If I'm not mistaken even the Krill may be in a state of decline or being over harvested??? [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]
The Grand Banks Fishery has surely been devastated. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]
Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
Bird, Although this is COOKING stuff it relates to your post. Just a side note... Sheepshead make a wonderful "crab helper." If you boil the dickens out of sheepshead it doesn't turn to mush. Instead it firms up and can be broken up and mixed with crab as an extender. Not many folks will have a clue it happened.
I learned this from an avid sports fisherman I served with in the USCG Aux. He did up a huge "crab" feast at a cookout we did in common with a group of "regulars" from San Diego Coast Guard Air Station. He strategically placed several remnants of crab shell around the edge of the huge serving bowl as decoration (and subtle psychological cues) and the crab extended with sheepshead was a real hit.
The last sheepshead I ate was speared at San Miguel Island off the California coast and was so big it wouldn't fit in my buddy's SCUBA game bag. As we had ample crab within 6 ft of the surface we did the crab separate and fried the fish.
There used to be abalone for the taking at the San Diego shore but now it is much harder to find any. At some of the off shore islands (Channel Islands) we would go to the windward side at lower low water and get all the abalone we would ever want at without getting anything wet but the soles of our shoes. The days of this sort of bounty are pretty much gone and likely to not return.
I know a place on the windward side of one of those islands where there are midden piles (trash heaps) of abalone shells from hundreds of years ago, left by the indigenous native population (Indians.) The abalone shells are truly enormous. I have never seen a living abalone in SOCAL or anywhere else even close to the size of those shells. Unfortunately I tried to pick one up to examine it. It just crumbled away at a touch. Luckily it is not a frequently visited location or surely vandals would have destroyed them.
About 15 years ago abalone about 8 inches or so in diameter, live in the shell, were selling at Point Loma Sea Food store (San Diego) for $25/lb. Scarcity rules price so who knows what they would cost now.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
Pat, my maternal grandparents lived in Oklahoma City from long before I was born, but at one time, they had lived in California and I still remember a large abalone shell they had for a door stop. I've only eaten abalone once. In January, 1974, I was in San Diego for the Helicopter Association of America convention and one night we ate at a place at the edge of the water called Anthony's Fish Grotto. Excellent clam chowder and the abalone was delicious.
And once filleted and cooked, I just don't believe anyone could tell the difference, from the taste, between sheepshead and red drum. I used to have a recipe that came from Alaska for smoking salmon. I used the same recipe and smoked sheepshead fillets and shark steaks from Port Aransas, then froze them. I used to carry that and cheese to the office for my lunch, along with a few crackers I kept in my desk. It was good cold, but even better warmed in the microwave oven. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] I never tried using it for crab extender but that certainly sounds possible. I even like the artificial "Krab" in the grocery store and on salad bars that's made from fish of some kind, but my wife doesn't like it.
And just as you could get abalone in shallow water, I used to go wading in knee deep water with my Dad at Port Aransas and gather all the oysters we wanted, but I'm afraid those days, too, are gone. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]
Bird, Some abalone live in the inter-tidal region and are exposed at low tide, often under rock ledges or in the shade, not in direct sunlight. You can gather them without even getting your feet wet, just the bottom of your shoe soles. I can recall large tide pools that looked to have been tiled with abalone. In one instance I saw crowding such that there was not enough room for every abalone to have its own spot so there were abalone on abalone. In a couple instances they were piled high into an arch of abalone.
Bounty in various species such as you and I recall is most likely a thing of the past, not to be repeated in the foreseeable future. These stocks were depleted with the pressures of predation from a population that is much smaller than the present one. As population continues to grow essentially unchecked, the predation/harvest pressure on the more desirable species will continue to increase. No one want to be the first person to not get what they want but don't mind maybe being the last person to get what they want.
As the desirable species are depleted the less desirable ones find themselves in the crosshairs of commercial and private exploitation. What used to be "trash fish" to commercial fishermen is now sometimes THE CATCH OF THE DAY.
I recall being in Manzanillo Mexico (West coast, north of Acapulco) for the finish of the Long Beach to Manzanillo race (sailboats) while enroute to San Diego from Acapulco. The hotel docks were crowded with race enthusiasts so we anchored in a small cove and when the wind shifted we hauled the anchor and found a space at the crowded hotel facility. Our move was in response to the change of direction of the breeze which put us down wind of a Korean fishing boat that had a couple hundred shark fins strung up above deck to dry. Hundreds of sharks slaughtered for their dorsal fins so some Koreans or their customers (Japanese) could have shark's fin soup.
