more modern and we live in a world of corporate food and if we want fish and we want American fish, this is the way we need to do it. And so it's moving slowly, right?
There's, there's a very, it's a big fight and there's some activists that have been very successfully fighting it for decades, but there, there's some real powers behind it that are trying to push it through right now and make it happen.
CARLYLE: Yeah. And we should say, I mean, probably everybody in here knows that there's been a lot of issues with fish farms and other parts of the world, and, you know, proponents of this say there's, they're fighting a ton of misinformation and misconceptions. And the idea about this ocean aquaculture, as it's called, is that because it's in deeper waters with more currents, then, there will be less problems with kind of, it's, they're not situated in stagnant water, super close to the coast and things like that. So that's kind of the promise. And Ryan, I'm gonna get to you with this question.
RYAN: Lordy.
CARLYLE: Um, so I spoke with Drue Banta Winters, who's the director of Stronger America through Seafood, that's an advocacy group for ocean aquaculture. And she said. look, we are hardly eating Gulf seafood anymore. Many of our working waterfronts are now full of condos. We have shuttered so much of our seafood processing infrastructure. We should grow seafood here and revitalize coastal communities and help save the fishing culture of the Gulf. Ryan, how would you respond to that?
RYAN: to, oh man, nothing is what it seems, folks, and you gotta really take a closer look at this.. And nothing about domestic seafood production.
here's what you gotta understand with this, uh, this offshore aquaculture. I'm gonna try to run through it there. There's so many issues with it these offshore fish farms.
You can introduce, some bad genetics mixing with the wild populations. You don't want to, you know, there's genetically modified fish you don't necessarily want mixing with the wild caught.
To me the biggest issue is marine debris. we see it with some of the inshore aquaculture stuff. Marine debris, uh, is a big problem with these fisheries, with these, uh, operations. Could you imagine the, the scale it takes to put one of these offshore pens in the Gulf of Mexico and then a hurricane comes through or a tropical storm?
it is gonna wind up. In a bad place and cause damage. but what we see, what's most concerning with all of this aquaculture stuff to me is the people that are promoting it are almost directly aligned with the, the major importers of seafood in this country.
So the same folks that push for the regulation of our domestic fisheries that shut and hampered our wild capture fisheries, are the same people that are importing seafood on a major scale into our country, are the same people that want to do this offshore aquaculture. And it's mostly foreign multinational corporations. And I wonder, you know, here's the problem. When our, uh, we let foreign investment into our local waters, the investors tend to be more about the profit, not about the conservation of our waters. They're so far removed from what's happening on the water. They don't care about the negative, uh, ecological outcomes.
CARLYLE: Well, I wanna follow up on that because you know, you've talked a lot about the privatization of a public resource, public resource being our ocean and our fisheries.
RYAN: Mm-hmm.
CARLYLE: Do you see this playing into that trend? And can you talk to why that is such a big issue for you and, and kind of some examples of where you've seen that effort towards privatization?
RYAN: So this vein of privatization, it's, it's, uh, not a new concept. We've privatized many fisheries around the country. And what does that mean? That means we take it out of public trust ownership and give it over to private corporations and individuals a lot of times in perpetuity.
And so what's happened, uh,as a commercial red snapper fisherman, we have a privatized commercial red snapper fisher. If you wanna go out here and catch red snapper, they're, they're abundant right here in our backyard.
You could catch 'em all day long until your arm falls off. But if you wanna catch 'em legally, you've got to have quota. You gotta buy that quota before you even leave the dock to go fish it. An example, we catch red snapper. We sell 'em for about $7 a pound wholesale to the wholesalers. We pay $5 a pound for the right to go catch it. And so these private investors have made it where they can buy our rights to fish out from underneath us and pretty much force 'em to buy it back. And so we see that, same thing, the privatization of our oceans with the cage farming out there. Shout out to my friends with, Don't Cage Our Ocean. They're doing a great job fighting the whole offshore aquaculture. check them out. but, uh, yeah, it's privatization, a lot of folks don't know about it, but, uh, this is what's happening across the country.
CARLYLE: So, and I wanna speak to kind of, since nobody is here to defend the quota system to kind of the need for why that was instated, which is the red snapper fishery was on the verge of collapse, in the eighties to until the early nineties, right. When it was established. So the idea may have been a good one, like, let's save this fishery, right? But you're saying that, that the way that it was designed, maybe it could be fixed, I don't know, is that we need to somehow pull the reins on how much we're catching and therefore let's have this quota system. Certain number of people can catch a certain number, right? Right. So was the idea good? And it's just like the way it's designed?
RYAN: Right. So yeah, there's some good things with this quota system allows fishermen to catch fish year round and allows us to sell fish to the restaurant year round so they can put that on the menu that allows the customers to enjoy that fish round. All great aspects of these fisheries. But, uh, with the red snapper, they used that, oh, this, this program helped, rebuild this fishery. Some of these quota systems have actually led to the, the, degradation of several fisheries around the country. But, uh, I would say that the recreational sector rebuilt the red snapper fishery when they were forced to these really short seasons over a period of years that helped the fishery recover.
