FISH 133 Spring 2019

The white gold rush
Patagonian toothfish, with their buttery white
flesh and a mild, non-fishy flavour were seen as
ideal fish to exploit, though their appearance and
name was seen as less appetising so they were
rebranded as Chilean sea bass, Chilean grouper
and black hake. In Japan it is known as mero.
In Chile it is known as bacalao de profundidad or
merluza negra.
With this ‘rebranding’ of the Patagonian toothfish,
it wasn’t long before it was gracing the tables of
upscale seafood restaurants around the world.
With demand and prices surging, the white gold
rush began in earnest.
In the mid-1980s, industrial fishing fleets from
Spain, South Korea and Japan, which had
overfished their national waters and depleted fish
stocks in Chilean waters, then joined in the rush
to target the Patagonian toothfish.
By 1994, fishing for Patagonian toothfish spread
to the coast of Argentina. Illegal, or pirate, fishing
for toothfish was rampant. In some areas up
to 90 percent of the total Patagonian toothfish
catch was being taken by illegal, unreported, and
unregulated (IUU) long-line fishers. In 1997 the
estimated illegal catch of Patagonian toothfish
was around 70,000 tonnes with a value of over
$500 million.
Different tactics were being used by illegal traders
to introduce illegally caught toothfish into the
United States market, including: mislabelling;
laundering illegally caught toothfish through the
Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic
Marine Living Resources’s (CCAMLR) own Catch
Documentation Scheme; using ports with lax
controls and dubious flag states; tampering with
the Vessel Monitoring Systems; misreporting
catches (i.e., claiming that catches were taken
on the high seas, even though they were caught
in CCAMLR waters); exploiting gaps in the chain
of custody; and trans-shipment of the fish at port
and at sea.
The fish on your dinner plate may be
an endangered species
In a report by Oceana in 2016, it was not
uncommon to find threatened and endangered
fish being passed off as either from legitimate
sources or passed off as other species in markets
around the world.
The authors found fraud at every level of the
seafood supply chain, from distribution to retail.
One in five of the more than 25,000 samples
tested was found to be mislabelled, on average,
and researchers discovered fraud in every area
studied except one. In the United States on
average 28 percent of fish were labelled as
another fish with fish labelled snapper, grouper,
and salmon being the least likely to actually be
those types of fish. In Europe, hake and sole
were mislabelled the most. Sixteen percent of
the fish mislabelled as other species were found
to have some level of conservation risk.
The edge of collapse
© Tony Fitzsimmons MSC
From the early 2000s catches of Patagonian
toothfish began to collapse as the stocks
were being over-exploited by both legal and
illegal fishing.
As the fishery floundered, the foodservice
industry began to have second thoughts and
the US based ethical supermarket chain Whole
Foods Market halted sales and more than 700
US chefs joined forces with environmental groups
on the “Take a pass” campaign. Toothfish was
now off the menu.
The fishery was killing albatrosses
and petrels
The Patagonian toothfish fishery uses longlines,
which were killing an estimated 100,000
albatrosses each year. The frozen bait used
by the fishery floated on the surface until it
thawed and the birds dived to take the bait,
became hooked and were then dragged below
9
The Plight of Patagonian Toothfish