Another time in Baja near a small restaurant on the beach beside an impromptu airfield there was a rowboat beached with several sea turtles in it, upside down and flailing, awaiting their turn to be butchered and made into turtle soup for the rich gringos who frequented the area. There are now strict regulations and protection for the green sea turtle. This turtle may not mature till over 20 years old and can live over 100 years if it escapes the cooking pot. It is now an endangered species.
You can't blame primitive people (who don't understand the big picture) for eating the best stuff they could find. Unfortunately a lot of the best stuff is in short supply now, unlike the human population. Most people know only realize something is in short supply when they can't get any. Looking ahead and cutting back is a difficult message to promote. Fishing fleets that used to fill their holds in a day or two now take weeks while using better equipment like color sonar, thermographs, and such. Shrimpers that used to fill their hold in a single night now scramble to find shrimp. There are still amazingly large shrimp to be had in the Guaymas region of the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of Baja California) but in the last decade the harvest yield has been a small fraction of what it used to be. No one wants to be the first to sell their boat and get another job. They hang on and keep trying harder and harder while producing less and less. The demand is there so the prices are high and that funds the continued effort to "get the last shrimp." I did love those large (4-8 per lb) shrimp but there are just not enough to go around and continued hard fishing will put the shrimpers out of business.
These are but a few things I have personally witnessed. The same thing is happening all over the world. Population increases as if there were no possible limit to the number of people the planet can support and in some areas the agricultural land is being paved over or turned into "hives" to house more consumers.
It is inevitable that at some point there will be more food demand than supply. This is irrespective of the ability to distribute the food. Flaws in distribution will exacerbate the problem prior to actually not having enough food per capita world wide. But even with perfect, loss free storage with no insect, rodent, or biological storage problems (mold and such) eventually, not that far into the future, improvements in distribution could only provide an equality of shortfall as there just won't be enough to go around. Those will be interesting times (in the supposed Chinese sense.)
//doom and gloom mode = off//
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
After reading all these posts I can't help thinking about "The Grapes of Wrath." The Okies came from the dust bowl to California looking for work and food, both of which were in drastically short supply. The thing they had in common was that most of them could farm. Still they starved when they came to an area of the country where the land was fertile and would grow anything. An excerpt:
*****
He drove his old car into a town. He scoured the farms for work. Where can we sleep the night?
Well, there's a Hooverville on the edge of the river. There's a whole raft of Okies there.
He drove his old car to Hooverville. He never asked again, for there was a Hooverville on the edge of every town.
The rag town lay close to water; and the houses were tents, and weed-thatched enclosures, paper houses, a great junk pile. The man drove his family in and became a citizen of Hooverville--always they were called Hooverville. The man put up his own tent as near to water as he could get; or if he had no tent, he went to the city dump and brought back cartons and built a house of corrugated paper. And when the rains came the house melted and washed away. He settled in Hooverville and he scoured the countryside for work, and the little money he had went for gasoline to look for work. In the evening the men gathered and talked of the land they had seen.
There's thirty thousand acres, out west of here. Layin' there. Jesus, what I could do with that, with five acres of that! Why, hell, I'd have everything to eat.
Notice one thing? They ain't no vegetables not chickens not pigs at the farms. They raise one thing--cotton, say, or peaches, or lettuce. 'Nother place'll be all chickens. They buy the stuff they could raise in the dooryard.
Jesus, what I could do with a couple pigs!
Well, it ain't yourn, an' it ain't gonna be yourn.
What we gonna do? The kids can't grow up this way.
In the camps the word would come whispering, There's work at Shafter. And the cars would be loaded in the night, the highways crowded -- a gold rush for work. At Shafter the people would pile up, five times too many to do the work. A gold rush for work. They stole away in the night, frantic for work. And along the roads lay the temptations, the fields that could bear food.
That's owned. That ain't our'n.
Well, maybe we could get a little piece of her. Maybe--a little piece. Right down there - a patch. Jimson weed now. Christ, I could git enough potatoes off'n that little patch to feed my whole family!
It ain't our'n. It got to have Jimson weeds.
Now and then a man tried; crept on the land and cleared a piece, trying like a thief to steal a little richness from the earth. Secret gardens hidden in the weeds. A package of carrot seeds and a few turnips. Planted potato skins, crept out in the evening secretly to hoe in the stolen earth.