CARLYLE: Who knew quota systems could be so spicy. So let's get back to eating this seafood. So we've been talking about some really, in some ways complex and and confusing issues behind all of the seafood that we enjoy.
Alex, let's talk about how to get people excited about a future where a seafood industry is again thriving. Can you walk us through a dish where you feel you're telling a whole story about the Gulf, the ecology, the culture and economy on a single plate?
ALEX: If we do anything well, it's, we sort of weave a narrative of taking Gulf seafood, but preparing it slightly different.So a good example we have additional on the menu right now. It's Gulf Shrimp served two ways, one fried, one in a soup form, but it's done in a very Japanese style. So we're using a tempura style and you know, we're taking the shells, we're making a stock, we're clarifying it to make a consummate, we're making a dashi, which is for this Japanese workhorse style thing. And it adds a very interesting dynamic to the flavor of shrimp. Like, it, it totally changes it. But it's just to show how wide these flavors can be. And now you get to, you know, introduce the story. Here's where it came from, here's this, here's that, you know, we took this old Japanese technique and we applied it to Gulf Waters. And it's just, it builds that dialogue, which is very, very, very important to getting people to like lock into a belief system.
CARLYLE: Well, before we get to our last question, is there any kind of burning statement or issue that you all did not get to share with the audience here?
MATTHEW: Eat Gulf oysters. Often
BOYCE: I mean just like know what you're eating, right? Like I think that's the, to go back to my romance question, I think to the extent that romance matters to me is because it is a way into your home and understanding the food. I don't know. And then,
so the hard thing about seafood is it, uh, it's about local communities, but it's a global commodity. So if we restrict red snapper here because of the quota, that's good for our local red snapper. But that just means restaurants are gonna get it from China. And so the more we have consumers that are saying, like, you have to know what your fish is and where it came from and what, like the more it, it's fun and that's what's gonna help resolve all these issues. I think so.
CARLYLE: So this question is for all of you. If you were to make your quick elevator pitch to customers, to policy makers, to anyone really, why does Gulf seafood matter? Matthew, we'll start with you and go down the line.
MATTHEW: It's easy. It's in our own backyard. It's plentiful. We've just gotta create an easier path to get it to everyone sitting here. So I'm with Ryan. I wanna see more independent fishermen included in the conversation versus corporate America.
CARLYLE: Alex
ALEX: I would say because of the downwind effect of it. I mean, look at the room that we're currently in and all these beautiful maritime seafood motifs. You know, it's not just about, you know, food and restaurants. It's about the art that it produces. There's just such a pastoral beauty to it. that you just cannot get anywhere else. And if you just sort of distill what Gulf seafood is into a bunch of offshore pins, uh, that's gone.
CARLYLE: Boyce, why does Gulf seafood matter?
BOYCE: So I do journalism that is always part history. And so I'm gonna fold that in here. But to the extent, one thing that helps it matter to me is how long it's mattered. Um, so this is sort of a Louisiana thing, but I wrote a book about the Mississippi River and in studying that, I learned that there are Indigenous cultures all across America, right? As far away as the Dakotas. There's this figure called grandmother, and she's from the Gulf Coast, right? And that's, she's the first farmer.
But it's sort of clear, the history that I've done about deep, deep history here in the Gulf is like, this was one of the first places where they were before people on this continent did agriculture. There was almost. Civilizations here. Right. And it's because we are in such a place with such a rich, rich ecosystem, and it, that is what sets this place apart. It's what's always set this place apart. And so it strikes me as sad that we're like forgetting that and going to restaurants and ordering Gulf recipes and not knowing that the shrimp on our platter came from China or Indonesia.
CARLYLE: Yeah. And Ryan, close it out for us.
RYAN: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Good job. Um, I would say abundant local seafood is a great indicator of a healthy environment. And we're all connected from the lakes to the streams, to the rivers. It all flows down into the ocean. And if we're taking care of things up river upland, we're gonna be healthy down river downstream. And the, the more you get out in nature and you realize that we're all, we're all connected, you can't do one thing without impacting another. I think the better off we'll all be.
AUDIENCE: Yes.
CARLYLE: And with that, let's give it up to this amazing panel. Thank you all so much. What a fascinating conversation. We could have talked all night, but we're gonna give a chance here for, uh, some questions to come in. So, if you could just, um, state your question, keep it brief so we can get a few in if, if there are any questions.
Q&A: We’re from West Central Florida and I've looked at the, uh, bounce back or lack thereof of the, uh, oyster industry in Florida in comparison with here in the Mississippi Gulf Coast. And you guys are doing a hell of a lot better. And I'd like to know your opinions on why. So if you could spend a little time talking about that.
CARLYLE: Ryan, would you like to take that?
RYAN: Yeah, I'll take it. We've been really blessed with great water quality. That what I would say is 95% of it. Uh, here in in Mississippi. We've been inundated with the Bonet Carre Spillway. We've had some good folks and organizations that stepped up and fought really hard.
