January 9, 2017 โ If youโve never laid eyes on a dogfish โ or tasted one โ youโre not alone.
Yep, itโs in the shark family. (See those telltale fins?) And fisherman Jamie Eldredge is now making a living catching dogfish off the shores of Cape Cod, Mass.
When populations of cod โ the Capeโs namesake fish โ became too scarce, Eldredge wanted to keep fishing. Thatโs when he turned to dogfish โ and itโs turned out to be a good option. The day I went out with him, Eldredge caught close to 6,000 lbs. (Check out the video above.)
โItโs one of the most plentiful fish we have on the East Coast right now,โ Brian Marder, owner of Marder Trawling Inc., told us. Fishermen in Chatham, Mass., caught about 6 million pounds of dogfish last year.
So, whoโs eating all this dogfish? Not Americans. โ99 percent of itโ is shipped out, Marder says.
The British use dogfish to make fish and chips. The French use it in stews and soups. Italians import it, too. The Europeans are eating it up. But Americans havenโt developed a taste for it. At least, not yet.
The story of the dogfish is typical of the seafood swap. โThe majority of the seafood we catch in our U.S. fisheries doesnโt stay here,โ explains Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly, who leads the Seafood Watch program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
And while we export most of what is caught off U.S. shores, what do Americans eat? Imported fish. About โ90 percent of the seafood we consume in the U.S. is actually caught or farm-raised overseas,โ Kemmerly says.
To sustainable seafood advocates, this swap doesnโt make much sense. โWeโre kind of missing out on the bounty we actually have here,โ Kemmerly says.
And, itโs not just dogfish.
The Environmental Defense Fund has launched a campaign called Eat These Fish to tell the story of a whole slew of plentiful fish caught off our shores. The group is trumpeting the conservation success of U.S. fisheries. Some species have been brought back from the brink of extinction through a system of quotas and collaboration between fishermen, conservationists and regulators. They point to fish such as Acadian Redfish and Pacific Ocean Perch.