Leave the weeds around the edge--then nobody can see what we're a-doin'. Leave some weeds, big tall ones, in the middle.
Secret gardening in the evenings, and water carried in a rusty can.
And then one day a deputy sheriff: Well, what you think you're doin'?
I ain't doin' no harm.
I had my eye on you. This ain't your land. You're trespassing.
The land ain't plowed, an' I ain't hurtin' it none.
You goddamned squatters. Pretty soon you'd think you owned it. You'd be sore as hell. Think you owned it. Get off now.
And the little green carrot tops were kicked off and the turnip greens trampled. And then the Jimson weed moved back in. But the cop was right. A crop raised--why, that makes ownership. Land hoed and the carrots eaten--a man might fight for land he's taken food from. Get him off quick! He'll think he owns it. He might even die fighting for the little plot among the Jimson weeds.
Did ya see his face when we kicked them turnips out? Why, he'd kill a fella soon's he'd look at him. We got to keep these here people down or they'll take the country. They'll take the country.
Outlanders, foreigners.
Sure, they talk the same language, but they ain't the same. Look how they live. Think any of us folks'd live like that? Hell, no!
In the evenings, squatting and talking. And an excited man: Whyn't twenty of us take a piece of lan'? We got guns. Take it an' say, "Put us off if you can." Whyn't we do that?
They'd jus' shoot us like rats.
Well, which'd you ruther be, dead or here? Under groun' or in a house all made of gunny sacks? Which'd you ruther for your kids, dead now or dead in two years with what they call malnutrition? Know what we et all week? Milled nettles an' fried dough! Know where we got the flour for the dough? Swep' the floor of a boxcar.
*****
I wish I knew how much fertile farm land we have in this country that is manicured or left to go wild and sitting stagnant because it "belongs to someone." We will soon all be Okies if we're not careful, and if hunger rears it's ugly head, it will be a matter of who is strong enough to take back that land and knows what to do with it if they do.
The majority of our population would not know how to grow a tomato plant if they had a bucket of fine soil, seeds and a watering can. This country is full of people who have built they're lives on paper, and WHEN those paper lives cease to have value, and they cannot make a living off the backs of others, they will be weeded out and those who can pull a trigger and work a hoe, will become the new rich.
Cindi, Much more literary than my "bands of armed rovers from the inner cities, too far down the food distribution chain" picture I tried to paint but nearly congruent.
Laws and ownership works so long as the thin veneer of civilization is not challenged by starvation.
Of course left wing politicians will decide for us that giving land from those who have more than they can farm to those who would like to try is the RIGHT thing to do. So civilization doesn't have to collapse so long as there is someone available in a position of power who knows better what to do with your property than you do yourself. Gee, aren't our elected leaders there to make the tough decisions in times of extreme difficulty.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
Red or Blue... They are all libs now. It's almost a fight over who can be more of a lib these days. In the meantime we just continue to lose our rights.... but that's enough talk of politics from me.
Arsenic or strychnine, take your pick! Oh, you one of those independents, huh, I'll get you a hemlock.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
Pat -
Good one! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
I tend to be more of the libertarian persuasion these days.
Decided to revive this a bit. Could see a lot of this coming down the pike when started part time farming 10 years or so ago. Found a 5 acre plot that was having trouble growing sand burrs. Spread copious amounts of home grown fertilizer (aka manure), kept chemicals on the land and animals to a minimum and slowly experimented with land experiments such as hay, fallow, pasture etc. Finally can get a crop off it but man did it take some work.
Now they are talking about how the genetics of seed have gone about as far as it can go and the concern is 'dirt'. The never ending 'they'. Upshot, they found out they could not 'make' dirt. Nature has to do it and in its own good time and will not be forced. The trace minerals have been taken out of the soil and replaced with petrochemical mock ups. Many areas now under starvation threat were the bread baskets of their time.
The antibiotics that were touted to be so wonderful are now turning up in soil and water as they pass thru animals that are being forced to grow faster and bigger than designed.
The cows and chickens and assorted i watch over are creatures of nature and they are not forced to do more that they can naturally. Yep they grow a little slower, and may not be as profitable, but when i sit down to dinner i know where they came from and what they ate so i can eat as well.
Wish 'them' luck at making dirt.
No fun, change the rules!!!
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