Let's give a round of applause. For those that litigated throw the Bonnet Carre spillway because if we didn't fight. To stop that deluge of water coming in. We would never recover..
CARLYLE: So I wanna take this opportunity real quick 'cause we didn't have a chance to talk about the Bonnie Carey Spillway. Matthew, can you just kind of explain for people who don't know, this is a flood control spillway on the Mississippi River, just upstream of New Orleans, right?
MATTHEW: explain Correct.
CARLYLE: And it was built to only be opened in emergencies, but, but what's happened recently?
MATTHEW: 2019 It stayed open. You know, the days off anybody top
BOYCE: was like almost 200 days that way. Like the 2019 was this record breaking flood year
MATTHEW: yeah. And it just, uh, we got all the just nasty stuff you can't even imagine coming from the top of the United States down and routed into a very sensitive, ecological, perfect area for seafood. And when salinity drops below five parts per thousand, it kills everything.
So 2019 is, is hopefully year that the lesson was learned and the fault began that this cannot happen again.
CARLYLE: Do we have any more questions here? We've got one in the back there,
Q&A: Thank you as an outdoorsman and an environmentalist, uh, the question that, uh, really wasn't touched on is how does a non-food industry, such as the menhaden fishery fishery, uh, affect the food fishery? And, uh, I figure one of you four guys can, take the bait on that one and go,
CARLYLE: Thanks you so much for that question. so Ryan, can you real quick tell people what the menhaden is being used for? Like how much, how big an industry it is and what it's being used for?
RYAN: So menhaden is also called a pogey. It is used, in the aquaculture feed industry. It's used in the cosmetic industry. they make oils, all kind of oils out of the Pogey. it's big facility in Moss Point. They do hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue a year in the Gulf.
The company is accused of pillaging the sea. Their science that they conduct says otherwise. Uh, I guess it's, you know, debatable if the science is any good or not. You know, they can say, you can buy any science you want these days, you know? So, I don't know. Um, it's a very contentious issue and it's one that I'd rather not wade into.
BOYCE: I don't have an answer as to how it impacts the food thing, but I think it's an interesting reminder of the way labels work. So in the same way, aquaculture, again, I have like includes people like Matthew all the way to these giant corporate farms. Commercial fishing includes everyone from Ryan to these giant boats that are like hoovering, tiny fish out of the sea. And so I think often we, we create these categories. I talked earlier about how there's recreational versus commercial, uh, tensions, right?
And, and now there's aquaculture versus wild caught fisheries. but often they get a lot more complicated than that. And so, yeah, I, I haven't dug into the menhaden science. I do know there's a lot of questions in the recreational community of our red fish and other game fish we're seeking, getting caught up in their nets.
But I think, whatever the science is, it should be a reminder of like, everyone should try and understand the complexity of these industries. 'cause the menhayden industry, at least in Louisiana, I think is, is maybe sec the second biggest fishery behind shrimp. But we don't, the general public doesn't know that because it doesn't wind up on our plate. And so there's a lot happening in our oceans that we miss if we only think about seafood.
CARLYLE: yeah. And as all of you have noted, everything's connected, right? So these questions have been great. Do we have any more?
Q&A: Yes. When you were talking about, uh, the fish farms and, and pens out in the Gulf, seemed like you were, indicating that there might be foreign fish introduced to be farmed in the Gulf ?
BOYCE: Uh, I mean the, the, the farm I've looked closest at, that farm will be growing. Red drum that is, that have first generation descendants of wild caught Gulf of Mexico fish. So, like Ryan was mentioning, concerned there's been salmon farms where there's genetically engineered salmon and then nets rip, they escape. One of the ways to fix that is to, um, use local fish. And so that's what this farm is doing. but I don't know that that's baked into the law, right?
CARLYLE: of it that is, that is, that's baked in. Wherever it is, whether it's Gulf Coast or Atlantic or eventually Pacific, they, they have to be native fish to that area. But again, that's contentious too because like there's a big push against farming red snapper because that could be competition for the wild fishery. So I think what's, what's being proposed right now is, um, as Boyce said, red drum and they're trying to figure out what other species are politically and environmentally viable.
let's uh, finish with a big round of applause 'cause I just silenced the crowd with that one. You all have been an amazing panel. Thank you so much.
And we'll keep the good times and the seafood chatter going. Thanks again. Y'all have been an amazing audience. I really, really appreciate y'all coming out.
OUTRO
Thanks for listening to Sea Change. This episode of Sea Change Live was hosted by me, executive producer Carlyle Calhoun. Eva Tesfaye edited the episode and sound design by Kurt Kohnen.
We’d like to thank the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, Eagle Point and Holy Ground Oysters, the band Grits and Greens, and the panelists Ryan Bradley, Matthew Mayfield, Boyce Upholt and Alex Perry.
Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux (Meer - O) Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
We’ll be back in two weeks.
